From the origins of conservation to the challenge of contemporary art: a précis

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Chapter II.

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historian R. H. Mariinissen notes in this vein that early maintenance work failed to acknowledge the value of historicity, regarded as a fundamental principle in a conservation act;⁸⁹ while Salvador Muñoz Viñas traces the origins of conservation in the conceptualisation of the principle of “least possible interference” in the mid-18^th century.⁹⁰

Early theorisation and regulation of the practice

Theorisation of the restoration and conservation practice emerged at the end of the Enlightenment.⁹¹ As the need for responsible and systematic practice became increasingly acknowledged and explored, the natural sciences came to be seen as a required direction for the conservation field. Scholars make special mention of the year 1888, when the chemist Friedrich Rathgen was appointed at the Koniglichen Museen, Berlin: this has been the first permanent appointment of a natural scientist in a museum’s restoration position.⁹²

The need to regulate restoration practices globally led the League of Nations⁹³ to devote an international conference on the subject (Plenderleith 1998, 134). The conference was held in Rome in 1930 and led to the publication of the Manual of the Conservation and Restoration of Paintings in 1939.⁹⁴ According to Pye (2001, 49), this publication marked a key moment for the field of conservation, as its title made a clear statement that “conservation was an activity distinct from, though closely related to, restoration”. From this time onwards, the landscape of conservation was to be radically reformed:⁹⁵ from being improvised and varied, the practice of conservation became regulated and systematic, while collective agency started replacing that

89 R. H. Marijnissen notes that although maintenance work has always been carried out, the attitude in this type of processes has nothing to do with that of conservation and he opposes art historian’s Alois Riegl argument that conservation or protection of monuments (Denkmalpflege) began in the time of the Italian Renaissance.

Marijnissen counterargues that the restorer-artist of that time “lacked the fundamental respect that dictates, above all, preservation of evidence of the past. He did not yet have the attitude of a historian, a paleographer, an archaeologist, a Bollandist, or even a learned person. He had not yet realized that a work of art is also a historical document” (Marijnissen 1996 [1963], 278).

90 Muñoz Viñas sees this manifested, in exceptional cases, even in the eighteenth century and he makes particular reference to Pietro Edwards (1744–1821). He notes that in his treatise Capitolato, written in 1777, Edwards introduced many ideas that are still valid today, such as the principle that an inpainting should not extend beyond the lacuna that it was intended to cover. However, Viñas also adds that Edward’s theory “had not immediate consequences and remained an isolated case for some time” (Muñoz Viñas 2005, 3).

91 By scholar, such as: Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc; John Ruskin; William Morris; Alois Riegl; and, Camillo Boito.

92 See, for instance: Pye 2001, 45 and Hölling 2015, 5.

93 An intergovernmental organisation, active between 1920 and 1944, that had as its principal mission maintaining world peace.

94 Edited by Helmut Ruhemann, George Stout and Harold Plenderleith.

95 In the same period took place the First International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments (Athens, Greece 1931), the findings of which were summarised in the key text Athens Charter.

51 of the individual. In the following decades, most of the major conservation organisations (still leading the field today) were established.⁹⁶ Already by mid-20^th century, conservation was a fully institutionalised field that, without losing its pluralism, advocated transparency, internal and external dialogue and the sharing of research.

Within this climate of systematisation, sub-categories of expertise were devised in fine-art conservation, corresponding to different fine-art media. However, the paradigm of contemporary art raised quite distinct challenges: by the 1990’s, the discussion of what is expected by the conservator of contemporary artworks was well underway.

The traditional conservation paradigm and the challenges of contemporary art

Having as its exemplary object a relatively stable, concrete artwork —i.e. an artwork embodied in a fixed material medium (e.g. a painted canvas), having a privileged set of physical properties fixed at the time of its making,— conservation practice traditionally aimed at preserving the material make-up of the artwork and/or its privileged mode of appearance.⁹⁷ Traditional theories of conservation were similarly preoccupied, mainly or exclusively, with setting the principles of physical treatment of an artwork — as, for instance, those of minimal intervention and reversibility, which emerged at the end of 18^th century and dominated conservation discourse for almost two centuries.⁹⁸

As already discussed in the previous Chapter, the traditional paradigm in conservation theory was challenged in the 1980s: a marked “communicative turn” in the relevant discourse⁹⁹ questioned the prominence of an artwork’s physical dimension and foregrounded significance as the main locus of importance — thus advocating the social character of the conservation discipline. This turn in conservation discourse is reflected in Getty Institute’s publication Values and Heritage Conservation as follows:¹⁰⁰

96 The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique — IRPA- KIK), was founded in Belgium in 1948. The International Institute for Conservation of Historic Objects and Works of Art (IIC) was created in 1950. The Institute of Conservation (ICON), that was originally named UKIC and was part of IIC, was established in UK in 1953. The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) was established in 1959. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) - Committee for Conservation (ICOM-CC) was established in 1967 (ICOM having been founded in 1946). The Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) was created in 1972. The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) was established in 1985.

97 When referring to traditional conservation here, a reference is made also to restoration, which was the overarching term until 1950’s. At that point, the term conservation became institutionally endorsed, also, by the establishment of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic Objects and Works of Art (IIC), an organisation that is still at the forefront of conservation research internationally.

98 See: Muñoz Viñas 2005, 2.

99 See: Muñoz Viñas 2005, 147–70.

100 “Cultural significance is the term that the conservation community has used to encapsulate the multiple values ascribed to objects, buildings, or landscapes” (Avrami et al. 2000, 7).

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The ultimate aim of conservation is not to conserve material for its own sake but, rather, to maintain (and shape) the values embodied by the heritage […] We have come to recognise that conservation cannot unify or advance with any real innovation or vision if we continue to concentrate the bulk of conservation discourse on issues of physical condition. (Avrami et al. 2000, 7)

Despite such theoretical proclamations, the shift of focus in conservation discourse, from physicality towards significance, is far from being universally endorsed and applied.¹⁰¹ A factor that influences negatively the concretisation of this shift is pragmatic: the status of the artwork as a commodity that bears an economic value naturally privileges an interest in the maintenance of its physical condition.

When it comes to contemporary art, however, a reconceptualization of the aims and practices of conservation seems to be enforced: one of the marks of this artistic paradigm is repudiation of material fixity in favour of physical variability. The physical variability of contemporary art is manifested in different ways: it is manifested in artworks that incorporate materials that are perishable; in artworks that interact with the exhibition space almost in the manner of a choreography; in artworks that do not prescribe a fixed arrangement of their elements in space; in artworks that require close engagement rather than a distant (visual or aural) appreciation of their physical properties; in artworks that can involve intricate material constructions but which, at the same time, offer no tangible material to be stored after their initial installation; in artworks that involve —and often incorporate— technologies destined to become obsolete; and, finally, in artworks that manifest themselves in an oscillating status between performative act and material object.¹⁰²

To make manifest the need for a reconceptualization of conservation practice in relation to contemporary art (or else, the unsuitability of the traditional paradigm), it would help to consider the way in which the conservator's identity is currently defined by the International Council of Museums - Committee for Conservation (ICOM-CC):

101 “The greater part of all conservation research still focuses on the challenges of physical condition—namely, the deterioration of materials and possible interventions— concentrating on the objects as opposed to their contexts” (Avrami et al. 2000, 5).

102 For instance: Bitch, 1995, by artist Sarah Lucas; Le Musée qui n’existait pas (The Museum That Did Not Exist), 2002, by artist Daniel Buren; 204 Somerset beach stones in 17 lines of 12 stones, 1972 –1973, by artist Richard Long; Delineator, 1974–1975, by artist Richard Serra; Wall Drawings, by artist Sol LeWitt; Monument 1 for V.

Tatlin, 1964, by artist Dan Flavin; Moon is the oldest TV, 1965, by artist Nam June Paik; and, Iriguchi (Entrance), 1955, by artist Saburo Murakami.

53 [The] person educated in conservation and restoration technics and ethics, who is responsible for maintaining objects in as stable a condition as possible, so that they remain accessible as long as possible and still represent the meaning attributed to the objects.¹⁰³

In this statement, accessibility to meaning is directly associated with the object’s stable condition — an axiom that constitutes an oxymoron in the case of many contemporary artworks. For instance, consider the work Strange Fruit (For David), 1992–1997 by Zoe Leonard. This work features a series of eaten fruits that had their skins sewed back by the artist to an uncut wholeness. It is telling that, when the artist was faced with the choice of having her sculptures scientifically treated in order to be preserved for the future, she decided that she had to let them decay to the level of material disappearance in order for the work to retain its meaning.¹⁰⁴ Curator Ann Temkin remarked in relation to this work: “What did the museum’s conservators think? Indeed, the piece is a bit of an affront to the whole profession” (Temkin 1999, 49). Conservation scholar Pip Laurenson offers a rational response to the noted challenge: since there is a shift in the nature of the artworks that conservators work with, there needs to be an analogous shift of focus in conservation research and practice (Laurenson 2006, 9).

But how, and to what extent, is this shift of focus evidenced in the actual research and practice of conservation? And how do practitioners themselves conceive of the challenges they are faced with and the ways in which they address those challenges? Departing from the exemplary paradigm of Time-Based Media (TBM) artworks, in the following sections I will explore these issues, drawing on the relevant literature but also on the practitioners’ own insights, as expressed in a series of interviews conducted for this purpose.