The Explicit Material: Inquiries on the Intersection of Curatorial and Conservation Cultures 9789004396852, 9004396853

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The Explicit Material

Studies in Art & Materiality Editor in Chief Ann-Sophie Lehmann, University of Groningen Editorial Board Christian Berger, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz Marjolijn Bol, Utrecht University Beate Fricke, Universität Bern Wolf-Dietrich Löhr, Freie Universität Berlin and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz Advisory Board Sven Dupré, Utrecht University Christine Göttler, Universität Bern Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen Robert van Langh, Rijksmuseum/Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art, and Science, Amsterdam Monika Wagner, Universität Hamburg

VOLUME 1

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/siam

The Explicit Material Inquiries on the Intersection of Curatorial and Conservation Cultures Edited by

Hanna B. Hölling Francesca G. Bewer Katharina Ammann

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Com&Com (Johannes M. Hedinger/Marcus Gossolt), Baum (Tree), 2010. Installation view at Kunsthaus Pasquart Biel, Switzerland, 17 January–14 March 2010. Image: Daniel Schmid. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hölling, Hanna B. (Hanna Barbara), editor. | Bewer, Francesca G. (Francesca Gabrielle),  1960– editor. | Ammann, Katharina, editor. Title: The explicit material : inquiries on the intersection of curatorial  and conservation cultures / edited by Hanna B. Hölling, Francesca G.  Bewer, Katharina Ammann. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2019] | Series: Studies in art &  materiality, ISSN 2468-2977 ; Volume 1 | Includes bibliographical  references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019013268 (print) | LCCN 2019016815 (ebook) |  ISBN 9789004396852 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004372818 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Museums—Collection management—Philosophy. |  Museums—Curatorship—Philosophy. | Museum conservation  methods—Philosophy. | Art—Conservation and restoration. |  Antiquities—Collection and preservation. | Material culture—Philosophy. Classification: LCC AM133 (ebook) | LCC AM133 .E95 2019 (print) |  DDC 069/.5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019013268

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2468-2977 ISBN 978-90-04-37281-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-39685-2 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Dedicated to David Lowenthal (1923–2018), with gratitude for his wisdom and friendship

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Contents Preface ix Hanna B. Hölling List of Figures x Contributors xv Introduction: Material Encounters 1 Hanna B. Hölling, Francesca G. Bewer, and Katharina Ammann

Part 1 Time and Change in Material and Object Inquiries 1

A Sea-Change Rich and Strange 17 David Lowenthal

2

The Present, the Past, and the Material Object 64 Paul Eggert

3

Engaging with Materials Telling the Whole Story 79 Elizabeth Pye

Part 2 Explicating the Performative: Material, Medium, Object 4

The ‘Extended Life’ of Performance Curating 1960s Multimedia Art in the Contemporary Museum 117 Judit Bodor

5

Framing Intention Presentation as Preservation Strategy in Video Art 142 Katharina Ammann

6

Out of the Box Preservation on Display 167 Anna Schäffler

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Contents

The Louvre on Celluloid Curating, Disseminating, and Preserving the Louvre’s Collections in Mid-Twentieth-Century Art Documentaries 186 Birgit Cleppe

Part 3 The Making and Unmaking of Objects and Myths 8

The Material Forms of the Past and the ‘Afterlives’ of the Compositiones variae Recovering, Conserving, and Exhibiting the Personal History of an Early Medieval Manuscript 209 Thea Burns

9

Would You Like That With or Without Mayo? How Interdisciplinary Collaboration Slows the Spread of Popular Misconceptions in Modern Art Scholarship 236 Dawn V. Rogala

Part 4 Transitions 10

Materials, Objects, Transitions Jorge Otero-Pailos in Conversation with Hanna B. Hölling 255

Index 273

Preface Hanna B. Hölling This volume emerged as a result of sustained discussions between art, cultural, and architectural historians, as well as heritage scholars, curators, and conservators specialized in traditional and recent art and material culture. These conversations were spawned by two sessions—The explicit material: On the intersections of cultures of curation and conservation and Objekte erklären: Kulturen des Kuratierens und des Konservierens—organized consecutively in 2016 on the occasions of the 104th College Art Association Annual Conference and the Swiss Congress of Art History. The majority of authors in this volume participated in one or another of these events or in conversations that developed in their aftermath. Each of them contributed a strongly voiced piece of writing on his or her respective topic, which went through a thorough editorial review by the co-chairs of the conference sessions. The editors discussed the contents and structure of the volume, and all reviewed the papers, working across diverse geographic and temporal zones. To see this book through the editorial and publishing process was thus a combined effort of many dedicated individuals. Hence I would like to thank Francesca Bewer of Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Katharina Ammann of the Swiss Institute for Art Research in Zurich for accepting my invitation to co-organize our respective sessions and subsequently build on those to create an edited volume. My sincere thanks go to the authors who patiently responded to our invitations, comments, and criticism and continued revising their work to produce the papers included here. We owe our thanks to Ann-Sophie Lehmann for her interest in realizing this project within Brill’s Studies in Art and Materiality series. I am grateful to my home institution, the History of Art Department of the University College London, for all the support provided over the past two years. The Getty Conservation Institute and Getty Research Institute afforded me a very fruitful research context in which to develop these ideas further during a 2016–2017 residency. The Swiss Institute for Art Research and the Harvard Art Museums were instrumental in supporting this enriching endeavour.

Figures 3.1 3.2

3.3a

3.3b

3.4

3.5

3.6

3.7

3.8 3.9

Nossa Senhora do Carmo altarpiece, 1735, gilded and painted wood, Carmo Church, Faro, Portugal (photo: Paulo Catrica) 89 Minute cross-section taken from the Nossa Senhora do Carmo altarpiece showing the thin gilding layer on top of the double-structured ground of fineparticled gesso mate over the coarser-grained gesso grosso, scanning electron microscope-backscattered (sem-bse) micrograph (photo: Isabel Pombo Cardoso) 90 Roman dagger and sheath (excavated in Chester, UK), iron; sheath approx. 5 cm across at widest point. The iron corrosion from the blade has completely enveloped the sheath (photo: Grosvenor Museum, Cheshire West and Chester Council) 93 X-radiograph of the Roman dagger and sheath showing the elaborate tin decoration on the sheath and the heads of rivets round the edge (photo: Vanessa Fell and Grosvenor Museum, Cheshire West and Chester Council) 93 Reconstruction drawing of the Roman dagger sheath showing how the components would be assembled. Structural details were established from the X-ray and from scanning electron microscope examination of the pseudomorph remains of horn (photo: Jacqui Watson and Historic England) 95 Llangorse, Wales, medieval textile, linen and silk, max. diam. 20 cm. The waterlogged mass is almost unrecognizable after limited cleaning. (photo: Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales) 97 Medieval textile from Llangorse after detailed cleaning and conservation, showing features of both woven pattern and stitching (photo: Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales) 97 Fragments of the medieval textile from Llangorse laid out with a drawing superimposed to indicate the woven pattern (photo: Amgueddfa Cymru— National Museum Wales) 98 Egypt, coffin of Nespawershefyt, around 1070–890 bc, detail of the inner coffin box (photo: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) 106 CT (computerised tomography) scanning image of the same part of the inner coffin of Nespawershefyt, showing that the profile of the head has been changed by cutting wood away from the inner side of the planks as well as building up the external wall. The positions of the mortises on the rims have been changed too, suggesting that these are reused pieces of wood, possibly from an earlier coffin (photo: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) 106

Figures 4.1

4.2 4.3

4.4

4.5

4.6

4.7

4.8

5.1

5.2

5.3

xi

Ivor Davies, Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968; Ni allaf ddianc rhag hon (I cannot escape this place), 2011, installation view, Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales (photo: Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales) 120 Ivor Davies, cue-sheet for the performance Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968, Swansea, 21 January 1968 (photo: Ivor Davies) 124 Ivor Davies and Emily O’Reilly, paper conservator, with relics from Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968, at the artist’s studio in Penarth, Wales (photo: Judit Bodor, 2013) 130 Q-lab cues for synchronised sound, visual and light elements in Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968/2015. From Silent explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art, 2015–2016. AV technician: Chris Hardwick (photo: Judit Bodor) 132 Spectator participation in Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968/2015. From Silent explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art, 2015–2016, Amgueddfa Cymru— National Museum Wales (photo: Judit Bodor) 132 Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968/2015, multimedia environment created by Ivor Davies, Judit Bodor and Nicholas Thornton (curators), Emily O’Reilly (conservator), Chris Hardwick (AV), Charlie Upton (sound), and Luned Aaron (artist) for Silent explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art, 2015–2016, Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales (photo: Amgueddfa Cymru— National Museum Wales) 133 Adam on St Agnes’ Eve 1:25, 21 January 2016, devised and performed by Mike Pearson with Anna Kelsey and Sebastian Noel, Sam Barnes, Richard Huw Morgan, and John Rowley (photo: Holly Heathcote) 134 Adam on St Agnes’ Eve 1:25, 21 January 2016, devised and performed by Mike Pearson with Anna Kelsey and Sebastian Noel, Sam Barnes, Richard Huw Morgan, and John Rowley (photo: Judit Bodor) 134 Installation instruction from David Claerbout for the single-channel projection Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine), 2001 (made available by Archiv Sammlung Goetz, Munich), transcription by Katharina Ammann. Claerbout’s most recent instruction mentions different player and projector types 148 David Claerbout, Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine), 2001, single-channel video projection, colour, silent, loop 3’39”, installation view at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2007. Courtesy the artist (photo: Studio David Claerbout) 151 David Claerbout, Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine), 2001, single-channel video projection, colour, silent, loop 3’39”, installation view at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2007; the overexposed image shows the spatial setting. Courtesy the artist (photo: Katharina Ammann) 157

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Figures

5.4 David Claerbout, Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine), 2001, single-channel video projection, colour, silent, loop 3’39”, installation view at Wiels, Brussels, 2011, together with Long Goodbye (2007). Courtesy the artist (photo: Jef Jacobs) 157 5.5 David Claerbout, Sections of a happy moment, 2007, single-channel video projection, black and white, stereo audio, 25’57”, installation view at Bündner Kunstmuseum 2009; in the foreground are two tableaux-pièges by Daniel Spoerri. With the artist’s consent, the video was not shown in a closed black box here. Courtesy the artist (photo: Stephan Schenk) 159 5.6 Technical installation of David Claerbout, Sections of a happy moment, 2007, single-channel video projection, black and white, stereo audio, 25’57”, installation view at Bündner Kunstmuseum 2009; background projection by Beat Streuli. Courtesy the artist (photo: Stephan Schenk) 160 6.1 Anna Oppermann, working state of Ensemble with decoration (Modes of behavior towards people when affection plays a part), decoration with birches, pears, and frames, since 1980 (filiation). Courtesy Estate Anna Oppermann and Galerie Barbara Thumm 167 6.2 and 6.3 Anna Oppermann, early working state of Ensemble with decoration (Modes of behavior towards people when affection plays a part), decoration with birches, pears, and frames, since 1980 (filiation), showing the iterative ensemble principle through different media and drawing of this photograph. Courtesy Estate Anna Oppermann and Galerie Barbara Thumm 171 6.4 and 6.5 Anna Oppermann, Ensemble with decoration (Modes of behavior towards people when affection plays a part), decoration with birches, pears, and frames, since 1980 (filiation), installation view at documenta 6, Kassel, 1977 and at Serpentine Gallery 1983. Courtesy Estate Anna Oppermann and Galerie Barbara Thumm 173 6.6 Method diagram illustrating different phases of consciousness of Oppermann’s artistic procedure. Courtesy Estate Anna Oppermann and Galerie Barbara Thumm 176 6.7 and 6.8 Drawing with personal notes on dealing with exhibition curators and artist scene and drawing illustrating the formation of Ensemble with decoration (Modes of behavior towards people when affection plays a part), decoration with birches, pears, and frames, since 1980 (filiation) and Oppermann’s intentions. Courtesy Estate Anna Oppermann and Galerie Barbara Thumm 178 6.9 and 6.10 Recursive documentation of daily working states during installation of the exhibition In Obhut (Anhand von Anna Oppermann) and final installation view of the ensemble staged as work in progress including the working table in the exhibition (photo: Anna Schäffler) 181

Figures 7.1

xiii

Henri Verne, ‘Le plan d’extension et de regroupement méthodique des collections du musée du Louvre. Les travaux de 1927 à 1934’, Bulletin des musées de France 1 (1934), 39 (photo: Ghent University Library) 188 7.2 Before and after shot of the rearranged painting collection. Henri Verne, ‘Le plan d’extension et de regroupement méthodique des collections du musée du Louvre. Les travaux de 1927 à 1934’, Bulletin des musées de France 1 (1934), 30 (photo: Ghent University Library) 193 7.3a The new arrangement of the Salle Jean Goujon in Henri Verne, ‘Le plan d’extension et de regroupement méthodique des collections du musée du Louvre. Les travaux de 1927 à 1934’, Bulletin des musées de France 1 (1934), 31 (photo: Ghent University Library) 194 7.3b Salle Jean Goujon in the Louvre as shown in Les Pierres vives—La sculpture française au Musée du Louvre (Fernand Marzelle, 1952). Digital film frame 194 8.1 Compositiones variae, fol. 219v (parchment fabrication recipe & others), c. 800, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana, Cod. 490. Reproduced with permission from Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca 211 8.2 Storage box for Cod. 490, 2015, board & bookcloth, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana (photo: Thea Burns, 2015) 213 8.3 Artisanal manuals, stemma or family tree showing general, not exact, trends and influences in the transmission of ideas and material. Reproduced with permission from Mark Clarke, The art of all colours. Medieval recipe books for painters and illuminators, London 2001, 27 215 8.4 Diagram of structure of quire 28 of Cod. 490, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana (diagram: Thea Burns, 2017) 221 8.5 ‘Good Shepherd’ miniature, Cod. 490, fol. 348r, c. 800, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana. Reproduced with permission from Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca 224 8.6 Detail of spine sewing after treatment, Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms Gr 19 (photo: Andrea Giovannini) 227 9.1 and 9.2 Jackson Pollock in his studio, 1950; Jackson Pollock at work, 1950. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, c. 1905–1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (photos: Rudy Burckhardt) 242 9.3 and 9.4 Barbara Rose interview, 1978. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, c. 1914–1984, bulk 1942–1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Pages 1 and 5 (detail) are from the edited transcript of an interview with Lee Krasner 245 9.5 Willem de Kooning, c. 1960. Photographs of artists by Fred McDarrah, 1963–1976. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (photo: Fred W. McDarrah) 246

xiv

Figures

9.6 Willem de Kooning’s studio, c. 1960s. Thomas Hess papers, 1937–1978. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (photo: W. [Walter] Silver) 246 10.1 Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust: Alumix, Bolzano, 2008, collection of the Museion: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bolzano, Italy (photo: Patrick Ciccone) 268 10.2 Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust: Alumix, Bolzano, 2008, detail of pollution, collection of the Museion: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bolzano, Italy. Courtesy the artist (photo: Jorge Otero-Pailos) 268 10.3 Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust: Trajan’s Column, 2015 The installation is made of conservation latex that has been used to clean the hollow inside of the cast of Trajan’s Column, the largest object in the V&A Museum. It shows the dust and dirt accumulated over decades in the usually unseen interior of the column, hanging in the space next to the cast. Commissioned by the V&A Museum. Courtesy the V&A Museum (photo: Peter Kelleher) 270 10.4 Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust: Maison de Famille Louis Vuitton, 2015, Panel #7 of the heptaptych. Louis Vuitton Collection. Courtesy the artist (photo: Louis Vuitton / Grégoire Vieille) 271 10.5 Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust: Old US Mint, San Francisco, 2016. The installation is made of conservation latex that has been used to clean the chimneys of the Old US Mint, where the gold from the California gold rush was turned into coins. As one of the only buildings surviving the 1906 earthquake, the pollution from the US Mint is some of the oldest pollution in San Francisco. Collection of SFMoMA. Courtesy the artist (photo: Charlie Villyard. Courtesy Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) 272

Contributors Katharina Ammann has studied art history and English literature at the University of Geneva, University of Oxford and the University of Bern (Ph.D. 2008). Her book Video ausstellen—Potenziale der Präsentation (Bern 2009) laid grounds for the understanding of the relation between the aspects of presentation, interpretation, and preservation in video art. Ammann was curator and collection conservator at the Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur and at Art Museum Solothurn, where she curated exhibitions and contributed to exhibition catalogues. She is currently head of the Art History Department and Member of the Board of Directors at the Swiss Institute for Art Research sik—isea. Francesca G. Bewer is Research Curator for Conservation and Technical Studies Programs and Director of the Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA. Studies at the Warburg Institute and the Institute of Archaeology (London) concerned historical studies of the Renaissance and of bronze technology. Bewer has published on art technology and on the history of conservation. Her book A laboratory for art. Harvard’s Fogg Museum and the emergence of conservation in America (ca. 1900–1950) won her the 2012 CAA/ AIC Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation. She is a founding member of the Copper Alloy Sculpture Techniques and History: International Interdisciplinary Group (CAST:ING). Judit Bodor is an independent curator, producer, and researcher based in Glasgow, Scotland. She works with archives, galleries, museums, and universities and has held positions with Artpool (Budapest), East Street Arts (Leeds), Dartington College of Arts, and York St John University. She currently works as Associate Tutor, MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at The Glasgow School of Art, and as Producer at WAVEparticle. Her areas of expertise include artists’ archives, performance art conservation and performative modes of curating. Recent projects include Left performance histories (nGbK, Berlin, 2018) and Silent explosion (Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, Cardiff, 2015–16). A trained art historian and arts manager, she has degrees from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (2002), Dartington College of Arts (2005), and a practice-led Ph.D. in curating from Aberywtwyth University (2017).

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Contributors

Thea Burns holds a B.A. (1st class honours in Fine Arts) from McGill University, a Master’s degree in Art Conservation from Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, a certificate in Paper Conservation from the Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute, University of London (2002). She taught paper conservation in the master’s degree program in art conservation at Queen’s University (1987–2001) and served as the Senior Paper Conservator for Special Collections in the Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard University Library (2002–2008). She is the author of several books: The invention of pastel painting (London 2007), The luminous trace. Drawing and writing in metalpoint (London 2012), L’art du pastel (Paris 2014) with Philippe Saunier, translated into English as The art of the pastel (New York 2015), and Compositiones variae. A late eighth-century craftsman’s technical treatise reconsidered (London 2017). Birgit Cleppe studied architecture at Ghent University and the Politechnico di Milano. She has worked as an art and architecture critic and has co-curated architecture exhibitions for the Flanders Architecture Institute, Antwerp, and Bozar, Brussels. At the Department of Art History (Ghent University), she is preparing a Ph.D. dissertation entitled ‘The golden age of the European experimental art documentary (1940–1960)’. With Dimitrios Latsis and Steven Jacobs, she is preparing an edited volume for I. B. Tauris on mid-twentieth-century art documentaries. Her recent research activities are centred on museology, the visual arts, and architecture. Paul Eggert is Martin J. Svaglic Endowed Chair in Textual Studies, Loyola University Chicago, and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. A scholarly editor and theorist of the editorial act, his principal arguments are brought together in Securing the past (Cambridge, UK 2009) and Biography of a book (University Park, PA 2013). His scholarly editions include the short stories of 1890s writer Henry Lawson and volumes in the D. H. Lawrence and Joseph Conrad Cambridge Works series.

Contributors

xvii

Hanna B. Hölling is Lecturer in the History of Art and Material Studies in the Department of History of Art, University College London, where she co-convenes the History of Art, Materials and Technology program, and Research Professor at the University of the Arts in Bern. Before joining ucl, she was Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Professor, Cultures of Conservation, at the Bard Graduate Center in New York (2013–2015). She is the author of two monographs, Paik’s virtual archive. Time, change and materiality in media art (Oakland 2017) and Revisions. Zen for film (New York 2015), which accompanied an eponymous exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York (17 September 2015–22 February 2016). David Lowenthal (1923–2018), emeritus professor of geography and honorary research fellow at University College London, was an American historian of conservation and heritage and adviser to UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICOM, the Council of Europe, and museums and heritage agencies in the UK, the US, Canada, Norway, Italy, Australia, and the Caribbean. He was renowned for his work on heritage and conservation history. He was awarded the International Institute of Conservation’s Forbes Lecture Prize in 2010 and the British Academy Medal in 2016 for his book The past is a foreign country —revisited (Cambridge, UK 2015). The medal honors “a landmark academic achievement which has transformed understanding in the humanities and social sciences” in a book that explores “the manifold ways in which history engages, illuminates and deceives us in the here and now.” His career spanning some seventy years culminated in his last book Quest for the unity of knowledge (Routledge, 2019) which conjoins insights into physical nature and human culture that are of concern to those in conservation, ecology, history of ideas, museology, and heritage studies. Jorge Otero-Pailos works at the intersection of art, architecture and preservation. He is the Principal and Founder of Otero-Pailos Studio, an art and architecture studio focused on experimental preservation. The studio stands for the idea that existing buildings and monuments can be reimagined into powerful agents of cultural change through contemporary art and architecture. He is Professor and Director of Historic Preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York. His artworks and public art installations have been commissioned and exhibited by major museums, foundations, and biennials, notably the Artangel Trust, the 53rd Venice Biennale, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Louis Vuitton Museum La Galerie, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2017.

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Contributors

Elizabeth Pye is Emeritus Professor of Conservation for Archaeology and Museums at University College London (ucl), where she taught conservation for much of her career. Her professional practice includes field conservation at archaeological sites around the Mediterranean, and, with iccrom, involvement in museum training in sub-Saharan Africa. She is author of Caring for the past. Issues in conservation for archaeology and museums (London 2001) and a number of papers on conservation and editor of The power of touch. Handling objects in museum and heritage contexts (London 2007). Her interests are in pre-industrial technologies, access to heritage, and philosophy of conservation. Dawn V. Rogala graduated from the M.A./C.A.S. program in art conservation at Buffalo State College of the State University of New York and received her Ph.D. in preservation studies from the University of Delaware. She has authored and co-authored papers on materials behaviour, paint analysis, and research methodology, including a monograph on the materials and techniques of Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann for The artist’s materials book series from the Getty Conservation Institute. Rogala is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation and the International Institute for Conservation. She works as a paintings conservator at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Conservation Institute, where she pursues the conservation and technical study of paintings with a focus on modern and contemporary artworks and artists’ materials. Anna Schäffler is an art historian, curator and fellow within the research group BildEvidenz. History and Aesthetics at the Free University Berlin. In her Ph.D. thesis she examines posthumous preservation practices of processual installation art. This analysis is based on her experience installing the Ensembles of Anna Oppermann since 2010, when she was assistant curator at Temporary Kunsthalle Berlin. Her recent projects, publications, and teaching focus on displaying contemporary art preservation and linking art history, conservation theory and curatorial approaches. Schäffler has been co-coordinator of the interdisciplinary Ph.D. and Postdoc Network CoCARe (Conservation of Contemporary Art Research). She is also engaged in research on artists’ estates as sites of knowledge and a new grassroots movement.

Introduction

Material Encounters Hanna B. Hölling, Francesca G. Bewer, and Katharina Ammann In every work of art, according to the art historian David Joselit, there is an irreducible singularity; the work remains indescribable, reluctant to the assignment of a singular meaning or interpretation.1 Seeing a painting as a sort of ‘time battery’, a mark of time that holds an infinite potential for staging meanings and actions, Joselit opens up a realm in which a work of art (a painting in his case) is capable of marking and storing time and accumulating actions. A life rather than a ready-made reality, the work of art is subject to change depending on the complex system of material relations in which it exists. And here is where this volume picks up, looking at the often overseen aspects of cultural artefacts that render them agents of impermanence from a mesh of disciplinary perspectives, with special emphasis on those of conservation and curation. Over the past decades, an increasing interest in the matter, materiality, and materials of artworks and artefacts has drawn the particular attention of scholars of various specializations to conservation, curation/presentation, and museums, in particular around questions of permanence, authorship, and authenticity.2 But it was not until recently that the study of material culture has striven to integrate perspectives of conservation discourse and aspects of heritage transmission with other humanities disciplines. Reflected in research and new education initiatives that followed the ‘material turn’, this object-focused and material-oriented interdisciplinary approach has spawned new and often unexpected insights into the nature of cultural artefacts and the cultures and people that produced, used, valued, and preserved them over time. How might a more fluid, transitional notion of the both tangible and intangible, material and conceptual nature of works be brought into sharper focus, wrestled with and accepted as necessary for the more nuanced interpretation and decisionmaking that challenges those tasked with their material preservation and display? And what can and does conservation theory and practice contribute to such an endeavour? These are some of the questions at the heart of this book.

1  Joselit 2016, 11. 2  See, for instance, Gordon et al. 2014.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004396852_002

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Hölling, Bewer, and Ammann

The Explicit Material: Inquiries on the Intersection of Curatorial and Conservation Cultures brings together a range of perspectives on material transitions, observing and explicating the myriad transformations that works of different kinds may undergo: changing contexts, changing matter, changing interpretations, and display. By making a point of the vibrant materiality of objects— their liveliness, power, and ability to change—the book aims to contribute to the conversation that confounds the continuing assumptions that artworks and artefacts are made of static, inert matter—inactive, stagnant, and passive ‘objects’ of investigation, subordinated to hygienic orders of museum vitrines or of preserved historical sites. Instead, it becomes clear that being material, they exist as complex constructs of material relations. In the words of the cultural historian and geographer David Lowenthal, the notions of ‘material permanence, wholeness, … and original authenticity have been increasingly supplanted by appreciative acceptance of temporal transience, processual transformation, varying contextual circumstances, life-cycle mutability, [and] erosive and corrosive agency’ (see Lowenthal, ‘A sea-change rich and strange’ in this volume). Most importantly, a close study of these internal material relationships, often through the trained eye of the conservator, curator, or other specialist offers a more nuanced reading of cultural artefact, which may lead to fundamental rethinking of the aesthetic and formal interpretations it is given, not to mention issues of authorship, authenticity, and permanence. We have sought here to bring together the ingredients for an interdisciplinary discussion about the relationships between curatorial and conservation philosophies across a range of institutions and sites and from the perspectives of a variety of human actors partaking in the lives of artworks. The book focuses on the ways in which these apparently divergent fields shape thinking about— and the practices of—collecting, exhibiting, and caring for objects. To ‘explicate’ means to unfold, unravel, make visible (from the Latin explicare). Taking conservation and curatorial approaches as an overarching meta-frame, The explicit material offers the reader an exploration of varying facets of the engagements with objects, materials, and meanings, beginning with several authors who consider material transitions as a point of departure for a more conceptual and discursive treatment of their topics. Lowenthal looks at the implications of the changing value of things that shift from one occurrence or state to another and at an acceptance of transience. Literary scholar Paul Eggert considers the general conditions of our interaction with material forms of the past and the nature of their continuing life in the present. The majority of the essays included in this volume take on the task of unravelling and unfolding ‘the matter’—the material of which the artefactual world is made—from each

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of its authors’ respective standpoints, range of research methods, and professional identities, while telling a story of material flux pertaining to a particular work or group of works. These range from video to 1960s performances, from medieval manuscripts to documentary films, from archaeological artefacts and historic sites to modernist painting and recursive, mixed-media, and conceptual ensembles. At the end of the book Hanna Hölling’s interview with the architect, heritage scholar, and artist Jorge Otero-Pailos explores how cultural transmutations condition the presence of transitional objects that are themselves physically unstable. The attention to the fabric of artworks and artefacts that is present in the practical and theoretical work of conservation contributes immensely to the evolving awareness of—and interest in—material questions not only among professional and lay audiences in the museum world but also in academia and in circles where policy around cultural heritage is discussed and made. Conservation writings have tended to appear in more specialized contexts and often focus on technical studies in art, the creative process, and the evidence of the work’s alterations over time. The essays collected in this book aim to encompass a broader scope of an artwork, artefact, and historical site’s life—from fabrication to dissemination to manipulation, including preservation—and to consider the historical and cultural context in which it exists. We propose an explicitly interdisciplinary approach, both in the makeup of the singular contributions and in the dialogue that they afford between the pages of this volume. The book is a tribute to the intellectual and practical activities of both curation and conservation focused on the perpetuation of artworks, artefacts, and historical sites. It is also an acknowledgment of the role they play in raising awareness of the behaviour and relationship of materials and the fascinating and somewhat bewildering understanding of the ineluctably transitional nature of all things. An integration of this discourse into the study of material culture is a part of a larger intellectual project directed towards a more profound understanding of the material world both as effect or product of human activity and also as an active agent of the universe in which we humans work and exist.3 3  For example, the Cultures of Conservation project at the Bard Graduate Center that is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and initiated in 2013, aims at conjoining the knowledge of conservation with other humanities disciplines in an innovative curricular initiative. Other projects related to the technical studies in art—for instance, the Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art (SITSA) at the Harvard Art Museums or its predecessor, the Summer Institute for Technical Art History (SITAH) at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University—address the knowledge derived from conservation to study artworks.

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(In) Between Conservation and Curation

Conservation provides connoisseurship with hard facts about the materiality of the artefactual realm and contributes to our understanding of the larger picture of how humans live and work in the world. While in the past conservation may have been associated primarily with the intervention aimed at prolonging an object’s material life into the future, today there is a greater awareness of the inextricable influence that any such intervention—and the interdisciplinary research that goes into it—has on our engagement with materiality. Outside of immediate material concerns, conservation now also recognizes larger goals related to the intangible: the transmission of tradition, memory, skill, technique, and tacit knowledge.4 We use the phrase ‘explicit material’ here as a means of referencing the ways conservation explicates objects and artefacts in terms of relational and temporal materiality, thereby also reaching beyond the tangible sphere of the material. In other words, the conceptually and practically enfolding material advances a way of conceiving of a more complex form of materiality that involves, yet is not exclusively concerned with, the physical constituency of matter. Temporal materiality—a different kind of understanding of Joselit’s meaning of an artwork as time battery—has to do with time, time passing, the chronicity of objects, the events of interventions, and the temporality of museum vaults and displays in relation to the time lived outside the institutional walls. Relational materiality indicates, first, that the material state of an artefact can only be grasped comparatively, in relation to something else. An artefact can be in a better ‘state’ or ‘condition’ only comparatively to another condition (perceived, deduced from a documentary material, or imagined). In other words, material change unfolds vis-à-vis a referent—an earlier documented shape of a work, another work, an edition, or a replica. Second, and on another level of relationality, a person interacting with or forming the material—whether creatively or destructively—enters with it a system of relations. The vectors of this system are not directed solely from this individual to an object, which assumes a certain dominance of humans over ‘inanimate’ matter. Following the idea derived from science and technology studies that objects and humans exist in an interconnected network of relationships (material and semiotic), it is not only the humans that have an impact on objects; objects also impact humans. Because nothing can exist outside of this network, our practices of care and maintenance—the procedures, tools, and policies—are afforded by the intricacies of active objects, whether physical or material. 4  For a discussion of conservation and its identity, see Hölling 2017.

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Relational materiality thus recognizes the reciprocity between artefacts and people and acknowledges that the formation of any knowledge about the material world is dependent on that network. We understand curation as an act of critical selection and making decisions about that which enters an institutional or private collection. Curation aims to explicate objects through research and varying iterations of display; in this way it overlaps with conservation in its concern for the responsible stewardship and thoughtful interpretation of artworks and artefacts. Traditionally, given the more academic formation of many curators, compared to the necessarily important manual sensitivity and involvement of those tending to the preservation and repair of the physical objects, curation has been staked out as a more intellectual way of interacting with the material world while conservation has been seen as a more practical, hands-on one. But this dualistic model gets in the way of things, not least because conservation professionals have an enormous impact on their aesthetics and ontology by making decisions about the physical and aesthetic sphere of artworks. Similarly, if on a slightly different level, there is a fine line between deliberate conservation actions and curatorial actions that carry a conservation effect. The work of a curator—the various practices of collecting and displaying objects—may implicitly impact a work’s physical shape and condition (thinking here especially of forms of installation art and iterant media). Such action is thus related to the consequences of deliberate conservation interventions. The nature of the role and relationship of curators and conservators has a complicated history.5 A curator has traditionally been considered a keeper, an overseer of works of art. Curation originates etymologically in the Old French expression curation, meaning ‘treatment of illness’, or the Latin curare, ‘to cure’. This overlapping of roles is reflected in part by the use of the same term in different languages to refer to both occupations: the term ‘conservator’ refers to a

5  For the sake of terminological clarity, throughout the text, ‘conservation’ is used to indicate a more general meaning of conservation-restoration-preservation. To account for the complex development of the profession, it should not be left unmentioned that the designation ‘conservator’ is more recent and was preceded by the term ‘restorer’. There is an interesting link with curation in its sense of healing, which is discussed later in our introduction. The term ‘restoration’, from the 14th-century Old French restoration, signified a means of healing or restoring health or renewing something lost. It gained the sense of ‘repairing of a building’ or ‘restoring to a former state’ in the mid-15th century. The etymological origins of conservation instead might be traced to the late 14th century and its development from the Latin word conservacionem, meaning the ‘preservation of existing conditions’. To conserve, from the Old French conserver or Latin conservare, means to keep intact, preserve and guard.

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curator in German (specifically in the German-speaking part of Switzerland6), Italian, French, and Spanish. While we accept the specific expertise involved in curatorial and conservation processes, we are interested in the discursivity of their points of contact, highlighting the areas where these boundaries are blurred. We prefer to draw on the overlap and even fluidity between curatorial and conservation approaches that has proven so fruitful to study and understanding of our material heritage. 2

Explicating the Material

Many scholars engage in thinking about the significance of materials and materialities from anthropological, social, philosophical and other perspectives, but a direct involvement with the physicality of objects in humanistic studies is not the norm. There are many reasons for this. One lies in the distinct approaches to objects, or ‘parallel universes’, of neighbouring disciplines’ knowledge about objects. For instance, unfolding the same methodological dilemmas in their own domains, art history posits knowledge about images, while historians of science speak about materiality.7 Similarly, the museum specialists who belong to the tradition of curatorship and connoisseurship know a great deal about objects, the details of their technical build-up and the nitty-gritty aspects of their materiality. Another reason for the absence of a direct material engagement in many humanities disciplines may lie in the theorization of materiality, which is often too abstract—as anthropologist Tim Ingold would say, ‘put in a language of grotesque impenetrability.’8 Art historian Petra Lange-Berndt maintains that for many the engagement with materials still seems an antithesis of intellectuality and the study of materials remains an auxiliary science.9 But the traditions of empiricism have had a strong presence in the Anglo-American world,10 which seems to be reconfirmed by developments such as technical art history, where connoisseurship is combined with a firm belief in science. To ignore the

6  In the past, the term ‘conservator’ used to denote the curator and even the museum director; meanwhile it is becoming more common in Switzerland to use it in the sense of restorer/conservator (see ‘Museumsberufe in der Schweiz’, ICOM Schweiz 2010, 27). 7  Daston 2017. 8  Ingold 2012, 427–442. 9  Lange-Berndt 2015, 12. 10  Lange-Berndt 2015.

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role of materials or take them for granted is to follow the long tradition that privileges the spirit over the body, form over matter, design over material.11 We do not propose here to tease out the differences between matter, materials, and materiality—terms that, though often used interchangeably, relate to notions that can and have been interpreted in different ways. It is important to note, however, that ever since the realm of visual arts sought to distance itself from the realm of craftsmanship, the materials and matter of which works are made have often been suppressed in the act of creation. Present only as a vehicle of something else—a medium in service of representation—material was to be overcome. This status quo reflects the process of privileging the mind over hand, where the ideas generated in the mind of the artists had to be transposed onto rudimentary, passive matter. This line of thought has its roots in Western philosophy. Plato, in his Doctrine of Ideas, denounces material as a necessary evil and the lowest part in an artwork. In the same tradition, the notion of minds before hands was reminiscent of Aristotle’s philosophical distinction between matter and form, with the latter seen as superior. Cartesian dualism of the mind and the body, later followed by the division between the culture and nature and between soul and the body, imprinted significant dualisms in the Western humanities. Although, no doubt, makers have been keenly aware of the dynamic interaction with the materials they work with—and on some occasions might indeed have even pushed them to their limits—for centuries, a work of art had to transcend its material qualities in the service of an artistic idea, which could remain legible only as a part of a larger iconography.12 (The removal and concealment of all traces of the casting process on a bronze sculpture come to mind.) Beyond the dominant social and human-related theories, materials have more recently been considered as having agency, the power to act, and lives of their own, thus challenging the anthropocentric, post-Enlightenment tradition.13 Furthermore, as Ingold writes, materials are ineffable. Established concepts and categories fail to pin them down.14 This is why we have to follow them—their joining with other materials, forming into a work, becoming an object of conservation, and decaying. Materials are also, according to Ingold, vibrant intermediaries. Rather than being straightforward and simple—a 11  Lange-Berndt 2015, 13. 12  For a comprehensive discussion of this topic, the theory of materials and the issue of marginalization of materials, see the introduction to Lange-Berndt 2015; see also Wagner 2001; Wolff 2007. 13  Lange-Berndt 2015, 16. 14  Ingold 2012, 435.

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view that materials have generally been assigned in the field of art history— materials are active, complex, and challenging.15 Such a dynamic view of materials allows one to conceive of a more complex world: ‘Change the material and everything changes with it’, claimed the French philosopher Florence de Mèredieu. ‘The materiality of the finished form is something that cannot be separated from visual experience, or from meaning and effect.’16 For the authors in this book, artworks and artefacts are not just carriers of meanings or means to an end. Rather, they are complex entities with a power to convey meaning and to signify themselves. They often preserve physical traces of the process of creation, re-creation, maintenance, distribution, and usage, revealing multifarious potentialities involved in materiality. Ascribing primacy to a text or an image, we run the risk of ignoring—in the words of the conservator Thea Burns—‘the partial, damaged, mobile nature of the physical components and organizing structure and [of being] oblivious to the potential of temporal materiality to enrich historical interpretation’ (see Thea Burns, ‘Form and function, technology and practice’ in this volume). In this book, materials are transmuting and morphing, changing before and during the creative act and, most importantly, after the work has left the artist’s hand. Often overlooked is how works in museums, collections, or on temporary display transmute, first, due to the very act of their musealization (the work moving from initial context to a museological one with its systems of archiving, classifying, conserving, storing, and presentation) and, second, because they are subject to the restless movement of things towards entropy. Installation art and works based on electronic technology, which are iterant and undergo processes of cyclical reoccurrence, fluctuate between concept and their multiple materialisations. Materials form objects that, on the one hand, are recognized as cultural artefacts and, on the other, are being redefined in these new structural constellations. The focus here is on material relations in objects—on what the awareness, and the acceptance, of the inevitably ongoing mutation of materials means for our understanding of objects and our attitudes towards (their) mediation and preservation. The contributions to this book show how the materials that form them change and take shape, are rethought and reconceived at many moments in the process of creation, use, dissemination, curation, and 15  In an interesting attempt to define the precise relationships between matter, material, materiality and materialism, Lehmann coined the term ‘4Ms’. Lehmann 2013, 10. Others have engaged with discourses of materials in art, e.g., Buskirk 2003. 16  De Mèredieu 2016.

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conservation. They were chosen for the ways they make visible different engagements with materials and uncover the historical, technical, and material conditions in which works are created and altered. 3

Table des matières Explicated

Introducing the volume in part 1, ‘Time and change in material and object inquiries’, are the philosophical essays of David Lowenthal and Paul Eggert. Lowenthal maps out the landscape of our complex relationship to cultural heritage with the wide-angle, hawkeyed perspective and precision of a wellpracticed geographer and historian steeped in a humanist background and with decades of involvement in heritage discourse. He sets the scene for conservation and curatorial dilemmas with a historical overview of shifting and ambivalent attitudes towards change, evanescence, decay, and loss and how these impact notions of identity and ownership and inform the dilemmas of conservation/preservation and curation. We—our perceptions and the stuff in our world—are temporal. Everything is in flux, subject to change and decay. Nothing can be preserved forever, transience and metamorphosis are inevitable, and everything in that sense is ‘living’. While this reality has been more readily accepted in non-Western cultures, there has been a tendency to embrace continuity, permanence, and a notion of objects as static. Why? Because, as both Lowenthal and editorial theorist Paul Eggert point out, durability is essential to our survival, our identity, and our understanding of reality, both on a personal level and as culture. Because of that, we value things and try to hold on to them and preserve them. ‘Materiality is the lifeline to the past’ (see Eggert, ‘The present, the past, and the material object’ in this volume). Anchoring us in our transitions through time is the special category of objects that might be called ‘art’ (or ‘transitional cultural objects’; see Otero-Pailos and Hölling, ‘Materials, objects, transitions’ in this volume). Location, context, nature of the material, and varying combinations of stakeholders are increasingly seen as important factors in their life story and affect the ways in which they are preserved, interpreted and displayed. The book focuses predominantly on ways in which museums have dealt with the preservation of objects in their care and how this is changing. As structures created to steward culturally significant objects that have traditionally consisted of material things (also considered assets), museums have been wedded to durability and protection of unaltered artefacts, equating those with the original material, which has been considered a source of authenticity. However, in the case of recent artistic works represented in this volume—performative,

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score-based, and of short duration—a question arises: What is the object/ work/material that needs to be preserved and how? The role of literary art forms in capturing creation and transience, which should not be underestimated, is Eggert’s way into the topic of how we try to come to terms with our temporality, the conditions of recovery of the past and the nature of its ongoing life in the present. Basing his analysis in his practice as a scholarly editor, Eggert engages in a discussion of the past and how it transgresses materially into our present. Across time and varying histories, works of art, buildings and literary works alike all show successive forms of existence and undergo changes in the hands of editors, curators, or conservators. As Eggert points out, a shift in the 1980s across disciplines in the perceived locus of authenticity from original (material object alone) to a recognition of the life of the work, in which the editor/curator/conservator and the reader/ audience play an active role in the process of meaning-making, that is, in creating a legible ‘object-as-work’—a new model of thinking. ‘There is a creative and critical role in the way that [curators and conservators] intervene in objects, because we alter the materiality of the object in such a way that it poses a question about whether the object serves its purpose, whether the object is real’ (see Eggert). Conservation, which had evolved in the early 20th century from the more artistic/artisanal restoration of objects to a more scientificallybased endeavour, grounded in a belief in objectivity, was now forced to let go of that presumption. The task of conservation and curation is to adjust the relationship between material object and meaning through ‘argued intervention’ in order to enable the work to continue to communicate meaningfully with the viewer. All of this is not to minimize the important role that scientific methodology and tools applied to the study of the structures and material metamorphoses play in our understanding of artworks and the people and cultures that wrought them. That is why archaeological conservator Elisabeth Pye pleads for a more intentional integration of curatorial and conservation resources and points out the power and responsibilities that museums have to engage their audiences in explorations of their physical world and culture through objects in their collections. In her essay, titled ‘Engagement with materials: Telling the whole story’, Pye shows how a more deliberate attention to—and sharing of—material information about artefacts can lead to museum-goers’ better understanding of their cultural signification. Referring to recent exhibitions, she advocates that the material behaviour and transformations of an exhibit should consistently be mediated and made visible as well. Most of the case studies in part 2, ‘Explicating the performative’, deal with the interpreting and preserving of contemporary art forms such as video,

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installation, and what is now referred to as performance art. These forms require a greater range of skills and more nimble thinking and catalyse the need for a different approach—both theoretical and practical—with regard to defining the nature of the work of art and the collaboration between the artist (if alive) and an interdisciplinary team of conservators, curators, technicians, and fabricators. This collaboration has often resulted in more of a co-creation in an art work’s reactivation than had been done in the days of restorations by sculptors (for instance, in the Renaissance). The first three essays in part 2 are dedicated to the material challenges of media, installation and performance art, which are due not only to fast-changing techniques but also to their instable and time-based quality. They also illustrate different ways in which traditional boundaries between acts of creating, preserving, and interpreting become blurred in the re-production of each of the works—to art critic Boris Groys’s point that the distinction between exhibition and installation (curation and creation) may have become obsolete.17 Each author concentrates respectively on one artist. Curator and art historian Judit Bodor examines today’s curatorial possibilities for a 1960s multimedia performance by Ivor Davies. Drawing on contemporary conservation theories, she describes the remediation of Davies’s work into a performative archival environment and a re-performance, while asking how these material transformations relate to issues of the work’s authenticity and authorship. The means of recording the artist’s intention is also discussed by art historian and curator Katharina Ammann, who proposes that the repeated presentation of a video work is, in fact, its most efficient preservation strategy. Given the medium’s latency, which needs materialisation in order to be seen, each playback secures its future functionality. Ammann examines works by David Claerbout—an artist who tends to closely regulate the curation of his video installations—to show the compelling interdependence of artist, curator, conservator, and technician in this field. The example also raises questions about where the object begins and ends and suggests that the material (when not displayed) might not constitute an object in its entirety—theoretical issues echoed in the interview at the end of this book. Curatorial agency also stands at the centre of ‘Out of the box: Preservation on display’ by art historian Anna Schäffler. Drawing from her experience of installing the ‘ensembles’ by Anna Oppermann, the author analyses the challenges of presenting and preserving process-based art. Referring to the deceased artist’s

17  Groys 2007, quoted in Bodor in this volume.

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practice, the curators are tasked with incorporating documentation material of the current installation of the work into its new presentation. Schäffler proposes not only to take the curatorial visualization of this ongoing production as a model for a contemporary process-oriented conservation strategy but also to understand the conservation of this work as a curatorially driven endeavour. The inclusion of Birgit Cleppe’s discussion of historical film documentaries as a deliberate conjoining of curation and preservation adds a slightly different perspective on the early use of a ‘time-based medium’ in the museum field. In ‘The Louvre on celluloid: Curating, disseminating, and preserving the Louvre’s collections in mid-twentieth-century art documentaries’, the art and architecture historian elaborates on the relationships between the museum’s material collection and its immaterial transmission through film, which is as such a performative medium. These might be considered on some level as a twentiethcentury parallel to plaster casts and reproductive prints as means of providing worldwide access to the museum’s collections. In these movies, acclaimed directors curate the viewer’s visit to selections of the collections through their particular aesthetic lenses and as a tool for a more intimate, compelling, and creative experience of the art than might be possible in reality. In part 3, ‘Making and unmaking objects and myths’, two essays study the correlation between the material and the process in the creation of artefacts and how it informs later interpretations—albeit regarding two very diverse subjects and epochs. Both rely on a combination of historical research into the context of the artefact under consideration and on material clues. Through a rare combination of conservation and codicological methodologies, Thea Burns, a researcher and conservator of works on paper, probes the physical context of a well-known medieval manuscript that had only been studied for its invaluable information on medieval painting materials and practices. She finds a window into not only the culture of late Lombard—early Carolingian Italy but also how the meaning of the text has been recreated over time. Change and the multiple layers of meaning of the text collection are proposed as positive values that should be made evident when the manuscript is publicly exhibited. Burns strongly advocates for an interdisciplinary approach where material and process-oriented studies are combined with the semantic readings of the manuscript collection. Her theoretical discussion at the end is reminiscent of Pye’s challenge to envision how one might exhibit this complex object of type that is traditionally not displayed in dynamic fashion. For this she looks to other disciplines for collaboration and input. Dawn Rogala’s essay, ‘Would you like that with or without mayo? How interdisciplinary collaboration slows the spread of popular misconceptions in modern art scholarship’, makes clear how quickly art-historical myths concerning

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the making of an artwork become accepted as facts. These can be resolved through a material understanding facilitated by interdisciplinary collaboration between art historians and their conservation colleagues. A painting conservator herself, she unmakes two misconceptions regarding the modernist painters Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning by comparing written with physical evidence in the artworks and advocates for an intensified exchange between curators and conservators at the institutional level. Hanna Hölling’s interview with Jorge Otero-Pailos, ‘Materials, objects, transitions’, wraps up the volume with a philosophical-artistic perspective. Hölling and Otero-Pailos reflect on temporality and duration, question what constitutes an object, and return to the role of objects in our attempts to grasp our own temporality and reality. The special transitional objects that might be considered art—which can apply to a building just as well as to a ring or a performance—are, like all things, in flux, in that their reality and value is socially constructed. The conservator’s intervention on an object, Otero-Pailos reflects, is a critical and creative positing of a question about whether the object serves its purpose—whether the object is real. And ultimately, this question serves to ‘test our ability to think of the reality of that temporality’. Thus the volume comes back to where we started, with a philosophical stance about how material objects necessarily shape our understanding of our present as well as the past and the future. Otero-Pailos offers us one other thought-provoking twist that also leads back to the greater temporal scales of geological and cosmic time (and space) and our place therein. In his artistic work The Ethics of Dust, he questions the nature of dust and the atmosphere, probing and complicating the boundaries of nature and culture. One might wonder what the ‘observer effect’—the fact that simply observing a phenomenon changes that phenomenon—of his work will be and also whether preserving atmosphere and dust as cultural objects merges heritage conservation and environmental conservation, and thereby ultimately adds up to our self-preservation and, poetically, to our inexorable return to dust and the stuff of stars. Bibliography Badagliacca, Vanessa, ‘On matter, materiality, and materialism entanglements with art history’, North Street Review (15 April 2016), online publication: northstreetreview. com/2016/04/15/on-matters-materiality-and-materialism-entanglements-with-arthistory/ [accessed 17 August 2017]. Buskirk, Martha, The contingent object of contemporary art, Cambridge, MA, 2003.

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Daston, Lorrein, ‘On glass flowers, highly voiced objects, and modern taboos in the study of materiality’, Primary Materials 1 (October 2017), online publication: www .primarymaterials.org/ [accessed February 2018]. de Mèredieu, Florence, Histoire matérielle & immatérielle de l’art moderne, Paris 1994. Gordon, Rebecca, Erma Hermens and Frances Lennard (eds.), Authenticity and replication. The ‘real thing’ in art and conservation, London 2012. Groys, Boris, ‘Multiple authorship’, IDEA 26 (2007), online publication: idea.ro/ revista/?q=en/node/41&articol=469 [accessed 17 January 2017]. Hölling, Hanna B., ‘The technique of conservation. On realms of theory and cultures of practices’, Journal of the Institute of Conservation 40 (2017), no. 2, 87–96, doi.org/ 10.1080/19455224.2017.1322114. Ingold, Tim, ‘Toward an ecology of materials’, Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012), 427–442. Joselit, David, ‘Marking, Scoring, Storing, and Speculating (On Time)’ in: Isabelle Graw and Eva Lajer-Burcharth (eds.), Painting beyond itself: The medium in the postmedium condition, Berlin 2016, 11–22. Lange-Berndt, Petra, Materiality. Documents of contemporary art, Cambridge, MA, 2015. Lehmann, Ann-Sophie, ‘How materials make meaning’, Meaning in materials. 1400– 1800 (Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Frits Scholten and H. Perry Chapman, eds.), Leiden 2013. (Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 62 [2012]), 6–27. Wagner, Monika, Das Material der Kunst. Eine andere Geschichte der Moderne, Munich 2001. Wolff, Vera, ‘Justice to the materials or revenge of the materials. A material aesthetics for modernity’, in: National Art Center (ed.), Living in the material world. Things in art of the 20th century and beyond, Tokyo 2007, 367–371. Yonan, Michael, ‘Toward a fusion of art history and material culture studies’, West 86th. A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 18 (2011), no. 2, 232–248.

Part 1 Time and Change in Material and Object Inquiries

⸪

Chapter 1

A Sea-Change Rich and Strange David Lowenthal Conservation is a cardinal curatorial concern. Along with works of art and architecture, all museum property needs to be ‘preserved forever’, declares an American conservator.1 England’s National Trust likewise promises to ‘protect special places forever’. But nothing can be preserved forever. Every inanimate object, like every living being, undergoes continual alteration, ultimately perishing. Cumulative corrosion extinguishes every form and feature. Things either morph into other entities, dismember into fragments or dissolve into unrecognizable components. Gradual change may be imperceptible within the span of a human lifetime or even longer, but it is eventually inexorable. All of us, not only curators, confront mortal dissolution. But awareness of it goes against the grain. We are schooled to hoard and order William James’s ‘blooming, buzzing confusion’ of the ramshackle world into which we are born. Yet efforts to overcome entropy are fleeting and fugitive. Few things are made to last; evanescence is the raison d’être of the vast majority of artefacts. Even the miniscule fraction preserved in museums and memorials finally wears away like Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’.2 The most obdurate artefact is fated to the metamorphic refashioning intoned by Ariel in Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.3 1

Ambivalent Reactions to Loss and Change

Buffeted by opposing imperatives to hold on and to let go, we preserve what’s precious and ditch or dismiss the rest as rubbish, their residues defiling and 1  National Parks Service museum curator Chris Ford (2000) quoted in DeSilvey 2017, 32. 2  W. James 1890, 462; Shelley 1818, 194. 3  Shakespeare 1611, I.ii. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004396852_003

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disgusting—the anthropologist Mary Douglas’s dangerous impurities, matter out of place.4 Would-be immortal treasures, such as saintly relics, are rare exceptions to our comfort in or indifference to customary transience. Most artefacts are jettisoned without compunction once useless. We piously preserve the Colosseum, remarked Le Corbusier a century ago, but merely endure the Roman aqueduct and let the locomotive rust on the scrapheap.5 Aqueduct and locomotive now join the Colosseum as cherished bygones. But the glut of unloved disposables overflows the garbage dumps, poisoning landfills and trashing ocean wastes. 1.1 Transience Inevitable A few accept evanescence with equanimity. Freud saw submission to ephemeral existence as essential to well-being. But the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, walking with Freud in the Dolomites, could hardly enjoy the exquisite vistas, knowing that their glory was transient. ‘He was unable to forget that all this beauty was fated to extinction, that it would vanish … like all human beauty and all the beauty and splendour that men have created.’6 Entropy’s implications—the eternally decreed curse of decay—left Darwin, like other Victorian devotees of progress, utterly dismayed.7 Not many envisage loss as Ariel’s emergence of old entities into new forms rich and strange. It is not only unstoppable decay and accretion that forbid permanence. Time deforms gaze as well as object, agents of sensing as well as things sensed. We never see, feel, hear, taste or smell old things as they once were apprehended. ‘What was rank and fetid to, say, a tenth-century Viking’s nostrils is not recoverable today’, not only because smells then pervasive no longer persist but because eleven centuries of changing odours have denatured the modern nose.8 ‘How a lemon tastes is contingent on the tongue doing the licking’.9 Efforts to retain or recover past scenes and artefacts are invariably undermined by present context. The rumble of jet planes, the whooshing of highway traffic, contaminate Colonial Williamsburg’s recreated ‘eighteenth-century sounds’. Moreover, they are heard as novelties, not as familiar noises. Music made centuries ago can never be experienced as it was initially: no ears that have heard a Verdi opera can hear Monteverdi as seventeenth-century auditors did. No eyes that have seen Frank Gehry’s buildings can see ancient 4  Douglas 1966. 5  Le Corbusier 1929, 51. 6  Freud 1915. 7  C. Darwin 1859, 395; F. Darwin 1876/1887, 282. 8  Smith 2007, 120–125. 9  Collins 2011, 71.

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architecture in the way anyone did when built. Subsequent scenes accustom us to other optics.10 Successive perceptions alter what’s perceived. Environmental context, stage of life, cultural ambience, prior history and present expectation make every viewer’s experience in some measure unique. Depending on season or time of day, rain or shine, state of health or fatigue, welcome recognition or wearied satiety, even the same viewer’s hundredth experience of the same scene differs from the ninety-ninth. Such variations may, to be sure, seem minor next to the overall sameness of a familiar scene or object. More acutely disjunctive is what contemporaries saw as of their own era but moderns sense as from long ago. We feel we ‘know’ the past because many of its remains, especially beloved works of art, are familiar features. But the temporal immediacy of times of creation is wholly unlike the antiquarian estrangement of subsequent gaze. The Renaissance viewer of Piero della Francesca’s frescoes ‘understands and knows his culture with an [irrecoverable] immediacy and spontaneity’, explains art historian Michael Baxandall. ‘He moves with ease and delicacy and flexibility within the rules of his culture … learned, informally, since infancy.’ The observer five centuries later ‘has to spell out standards and rules, making them explicit and so … also coarse, rigid and clumsy’.11 Anachronistic mindsets alienate even adored antiquity. 1.2 Durability Essential Though change is thus unavoidable, the felt need for constancy denies it, mitigates its impact, or strives to retrieve the status quo ante. Constancy has been revered throughout recorded history. Continuity, perpetuity, permanence are ceaselessly lauded. So impious was innovation that Christian theologians long banned novelty as heresy.12 From Marx’s assertion of revolutionary change, ‘All that is solid melts into air’, it followed that ‘All that is holy is profaned’.13 The classical scholar Francis Cornford’s satire on academic politics made tradition a rock on which all innovation would founder. Any proposed change should be rejected for having been tried and found wanting, needing revisions for which the time was not ripe or inciting demands for further reform. Hence ‘every public action which is not customary, either is wrong, or … is a dangerous precedent. It follows that nothing should ever be done for the first time’. 10  Lowenthal 2015, 301. 11  Baxandall 1985, 109, 115–116. 12  Lowenthal 2015, 359–362. 13  Marx & Engels 1848.

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Opposing a bill to abolish primogeniture, the Duke of Norfolk in 1992 rebuked efforts to alter Richard II’s original intent (1299): ‘Who are we to change that now, centuries later?’14 Conservative American jurists similarly extol ‘originalism’, the doctrine that the Constitution’s meaning has been stable since its enactment. Why such fondness for immutable precedents? Simply put, durability is essential to survival. We could not long exist without the endurance of familiar things, scenes, habits. Recognition is crucial. We know things only because we have seen their likeness before. We perceive only what we are accustomed to. Every object, every grouping, every view is made intelligible by habitude. ‘The reality and reliability of the human world’, as Hannah Arendt wrote, ‘rest primarily on the fact that we are surrounded by things more permanent’ than ourselves.15 Things that lack familiar elements or configurations remain incomprehensible. Familiarity thrives on continuity in ourselves and permanence in our surroundings. Hence the neoclassicist Quinlan Terry is delighted to be told his new building looks as if it had always been there.16 Habit and memory are efficacious only if things around us are stable enough to be recognized and acted on with expectable results. Rare cataclysms aside, most aspects of the natural scene—skies, seas, terrain, plants, animals—commonly endure little altered, changing slowly enough to remain indubitably themselves. The ‘ancient permanence’ of Dorset’s ‘Egdon Heath’ as ‘it always had been’ thus comforted the writer Thomas Hardy: Ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress. … To know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New.17 For Hardy a mythically changeless countryside lent credence to a supposedly fixed cosmos. Nowadays, however, novelty speeds apace. And longevity and mass emigration leave ever fewer in locales of birth or youth. What surrounds us in later 14  Cornford 1908, 15; Duke of Norfolk, on Hereditary Peerages Bill, Hansard House of Lords 540: 1127 (26 November 1992). 15  Arendt 1958, 95–96. 16   Quinlan Terry, ‘Classical residential architecture’, in ‘The Old Garden—an English country house, Twickenham, Richmond’, 22 January 2014, https://www.slideshare.net/ KnightFrankLLP/country-houselondon. 17  Hardy 1878, 4.

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life is seldom what we grew up with. But mind and body ill equip us to cope with radically shifting scenes. Stranded by swift and massive displacement, we cling to what survives from or reminds us of our past. We indulge habit and memory from a vital need for familiar anchorage in perilously novel milieus. We deplore change so rapid or sweeping as to threaten cherished mantras and milieus and unmoor us from familiar ways. Above all, we decry improvers or iconoclasts who demolish within days what took decades or centuries to create. Loading jalopies for the trek to California, John Steinbeck’s uprooted Okies are told there is no room for such souvenirs as old hats and china dogs but cannot bear to be so bereft. ‘How will we know it’s us without our past?’18 Like forebears and descendants, perdurable things and thoughts enrich life with a social continuum that antedates and will outlast us. Preservation is inherently a self-conserving enterprise. The perpetuity of homestead or keepsake, landscape or locale, forges a symbiosis of self and surround whose continuation holds a promise of permanence, a seeming semblance of immortality. Each saving act attaches the vulnerable object to our own identity and further endears its preservation. Because we value things, we save them, and our care enhances their value to us. 1.3 Curatorial Permanence Hence curation is overwhelmingly preservationist, stemming erosion and corrosion to ward off decay and dissolution. Indeed, perpetuation is almost a defining precept of heritage stewardship. Much intoned but rarely honoured were John Ruskin’s and William Morris’s anti-scrape diktats never to prolong the life of buildings beyond the application of daily care.19 Well-nigh universal was the certitude of art conservators that they could rectify the lamentable renovations of previous restorers. Still largely taken for granted is the supreme goal of artefact protection. The loss of treasured art is so dismaying as to seem deviant, demanding protective intervention even at the cost of human life. ‘I should certainly save [Raphael’s] Dresden Madonna first’, said an aficionado. ‘I can get another baby any day … but there is only one Dresden Madonna.’ Harold Nicolson was ‘prepared to be shot against a wall if [thereby] I could preserve the Giotto frescoes. Nor should I hesitate for an instant … to save St. Mark’s even if … by so doing I should bring death to my sons.’20 Art’s immortal aura elicited Henry James’s 18  Steinbeck 1939, 76, 79. 19  Morris 1877, 319–321. 20   George Birdwood quoted in ‘Madonna or baby?’ The Press [Christchurch, NZ], 16 November 1912; Nicolson 1944.

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heartfelt tribute, as his fictional alter ego views paintings at London’s National Gallery: The perfection of their survival often struck him as … the richest and most universal virtue … Empires and systems and conquests … and every kind of greatness had risen and passed away, but the beauty of the great pictures had known nothing of death or change, and the tragic centuries had only sweetened their freshness.21 1.4 Death and Decay Proscribed Thus enraptured, we embrace the illusion of immortality. Collectors and curators, museum-goers and trustees consider collections’ permanent assets. To let them perish or decay is culpable complicity in asset loss. Philadelphia Museum of Art staff were appalled by the acquisition of Zoe Leonard’s Strange Fruit ( for David) (1992–1997), made of sewn and zippered avocado, grapefruit, lemon, orange and banana rinds and skins. Its intended evanescence violated curatorial precepts: ‘How can you give an acquisition number to something that won’t always be there?’ Anent transient features of Rupprecht Matthies’s participatory ¿Being Home? (2009), the Denver Art Museum fretted that its ‘cataloguing procedures do not provide a clear way to categorize or describe objects that are original parts of a work, but may be temporary’. Museums have long been dedicated not just to preserving individual items but to ‘the notion that works of art are fixed and immortal’.22 ‘How many of you REALLY believe that we save all things forever?’ Jerry Podany asked his fellow International Institute for Conservation councillors in 2002. ‘I expected that most would grumble about how this was never really possiblee. … But to my surprise I was wildly outnumbered.’23 Still persisting is the mindset privileging ancient survivals and durable material and equating authenticity with original substance. Similarly persistent with few exceptions is Western animus against visible decay and decomposition. Most marks of decrepitude are unsightly harbingers of imminent demise and ultimate dissolution. Decay remained generally repugnant even after taste for architectural ruins and sculptural memento mori gained favour, leading to a picturesque taste for faked ruination. Dilapidation and obsolescence evoked horror in the Gothic tales of Ann Radcliffe and E. T. A. Hoffman. The putrescent evil of the worn-out 21  H. James 1890, 660. 22  Temkin 1999, 45–50; Hochfield 2002; Moomaw 2016, 134. 23  Podany 2017.

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past, a stock theme in Victorian literature, peaked in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898). Thomas Hardy’s Jude was horrified to find the stonework of his long-dreamt-of Oxford colleges worn and rotten.24 1.5 Obsolescence Foments Evanescence Mass industrial production spurred speedy obsolescence and heightened aversion to marks of decay. Fast-fading colours, rotting paper, jerry-built houses distressed Ruskin back in 1857, when things lasted longer than now. Ephemeral materials invited careless craftsmanship, for no ‘workman worthy the name will put his brains into a cup, or an urn, which he knows is to go to the melting-pot in half a score years’.25 What’s modern becomes ever more ephemeral: most things we wear, use and see around us are now shorter-lived than we are. ‘Whereas in all previous civilisations it was the object and the monument that survived the generations … today it is we who observe the birth and death of objects’, notes anthropologist Paul Connerton.26 ‘Hitherto, the active life of almost any given class of artefact could be measured in centuries, if not millennia; there was little difference … between a plough used by a Roman and one used by a nineteenth-century Dorset farmer’, wrote a 1970s observer. ‘Now the cycle of invention, use and obsolescence [takes] a decade or less.’27 While conservation science preserves treasured heritage ever longer, modern technology shortens the lives of everything else. More plentiful than ever, artefacts perish at an unprecedented pace. When materials were dear and labour cheap, much was made to last, handed down over generations. Today we replace rather than repair. Who now protects fabrics with dust covers? How many turn cuffs and collars or darn socks? Since profits depend on high turnover, old goods become obsolete even when still serviceable. ‘A machine less than ten years old can no longer be repaired because the design has been abandoned’, wrote a critic a generation ago. ‘“They’re not making them any more”, and the machine becomes, literally, a museum piece.’28 ‘For commercial media producers, the promise of perennial revenues encourage Apple and Microsoft to design products with the working lifespan of a pack of Twinkies.’29

24  Hardy 1895, 84. 25  Ruskin 1857, 45–46. 26  Connerton 2009, 122, 143. 27  Chamberlin 1979, 79. 28  Chamberlin 1979, 79. 29  Sterling 1995; Rinehart & Ippolito 2014, 46. Legendarily long lived thanks to being baked with embalming fluid, Twinkies have an actual shelf life of 45 days.

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The brevity built into new houses, clothes, furniture, crockery, computers rapidly devalues any wear and tear. Evanescence proscribes decay in artefacts just as rejuvenation bans ageing in human beings. ‘Things do not die of old age’, notes a sociologist. ‘They disappear … well before they begin to show signs of “senility” … They could be infinitely durable, if we wished them to be. But we do not wish them to be.’ Little is cherished lifelong. ‘Forget about forever— nothing lasts a year’, a 2010 analyst recalled regarding six-to-nine-year-old wares already in the Technology Graveyard. Who can recall the Olympus m:robe, PocketPC, MSN Explorer, Smart Display, those innovative marvels of the new millennium? Accept obsolescence when you buy a gadget ‘so you feel no sense of loss when it’s discontinued’. Speedy flops like Google Glass, Coke Blāk, Lady-pens and the Segway survive in the new (2017) Museum of Failure in Helsingborg, Sweden.30 Art and architecture apart, admiration of the patina of age remains the exception. Few old or long-used features exhibit ‘pleasing decay’; wear and tear usually portend grievous or repugnant loss of function, senescence, imminent demise, posthumous decay. Relics are treasured more for being old-fashioned than old, youthful appearance extolled even in prized antiquities and admired Old Masters. Newly patinated fixtures and distressed furniture bespeak simulation less of material age than of ancestrally entitled usage. The Viennese art historian Alois Riegl found ‘on the one hand an adoration of the old … totally opposed to renovation, … and on the other an adoration of the new … bent on uprooting every trace of age’. But the latter preponderated: ‘To the great majority, only the new and the whole are beautiful; the old, the fragmented, and the faded are ugly.’31 Only crazed eccentrics cultivated dust and filth. As Le Corbusier put it, ordinary folk who wash their clothes and clean their houses rightly scorn the patina of age.32 Decay and wear generally detract from the appeal of antiquity in art and architecture too. ‘We love old buildings … for what they stand for rather than for what they look like’, the painter and designer John Piper disparaged post-war English taste. Restorers who supplanted worn medieval sculptures to make ‘every square inch of ancient surface’ new and bright and complete conformed with common preference.33 Collectors’ distaste for the look of age fuels ‘restoration’ of medieval helmets and early modern flintlocks, expunging patina, buffing metal to a high shine. Measures to arrest decay of the Sphinx’s ancient 30  Bauman 1992, 188; Pogue 2010. 31  Riegl 1903, 47–49. 32  Le Corbusier 1937, 46. 33  Piper 1947, 90; Schofield 1977, 154.

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stonework halted when zealous workmen were found dismantling its left front paw. They ‘had all these nice, new limestone blocks’, an Egyptologist explained, that ‘would look better than the old, dirty ones’. Inveighing against restoration that exposed old paintings to unkind disclosure of decay, Louvre curator René Huyghe likened an old painting ‘to a beauty, originally famous and admired, but upon whom the years have left their devastating mark. What we prize in her is the memory of her past splendour, not her present state of decay’. Avoid ‘a glaring light that will accentuate her wrinkles’, and veil time’s injuries.34 2

Embracing Transience

Evanescence and impermanence have not everywhere lacked champions. Traditional Japanese celebration of transience and incompletion honours three simple principles: nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect. This wabi-sabi aesthetic animates Japanese gardens, pottery and poetry—and, since 2006, the Tottori Sand Museum in southwest Japan, where new sculptures are crafted for each year’s international festival from the collapsed remains of the previous year, creating ‘ephemeral treasures and indelible memories’. A unique ‘attraction of the sand sculptures is their frailty’, says Tottori’s mayor. ‘All the forms will eventually disappear or degrade or collapse.’ Treasuring that impermanence is ‘a Japanese virtue’.35 The organic analogy—the idea that artefacts and works of art resemble living beings in coming into being, undergoing erosion and accretion and ultimately perishing—began to replace unattainable mandates of permanence with appreciation of transience in Renaissance Europe. Ruined buildings came to be admired for their mortal conformity to human lives in the aesthetic canon of the picturesque. Emulating nature in beautifying by ageing dominated taste in landscape design in the eighteenth century; by the early nineteenth century fragmented classical sculptures and patinas of age in paint and certain metal ornaments were valued as softening effects of time and long usage.36 2.1 Fragmentation Fragmented antiquities distressed European humanists as incomplete and incoherent. Just as they reassembled the mangled body of classical learning— reuniting the theologian-poet Thomas Traherne’s ‘worthless shreds and Parcels’ 34  Anonymous 1980, 1; Huyghe 1950, 191. 35  Juniper 2011; Yoshihiko Fukazawa quoted in Rich 2017. 36  Lowenthal 2015, 211–213.

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of fragmented relics—into an ‘Intire piece’, so they returned mutilated antique remnants to lovely wholeness.37 Textual restorers reconstituted scattered classical fragments; sculptors made facsimiles to fill in missing remnants, adding new heads and limbs to bring antique torsos alive. Romantic sentiment, picturesque taste, and the cachet of authenticity attached to original creations endeared fragments in their own right by the late eighteenth century. Connoisseurs of an ‘aesthetics of rupture’ scorned modern repairs to ruined buildings and armless torsos. Admiration of the Parthenon frieze shipped to Britain epitomized the aesthetic revolution that transformed incompleteness from a defect into a virtue: as late as 1805 Lord Elgin and others took it for granted the sculptures would be restored and sought out Antonio Canova and John Flaxman to make Phidias’ humans, horses and centaurs whole; by 1820 it seemed right to leave them fragmented. ‘How broken down they are, a’ant they?’ remarked one viewer of the marbles in the British Museum. ‘Yes’, his companion replied, ‘but how like life.’38 Fragments seemed lifelike because their fate mirrored living processes. And the taste for fragments spread to other works of art, new as well as old. Literary creations like Goethe’s Faust were advertised as ‘Fragments’.39 ‘Many works of the ancients become fragments’, wrote the scholar Friedrich von Schlegel, ‘many works of the moderns are so’ at their genesis.40 The tragic abbreviation of lives such as Byron’s and Shelley’s lent these ‘fragments’ a romantic lustre. Fragments join the past dynamically with the present. Mutilated and incomplete, they impart a sense of life ‘from the evidence of their struggle with Time’, in the polymath André Malraux’s phrase.41 The decrepitude of many Christian relics underscores the miracle of their immortality. The charred and fragmented bones, the scattered remnants of wood and cloth, express the eternal virtue of the saints and sacred events they enduringly incarnate. On the other hand, the unreconstructed fragments of mutilated sculptures evoke the past with peculiar intensity. They shock the viewer into a double apprehension, of a presumed original state and of decay into bricolage. In thus engaging the imagination, fragments activate myriad connections between what is and what was. ‘The fragment points backward’, notes the sinologist Stephen Owen of Chinese aesthetics; it recalls what it came from, bonding past and present. In the ninth-century Tang poet Li Ho’s song of ‘An 37  Traherne c. 1660s, vol. 1, 196. 38  St Clair 1967, 152–153; Haydon 1960, 28 May 1817, 2: 120. 39  Goethe 1790. 40  Schlegel 1797–98, 21. 41  Malraux 1953, 635; Meiss 1963.

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Arrowhead from the Battlefield of Ch’ang-p’ing’, a wanderer contemplates the commingled debris—‘Char of lacquer, powder of bone … three-spined, broken wolf’s fang’—left by the carnage. The encrusted lump ‘clearly was something but … now has no form, category, or definition … char or ash, something that remains after burning; powder of bone, relics of death’, the physical survivor that recalls a shattering and a dissolution. ‘Fragments not only reveal what is missing, ghost presences of their past, they also refer to their rediscovery. Thus the fragment implies’ the history of both its deposit and its recovery.42 The creative function of fragments in dynastic China parallels their role in the Renaissance. As noted above, humanists regarded bringing together fragments of ancient, buried texts as laudable acts of healing, recalling the resuscitation by Aesculapius of Hippolytus, torn to pieces by wild horses. Resurrected fragments became nutriments for new metamorphoses. And in restoring past fullness the humanist reassembled himself as well, reconstituting out of the fragments of his own memory, his own history, an identity that combined an old consciousness with a new one. Such resurrection demanded not simply the rebirth but the replacement of the past, for ‘the dead must be devoured and digested before new life can ensue’.43 Mending fragmented pottery, the Japanese aesthetic of kintsugi celebrates the entire history of their making, breaking and reconnection. Rather than hiding the breakage, gold-dusted lacquer calls attention to it by adorning the repairs. Like the philosophy of wabi-sabi, kintsugi highlights change integral to the chequered lives of valued objects, celebrating imperfections and injuries sometimes deliberately induced.44 For Renaissance Europeans, fragments were vehicles for restoring and translating the past; for the Chinese, fragments encapsulated and magnified the past; for the Japanese, fragments vivified the history of the reunited composite. All preserved fragments not for their own sake but to creatively restore, reimagine and reconfigure fabled pasts. Curating fragments has practical as well as philosophical advantages. They generally take up less space than entire works and are less costly to maintain. Clearly reduced from original completeness, they evoke a presumption of change that should allow their caretakers greater latitude: fragments do not demand the same fidelity to site-specific wholeness. The Parthenon frieze (Elgin Marbles) is displayed at the British Museum as an array of sculptures rather than as an appurtenance to architecture. Yet what survives is always a mere remnant of what once existed. The intact entities displayed at historic 42  Owen 1986, 66, 70–73; Li Ho 1982. 43  Giamatti 1984; Cave 1979, 71. 44  Bartlett et al. 2008.

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sites or in museums are all, in a contextual sense, fragments of some former greater assemblage. 2.2 Metamorphic Appreciation Radical transformation was newly extolled in Renaissance poetry. In Greek myth, turning Medusa’s hair into snakes and coral was loathsome. But Shakespeare celebrates the father’s bones made coral, his eyes now pearls, as new creations ‘rich and strange’. Marguerite Yourcenar invests corroded statues with organic life. Changing ‘in the way time changes us’, they undergo ‘fatigue, age, and unhappiness’. But the hazards of history heighten their charm. Fragmentation enhances their splendour—‘a torso which has no face to prevent us from loving it; … a bust with eroded features, halfway between a portrait and a death’s head’. Ancient works marooned on land acquire ‘the majesty or the languor of a tree or a plant’. Shipwrecked marbles resurface ‘gnawed or eaten away, corroded, decorated with baroque volutes sculpted by … the tides, or encrusted with shells’. The social career of statues is a temporary interlude between their prior incipience and subsequent entombment in nature: The forms and gestures the sculptor gave them proved to be only a brief episode between their incalculable duration as rock in the bosom of the mountain and their long existence as stone lying at the bottom of the sea. They have passed through this decomposition without pain, through this loss without death, through this survival without resurrection.45 Yourcenar reconnects social lives with chemical careers. ‘Things decay and disappear, reform and regenerate’, as in curator Caitlin DeSilvey’s ruinous Montana homestead, where ‘the mice have moved back in’ and are creatively ‘rearranging the inventory’. Objects that cease to be do not simply disappear. ‘They’ll break down into rubble’, notes geologist Jan Zalasiewicz. ‘But even the rubble that’s washed away will have its own character, its own signal.’ He instances the trillion lead bullets fired over the past century, eventually becoming silvery galena or oxidizing into crystalline cerrusite and anglesite—‘the killing fields transformed into a mineralogical garden’.46 Accepting mortality dethrones material persistence. Museums still tout longevity but no longer pretend eternity. For patrons, too, perpetuity ends ever sooner. Philanthropist Leon Levy’s gift to the Metropolitan Museum of 45  Yourcenar 1954, 57–62. 46  DeSilvey 2017, 44; Jan Zalasiewicz quoted in Kolbert 2013, 48; Zalasiewicz & Zalasiewicz 2015, 36–39.

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Art would memorialize him ‘in perpetuity’, promised director Philippe de Montebello. ‘How long is that?’ asked Levy. ‘For you, 50 years’. ‘For my $20 million’, Levy countered, ‘75 years’.47 A single lionized generation is all today’s donors can expect. Metamorphosis—abrasion and accretion, dissolution and amalgamation— varies not only with natural processes but also with human interventions. The pace of change reflects efforts to slow or speed alteration or demise, to restore or improve on previous integrity, to prevent or promote transformation into something else. Preserving substance increasingly gives way to prizing dynamic process. Objects and places are seen as worthy not only in their creation but in their destruction and dispersal. Their identities, like our own, ‘are made through processes of subversion and fraying as much as consolidation and stabilization’, adds DeSilvey. We come to appreciate ‘old rot’ along with ‘new roots’.48 Artefacts and works of art are no longer esteemed solely for presumed moments of making but over their whole existence. Matter quarried or compounded for their creation, motives that inspired their composition, their use and misuse by viewers and vendors, collectors and scholars, conservators and curators, copyists and plagiarists, even thieves and vandals, all shape their histories. So do their successive environs, from studio or workshop to grave good or church ornament, gallery wall, collector’s hoard, museum display, captive spoil of conquest or rescued icon of repatriation. Repatriation can profoundly transform how heritage is curated. Ceremonial Amerindian potlatch creations are traditionally gifted to tribal chiefs and families; their acquisition and display by outsiders is desecration. Canada banned potlatches in 1921 and sent regalia confiscated from a First Nations tribe to US, UK, and Canadian museums. Returned 50 years or more later, these sacred items now tell the story of their loss and recovery in a tribal museum, U’mista Cultural Centre. Recounting that history demands unaccustomed modes of care and conservation. Moreover, during the decades that potlatches were proscribed, some ceremonial practices were forgotten or truncated and many recovered items had badly deteriorated. Today’s preservation goals run counter to tribal ‘anti-scrape’ tenets, just as keeping used potlatch items in a museum contravenes their traditional familial afterlives.49 Ongoing metamorphosis was mandated for a monumental statue, cast in Paris in 1880 by a Boston sculptor, of the first king of Hawai’i, Kamehameha I, 47  Levy with Linden 2002, 190. 48  DeSilvey 2017, 153, 183. 49  Clifford 1991, 107–146; Clavir 2002, 56, 129–144, 151–153, 162–178; Knight 2013, 120–125.

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in the pose of a Roman emperor. Installed before the courthouse at Kapa’au, near the king’s birthplace, the statue is revered as an ancestral embodiment, with continual gift offerings and festival parades, chants and leis. Asked to restore the dilapidated brass statue—peeling paint, chemical corrosion, cracked base—conservator Glenn Wharton found Honolulu officials, experts and local residents deeply divided over whether to retain decor added over many decades by local celebrants—overpainting in red, yellow and brown; whitened fingernails and toenails; blackened, penetrating eyes—or to strip off folk embellishments and return it to regal golden splendour. Wharton crystallized local feeling through public debate. No need was felt to defer to any intention of the deceased sculptor, unversed in Hawai’ian matters. The community voted to keep (and continue) ongoing local changes that made Kamehameha ‘more human’. The Painted King is a rare instance of interactive collaboration honouring community desire to remain co-creative with an iconic artwork.50 Processual change is most problematic in locales of marked transition between culture and nature, such as rural sites commandeered for industrial or military use and then abandoned to dereliction and vegetal regeneration. As with ancient ruins, the corrosive interplay of nature and culture generates an aesthetic of decay that abhors yet requires intervention. Left unchecked, nature’s reconquest renders relics of human occupance invisible or incomprehensible within second-growth woods and impenetrable thickets. Stayed at some favoured stage of decay and dissolution, scenic vitality gives way to a mummified corpse. As DeSilvey details, site management requires constant negotiation between these opposing outcomes: on the one hand, selecting prized moments of precarious aesthetic balance, on the other, cherishing processes of decay and regeneration that make those very moments short-lived, ever giving way to new amalgams of memorial decrepitude and burgeoning novelty. Industrial decay and biological revival at the Ruhr blast furnaces of Duisburg acquaint visitors with tensions of interplay between domestic and wild, control and chaos, intervention and abandonment. At the former military site of Orford Ness, a salt marsh on the Suffolk coast, the National Trust’s interpretive strategy combines ‘the ostensibly wild and the aggressively technological, the benign and the destructive’ to stress scenic awareness of confusion and contradiction, of incongruous order in disarray. At storm-battered Mullion Cove harbour in Cornwall, the National Trust shows why its promise

50  Wharton 2011. The Kapu’au statue is the original, thought lost at sea but later recovered. The statue in Honolulu is a later cast replica.

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to ‘protect special places forever, for everyone’ can be honoured here only ‘for the time being’, as the sea progressively gnaws away the shore.51 Like the illusion of immortality, native purity now yields to acceptance of exotic change. The World Heritage site of Røros, Norway, embraces the seventeenth-century copper mine, the town’s civic architecture, workers’ houses and gardens. Some wanted the surrounding landscape, poisoned by industrial residues, restored to ecological health. But they were bested by those for whom the polluted scene was intrinsic to its industrial history. Hence exotic flora engendered by toxic wastes embellishes the mining heritage.52 Contrariwise, the walled garden at Duisburg is kept suspended in calculated barrenness, the successional clock continually rewound to highlight the colonization of industrial waste by invasive volunteer vegetation. At the old gunpowder works of Kennall Vale, Cornwall, non-native beech and sycamore, planted while the industry was active, were later demoted in favour of indigenous oak and ash. These are once again supplanted by beech and sycamore, to stress the landscape alteration made by replacing indigenous species with alien ones.53 Yourcenar’s temporal transitions were creatively replicated in Damien Hirst’s Venice Biennale show, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable (2017). Each invented artefact appears thrice: as ‘Coral’ in its ‘original’ encrusted state, as if just ‘recovered’ from the Indian Ocean; as ‘Treasure’, a seemingly restored artwork in a cabinet of curiosities; and as ‘Copy’, a purported modern museum reproduction. It is ‘art for a post-truth world’, remarked a London reviewer, in which what is real looks fake and what is fake seems real.54 Similar ambiguities inspired Adrián Villar Rojas’s Theater of Disappearance (2017) on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which bizarrely juxtaposed urethane foam copies (much altered) of Met treasures embracing (or sat on by) modern figures. While paint dust lends the new artworks a patina of antiquity, playful new poses restore Met icons from static eternity to the natural trajectory of reuse, recycling, regeneration, decay and decomposition.55 2.3 Replication So ingrained is the Western cult of originality that we are apt to forget how recently it became enthroned and how customarily it was derided. ‘There is all this talk about originality, but what does it amount to?’ said Goethe. ‘As 51  Simmel 1911, 135–43; DeSilvey 2017, 70–71, 102–103, 114–116. 52  Jones 1998; ‘Røros mining town and the circumference (Norway)’, unesco World Heritage Centre Nomination file No. 55bis (2010), 309–322; Guttormsen & Fageraas 2011. 53  DeSilvey 2017, 108–109, 141. 54  Vogel 2007; Cumming 2017; Hirst 2017. 55  Van Straaten 2017; Galilee & Villar Rojas 2017.

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soon as we are born the world begins to influence us, and this goes on till we die.’ Though usually contemptuous of tradition, Emerson opined that even ‘the originals are not original. There is imitation, model, and suggestion, to the very archangels, if we knew their history’.56 As in life, so in art: the word copy, now confined to mere reproduction and repetition, then denoted copious eloquence. Copying was essential to humanist revival of admired classical exemplars. When Francis I of France envied the papacy’s recently excavated Laocoön (created c. 40 to 30 bc, found 1506), the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli promised to make the French king a copy even more perfect than the original. Reproductions were lauded for celebrating originals, as with Rubens’s loving 1629 replication of Titian’s 1562 Rape of Europa.57 Multiplying copies of ancient masterpieces would help ‘prevent the Return of Ignorant and barbarous Ages’, Josiah Wedgwood wooed customers. Copies diffused good taste, instructed the public eye, and improved the arts while enhancing the prototype. ‘The more Copies there are of any Works, as of the Venus Medicis for instance, the more celebrated the Original will be.’ The poet Samuel Rogers extolled Wedgwood’s mass-produced cameos and intaglios as aids to antique appreciation: Be mine to bless the more mechanic skill, That stamps, renews, and multiplies at will; And cheaply circulates, thro’ distant climes, The fairest relics of the purest times.58 Well into the nineteenth century, fine engravings were often more highly valued than their source paintings, both as works of art in their own right and for generating prints. The ‘noble enterprise’ of copying culminated in an 1867 Convention for Promoting Universally Reproduction of Works of Art for the Benefit of Museums of All Countries.59 The mass market in copies attests to an enduring public fondness, often preference, for replicas. The old maxim that ‘a happy imitation is of much more value than a defective original’ chimes with claims that Nashville’s Parthenon outclasses the Athenian because it is more complete, Disneyland’s ‘Vieux Carré’ as just like the New Orleans 1850s original but ‘a lot cleaner’. The 56  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Johann Peter Eckermann, 5 December 1825, in Goethe 1966, 138–139; Emerson 1859, 286. 57  Vasari 1568, 4: 244–245; Muller 1982, 239. 58  Wedgwood & Bentley 1779 catalogue, in Mankowitz 1953, 253, 229; Rogers 1799, ll. 65–68, at 103–104. 59  Haskell & Penny 1981, 17–21, 43; Wright 2015, 35–38, 115–117, 124–125, 178–188; Scott 2013, 67–68.

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California coast boasts seven waxwork ‘Last Suppers’, all ‘superior’ to Leonardo da Vinci’s original. For the painting in Milan is ‘so ruined, almost invisible, unable to give you the emotion you [get] from the three-dimensional wax, which is more real’ and more lifelike, mocked Umberto Eco. Facsimiles also appeal by not requiring the solemn awe owed the originals. They dispel ‘the profound atavistic fear we experience when we are face to face with the original’, says Julian Barnes’s fictional art-history guru. Paralysed by the unique masterpiece, ‘we must demand the replica, since the reality, the truth, the authenticity of the replica is the one we can possess, colonise, reorder, [and] find jouissance in’.60 Even the cognoscenti gain jouissance from the copy of Paolo Veronese’s Nozze di Cana (1490–1527) in Palladio’s Benedictine refectory in San Giorgio, Venice. Installed in 2007 in the space for which Veronese’s painting was commissioned, this replica, laser-scanned by Factum Arte, challenges traditional diktats of authenticity. The original, purloined by Napoleon, stripped into pieces, rolled up and sent to Paris in 1797, hangs in the Louvre opposite da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The replica Nozze di Cana restores the original integrity of that other work of art, the Palladian interior. Moreover, the painting is far better seen in Venice. Viewing in Paris is distorted by being hung too low, by the cumbrous gilt frame, by artificial lighting, by nearby obtrusive doors, by the selfie-addict Mona Lisa mob that precludes contemplation. In most ways, the replica is more faithful to the original than the physical original. Exemplifying Adam Lowe’s aperçu that ‘an original is never an original, once it goes through time’, Nozze di Cana’s aura has migrated five centuries later to its copy.61 3

Curatorial Dilemmas

Creators, patrons, inheritors, collectors, donors, national and tribal custodians, and public audiences all affect how art is shown and cared for. Whether to stem or allow or hasten decay, whether to display continually or rarely, to show to all or only to a chosen few, to forbid or foment viewer interaction, to prohibit or permit loans, involves myriad problematic stewardship injunctions. Many have historical precedents: Maori and Hopi exclusion of women, children and non-initiates from sacred displays echoes Victorian museums that banned the hoi polloi and shielded genteel ladies from antique vulgarity, though for 60  Dallaway 1800, 156–159; Kreyling et al. 1996, 40–44, 124–149; Souther 2007; Eco 1973, 17–18, 20; Barnes 1998, 54–55. 61  Adam Lowe quoted in Zalewski 2015, 71, 73; Latour & Lowe 2011.

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quite different reasons. But today’s new display aims intensify conflicts among museum personnel, patrons and other stakeholders. For example, showcasing evanescence prompts novel appreciation of process, change and decay. Accepting and even celebrating loss incites or inflames disputes over identity, possession, conservation and curation. 3.1 Authorial Intent Creators’ supposed intentions have long been deemed paramount for works of art, however they may be swayed by patrons’ demands for a flattering portrait, a sumptuous use of precious paint or costly marble, or a celebratory history. Contemporary art tends to sanctify authorial intent, compelling curators and conservators to heed artists and their estates. The US Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) and similar laws abroad legally sanction artists’ moral right to edit, alter or even eradicate their own work, overriding the property rights of owners.62 But intentions may be hard to gauge and often change over time, both during and after acts of creation. ‘Any artist’s intention’, warns art historian Martin Kemp, is ‘a complex and shifting compound of conscious and unconscious aspirations, adjustments, re-definitions, acts of chance and evasions’.63 Many painters and sculptors who first forbid preservation later press to protect their works. For example, at his 1915–1916 Cardiff Silent Explosion exhibition, Ivor Davies revoked his earlier decision to let certain works die off. ‘Despite curators and conservators embracing the paintings’ changeable, transforming natures, the artist’s revised desire to conserve them’ redefined them as ‘stable and collectable’.64 Eventually, however, creators die and heirs abandon control over time. Responsibility for curation and conservation reverts to collectors and museums, increasingly disinclined or unable to comply with authorial mandates that seem outmoded or reprehensible, if not unattainable. Some restorers lauded the 1990s renovation of the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s Last Judgement (1536–1541) for revealing his colouristic genius. But others termed it a disaster, voiding the frescoes of inspiration and corrupting their essence. For admirers, removing the varnished veil of time recovered Michelangelo’s ‘full chromatic effects’. For critics, the expunged veil contained Michelangelo’s intended shadow-and-chiaroscuro finishing and balanced

62  Adler 2009. 63  Talley 1996; Kemp 1990, 18. 64  O’Reilly et al. 2016, 171–172.

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tinting. Did restoration perhaps reveal Michelangelo’s first creative burst at the expense of his later views?65 Intention is further clouded by multiple authorship, as is appreciation. Just as buildings often have several architects and builders, many works of art have several creators—paintings from so-and-so’s studio indebted to assistants and acolytes, sculptures by stone and marble quarriers. In the Western tradition, collective attribution diminishes the perceived value of artworks, as JeanMichel Basquiat and Andy Warhol’s Collaboration Paintings (1984–1986) exemplify. All who display a work of art become to some degree its co-authors—not least those who name it, who more often than not are someone other than the painter or sculptor, as with Mona Lisa and Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe (1929), titles that profoundly affect how these works are seen. ‘From the initial act of choosing to place an object in an art setting, to deciding on its lighting or placement’, notes copyright authority Amy Adler, ‘all curatorial choices change the meaning of a work.’66 As in literature, an artist’s supposed intention may have little bearing on the finished product. ‘The artist goes from intention to realization’, said Duchamp, by means of ‘efforts, pains, satisfactions, refusals, decisions, which … cannot and must not be fully self-conscious’. The resulting gulf ‘between the intention and its realization [reflects] a difference which the artist is not aware of’. Few are as explicit as the American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth’s jocose mandate for Glass (one and three) (1965): ‘It is the intention of Joseph Kosuth that this work be owned or exhibited exclusively in a FLEMISH speaking cultural/ linguistic context. Fulfilment of this requirement is absolutely essential to the existence of the work.’ Given myriad qualms, artists’ intentions might better be termed ‘opinions’, ‘directives’, ‘guidelines’, or ‘sanctions’.67 3.2 Longevity Ditching the futile maxim of preservation forever may seem unproblematic. But then choices must be made between durability and display. Drawings and watercolours best resist fading when seldom and briefly shown. Prehistoric cave paintings and embossed cathedral floors suffer least damage when breathed at or walked on by few and seldom. Alternatively, visits may be restricted by lot 65  Pietrangeli et al. 1994; Beck with Daley 1996, 88–100; Eggert 2009, 90–93; Graham-Dixon 2008; Daley 2011. 66  Smith & Newman 2014; Yeazell 2015; Adler 2009, 278. 67  Duchamp 1957; Kosuth (1976) quoted in Stigter 2011, 71; Wharton 2015, 10. Kosuth’s Glass [one and three], sold to an Antwerp collector, went in 1979 on long-term loan to the Kröller-Müller Museum and was sent to Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum for a 2005 conceptual art retrospective.

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or by advance booking, as at Malta’s prehistoric Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum (ten visitors an hour) and at blockbuster exhibitions. Or display may be confined to certain ceremonial dates, like the annual Shōsō-in opening at Nara, Japan, with some imperial treasures shown every ten years and others that have never been displayed before.68 On the other hand, looming natural disaster, imminent iconoclastic threat, or authorial mandate may commend maximum exposure over shorter lifetimes. For example, Xu Bing’s A Book from the Sky (1987–1991) features 400 traditional thread-bound books with pages open, revealing Xu’s woodblock-printed imaginary characters. Surrounding the books are delicate paper scrolls, with inked prints of the same logograms, suspended in mid-air. Very bright lights project the scrolls on the ceiling ‘to simulate the atmosphere of heaven’. High intensity illumination will soon turn the scrolls yellow and brittle, shortening their lives. Xu refuses to dim the light or display reproductions, using the original scrolls in every exhibition. He promises a new work when the originals are too deteriorated.69 Installations with moving parts or that invite visitors to ‘push buttons, bounce on platforms, or open doors and drawers [have] contradictory effects on longevity’, note conservators. ‘The more an object operates, the shorter its physical life.’ Yet performance also ‘increases its appreciation, including financially. This builds the affection needed to secure resources for future exhibition and conservation’, note Glenn Wharton and Harvey Molotch. ‘In contrast, installations relegated to storage grow cold as familiarity with them ebbs away.’70 Kinetic art poses further dilemmas, especially with works meant to be heard as well as seen. Many fragile Jean Tinguely machine-driven creations would soon break down if run continuously. A 2016 Tinguely retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam limited Gismo (1960) displays to three 15-minute showings a month.71 Episodic viewings resemble reiterations of performance art. Occasional happenings ipso facto become special occasions, turning curators and docents into stage managers. But changing artefacts, environments, and clienteles continually redefine longevity. Navajo sand paintings made for tribal healing that must be completed, used and destroyed within 24 hours differ from those made for other purposes or for sale. Moving Japan’s open-air Tottori Museum 68  Corkill 2011. 69  Liu et al. 2016, 120. 70  Wharton & Molotch 2009, 214. 71  Jean Tinguely—machine spectacle, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam exhibition on view 1 October 2016–5 March 2017.

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indoors to protect works from wind and rain extended the life (and touristic appeal) of sand sculptures from six weeks to eight months. As natural decay is now too slow, the last days’ visitors join bulldozers in razing the sculptures and piling up the sand for next year’s works.72 Future preparation goes hand in hand with transience in Josh Kline’s Cost of Living (Aleyda) (2014), digitally produced sculptural objects neither intended to last nor yet wholly present, since 3-D printers up to Kline’s scan resolution do not yet exist. By the time the fully detailed scan is realized, the objects themselves will have deteriorated. As with the weathering of ruins, deferring completion to an indeterminate future commits conservators to vexedly invasive tasks.73 Diverse expectations stem from the differing durability of structures of stone, wood and straw and of traditions expressed in songs and words, rituals and re-enactments. Authenticity is accorded not only to surviving original stone- and brickwork in Western European buildings but also to the replicated forms of recurrently rebuilt (because they are less durable) Norwegian and Japanese wooden structures and to the craft skills of ‘Living Treasures’ who steward traditional building techniques. Intangible heritage celebrates successions of artefacts meant to be ephemeral; they must be destroyed or buried before new artefacts can be made to carry on ritual purposes. Their retention in museums and galleries violates tribal social precepts. Still less tethered to physical preservation are legacies of communal activities ranging from music and dance to cooking and bungee jumping (jumping off bridges and high buildings, derived from land diving in Pentecost Island, Vanuatu).74 For such events curatorial display is in large measure performance art. 3.3 Transience Notably problematic is art intended to decay, lose coherence and perish. Many stress ephemerality with fast-decomposing materials. Dieter Roth’s butterfatand-chocolate and Sonja Alhäuser’s chocolate–popcorn assemblages expire when the chocolate crumbles or is eaten by viewers; Brad Troemel’s compages terminate when his dead fish rot, the ice melts and the Gatorade evaporates into neon goop. Some works are left to disintegrate at their own pace, apart from risks to health or safety. Decomposition is sped in others by exposure to the elements, like Yoko Ono’s Painting for the wind (1961), or by inviting iconoclasm, like her Painting to be stepped on (1960), Man Ray’s Object to be 72  Parezo 1983; Rich 2017. 73  Lerner 2016, 50, 58. 74  Larsen 1995; Geismar 2013.

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destroyed (1923), and Joe Mangrum’s Swept away (2012) mandala sand paintings at New York’s Columbus Circle. Most Earth art is deliberately evanescent. Will Ashford’s landscape Mona Lisa (1979), outlined by a selective spread of fertilizer, ‘grew’ with the grass, ‘matured’ with rain and sun, then wilted into invisibility.75 Diverse motives fuel artists’ destruction of their own creations. Jasper Johns invoked self-improvement, destroying his earlier work to purge himself of influence. Soon after, his dream of painting a flag spurred the iconic flag series that made him famous. Distaste led Picasso to paint over paintings. His Woman with child on the seashore (1921) initially included a man, later amputated. Picasso gave tiresome admirers signed dédicaces on paper napkins, gleeful that they would soon fade away. Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and other artists donated hundreds of their unwanted works to Michael Landy’s London Art bin exhibition (2010), ‘monuments to creative failure’ subsequently trashed in a landfill.76 The obverse of time-lapse decay and dissolution are static structures whose fragmented components convey their explosive or incendiary origins. Cornelia Parker’s conceptual sculptures exemplify this diachronic intent. Their visual impact stems from our awareness of the engendering demolitions—the deliberately blown-up garden shed reconfigured as Cold dark matter: An exploded view (1991), the charred remnants of a Florida forest fire in Heart of darkness (2004). Like Parker’s Thirty pieces of silver (1988–1989), they embody past existence and destruction that initiates new life.77 Many admire the look of decay. ‘I love the way it’s aged’, said Cy Twombly of one of his works. ‘I want a sign put on the back that says “Do not ever restore this painting”.’78 Some would gladly assist aesthetic demolition. The conversion from ‘hideous barracks’ to Piranesian etching of the Palais d’Orsay (1810), ruined by the 1871 Communards, delighted Joris-Karl Huysmans, who proposed further embellishing Paris by burning down the Madeleine, the Opéra and the Odéon, for nineteenth-century architecture, ‘so pitiful when it is raw, becomes imposing, almost splendid, when it is baked’.79 Others enjoy demolition as spectacle that visibly disintegrates, fragments ejected, carbonized, pulverized, peeling off, liquefying, imploding, shattering. Bill Morrison’s Decasia: The state of decay (2001), a 67-minute montage of decomposing nitrate 75  Wharton et al. 1995; Rimmaudo 2016; Chen 2017; Valentine 2012; Gerster 1980. 76  Spieker 2017; Crichton 1994, 26–29; Richardson 1983; Luke 2010. 77  Cole 2009; Viney 2014, 44–64; Raez 2013. 78  Cy Twombly quoted in Leonard 2003, 112–115. 79  J.-K. Huysmans (1886) quoted in Gamboni 1997, 256.

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film, offered ‘all the putrefaction you could ask for. Watch Master Narratives Crumble! Entropy Now’.80 Auto-destructive art stresses that all is ephemeral. It’s ‘a mirror image of reality’, asserted Gustav Metzger. ‘Society is deteriorating. So is the sculpture.’81 Memento mori was the message of Leopoldo Maler’s self-sculpture in ice, H2OMBRE (1982), dripping away in a New York gallery. ‘Tomorrow it is not there anymore’, said Maler, sipping tea made from H2OMBRE melt-water, ‘maybe like me’.82 Anarchic destruction so charmed Pete Townshend that after his first gig with The Who he smashed his guitar and amplifiers onstage. He felt impelled ‘to start a rock band that would last only three months. The Who would have been [it] except that we had a hit’. Amy Adler considers physical destruction ‘a powerful expression of the metaphorical essence of art’. Terming demolition a creative process, Picasso called the making of a picture ‘the sum of its destructions’.83 The iconic destructive creation is Erased de Kooning (1953), a drawing the painter gave Robert Rauschenberg to efface, to exemplify the evanescence of all art. ‘The drawing was done with a hard line, and it was greasy, too, so I had to work very hard on it, using every sort of eraser’, said Rauschenberg. ‘But in the end I felt it was a legitimate work of art.’ Erased de Kooning also epitomizes the yen for personal involvement that moves many to alter, add to or cull existing art.84 But the drawing’s faint survival (digitally enhanced by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) as a collaborative display relic dismayed de Kooning, who had intended its total destruction. Revered today as a surviving relic of intentionally ephemeral art, Erased de Kooning ironically attests the abiding longevity of fame. Destroyed works typically ‘preserve and depend upon … the original artist’s reputation’, concludes copyright authority Sonya Bonneau.85 Indeed, loss often magnifies fame. The Mona Lisa’s 1911 theft from the Louvre made it legendary, enticing far more viewers to the vacant space than had previously seen the painting. When Diego Rivera refused to paint over the face of Lenin in his mural Man at the crossroads (1933), commissioned for Rockefeller Center, Nelson Rockefeller had the mural destroyed; hence it became Rivera’s best-known work, far more than the scaled-down replacement copy in Mexico

80  Muschamp 2004; Jones 2003. 81  Metzger 1965, 16, 18–19. 82  Anonymous 1982. 83  Pete Townshend (1998) quoted in Grimes 2017; Adler 2009, 284; Picasso quoted in Hensbergen 2004, 47. 84  Robert Rauschenberg quoted in Tomkins 2005, 88; Rosenberg 1976, 108; Katz 2006. 85  Stevens & Swan 2004, 258–260; Bonneau 2013, 96, 99.

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City. Tilted arc’s (1981) removal and destruction in 1989 made it Richard Serra’s most famous sculpture.86 Annihilation elicits homage. Exhibits of ready-made utilitarian objects call into question the very concept of art. This was the aim of Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain, a manufactured urinal (‘art is something you piss on’) elevated into art by being placed on its side in a gallery. Alfred Stieglitz confirmed Fountain’s artistic bona fide by photographing it upside-down, the toilet’s flowing curves evocative of an erotic Brancusi sculpture. Ninety years on, acclaimed as the twentieth century’s most influential artwork, Fountain (not the now-lost original, but one of eight replicas) was assaulted with a hammer by the French performance artist Pierre Pinoncelli. He argued that the vandalized toilet was a new work of art, made in the spirit of and (unverifiably) approved by Duchamp.87 Duchamp’s subversion of art was presaged by the Victorian architect Robert Kerr’s fictional Georgius Oldhousen: ‘I mean to go in for letting the workmen have the use of all the rooms, with liberty to smudge them as much as they like, and so at the end we shall have a sort of antique effect.’ ‘They will be dirty.’ ‘You may call it dirt; I call it Art.’88 The line between art and dirt was blurred when a zealous janitor mistook Turner-prize-winner Damien Hirst’s garbage art strewn across a London gallery floor for actual garbage. Salvaged and meticulously restored, the costly installation now bore a warning: ‘Keep Off’. Likewise recouped from cleaners was Where shall we go dancing tonight? (2015), an Italian museum oeuvre of empty champagne bottles and spent party poppers evoking 1980s consumerism. Museum director Letizia Ragaglia lauded the recovered display for ‘arousing great interest’ in contemporary art, ‘even annoying people’.89 Several similar ‘mistakes’ suggest canny cleaner complicity. Destruction and creation thus become one and the same. ‘This model of creative vitality captures the ethos of the present era’, affirms Adler. We expect contemporary art ‘to be violated, reworked, and even destroyed rather than … embalmed and preserved’. After Picasso died art dealer Tony Shafrazi defaced his Guernica (1937) by spray-painting to ‘bring the art absolutely up to date … 86  Leader 2002; Mannheim 1998, 250–260; Senie 2002; Kammen 2006, 238–243, 246–248. 87  Tomkins 1996; Lichfield 2006. 88  Kerr 1879, 1: 219, 330–331, 2: 101. 89  Hoge 2001; Squires 2015; Ragaglia quoted in Anonymous 2015.

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and give it life’.90 Hans Haacke broke replicas of Duchamp’s ready-mades to return these ‘relics’ to vital art. Today’s artistic motives had certain Renaissance harbingers. Distressed fascination with what was incomplete and fragmentary, analogy with human life-history and an urge to collaborate with original artists stimulated sixteenth-century creativity. Decay made mutilated remnants of antique architecture and unearthed vividly lifelike sculptures, inviting reparative completion. These tattered remains enabled humanists to become co-creators, sculptors by restoring body parts, architects by replicating classical structures, painters by portraying, and poets by reciting trajectories from wholeness to ruin and resurrection. The mutilated state of so many antiquities encouraged collectors and artists ‘to take part literally in the creation by restoring the objects’.91 3.4 Location and Locale Where art and artefacts are housed and displayed, as well as when and for whom, reflects divergent stakeholder aims. Against museums’ usual remit to make holdings widely accessible, artists or owners may strive to keep a famed collection or artist’s oeuvre intact, forbidding dispersal by sale or loan. Every item in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Barnes Collection must remain exactly where placed by their founders; the empty frames of the 13 Gardner paintings stolen in 1980 still hang on the walls. Yet removal can be essential as salvage, the saving alternative to terminal decay or demolition. Cut and lifted from Philae in the Nile, the Abu Simbel temples were spared submergence behind the Aswan High Dam and are more imposing on Agilka’s bare rock than in their former palm-tree setting. Less congruous is John Rennie’s 1831 London bridge, re-erected in the Arizona desert in 1971 along with lamps cast from Napoleon’s cannon and an imitation City of London pub; it now spans a mock Thames diverted from the Colorado River. The bridge’s 2011 rededication featured plastic heads of several famed miscreants, making it ‘the place to be’, said state governor Jan Brewer, ‘if you want to get A Head in Arizona’.92 Many decry the relocation of art and artefacts designed for or innate to particular locales. The removal of relics indisputably of their place annuls their purpose. ‘It’s a dreadful thing to do’, says Lucy Boston’s Green Knowe child when the local Standing Stones are carted off to a museum. ‘They were in their 90  Adler 2009, 287; Shafrazi (1990) quoted in Gamboni 1997, 120. 91  Barkan 1999, 8–9. 92  Holmes 2009; Lacey 2011; Jan Brewer, remarks, 14 October 2011, quoted in Lowenthal 2015, 444. See Elborough 2013.

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own place. Out of it they will be dead.’ Ripping statues of winged beasts from Nimrod’s Assyrian palace ‘seemed almost sacrilege’ to A. H. Layard, the British diplomat responsible for doing so. ‘They were better suited to the desolation around them; for they had guarded the palace in its glory, and it was for them to watch over it in its ruin.’93 Artists’ legal rights over their works may include their location. When a sycamore tree in the courtyard of New York’s Trinity Church was smashed by World Trade Center debris on 9/11, sculptor Steve Tobin replaced it with a commemorative bronze simulacrum, more roots than branches, in 2005. Upset by ‘hordes of non-parishioners’ crowding the courtyard to ogle the ‘ugly’ statue, Trinity exiled Trinity Root—damaged in transit—to its retreat centre in West Cornwall, Connecticut. Tobin has sued against its unlawful removal.94 Locational rights may extend to the environs of site-specific art. Sculptor Arturo Di Modica charges that Kristen Visbal’s Fearless girl (2017), defiantly facing Charging bull (1989) on Wall Street, subverts his message of ‘aggressive financial optimism’ into a feminist fable; Alex Gardega’s Pissing pug (2017), a dog peeing on Fearless girl’s left leg, for a few hours further inflamed this sculptural fracas.95 Those who displace icons may seek context by appropriating an entire locale, as Henry Ford did with Thomas Edison’s famed Menlo Park lab: Before he moved the laboratory [to Greenfield Village, Michigan], he went out to New Jersey—the land where the building was originally— and dug up tons of dirt, just tons of it. Then he had it all carted out here and dumped it all over this site before they stuck the building down on top of it. … This place had been built on New Jersey soil, so it should be restored on New Jersey soil. Indeed, Ford moved not only Edison’s lab site but old Edison as well, brought to Greenfield on the fiftieth anniversary to re-enact himself turning on the first electric light.96 Art and antiquities are often more accessible in a gallery or museum, to be sure, than in previous cathedral or jungle settings. But making them easier to see also disembodies them. In an antique building or landscape they feel like temporal survivals; in a gallery they are shorn of duration. The most artful

93  Boston 1979, 120; Layard 1853, 67. 94  Barron 2017. 95  Fulgallo & Jaeger 2017. 96  Phillips 1982, 10; Pretzer 1989, ‘Introduction’, 25.

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placement, the most breath-taking proximity, leaves them stranded in isolation, as are many displaced fragments of wall paintings. Yet art can gain by being freed from contexts of time and place, as creators usually intend and collectors usually want. ‘The mania for showing things only in the environment that properly belongs to them suppresses the essential thing, the act of mind which isolated them from that environment’ in the first place, argued Proust against the contrivance of context in historic houses and period rooms. A painting viewed ‘in the midst of furniture, ornaments, hangings of the same period … does not give us the exhilarating delight’ of a gallery whose neutral and uncluttered background accords with ‘those innermost spaces into which the artist withdrew to create it’.97 Religious sites aside, portable artefacts and works of art are seldom made to be seen where they were created. Highly burdensome are national and tribal decrees outlawing the export and demanding the return of art and antiquities made by presumed ancestors or found on national and tribal terrain. Ratified as morally justified by unesco and other international agencies, retentive strictures are more and more heeded by major Western museums in the wake of lawsuits enjoining widely publicized repatriations. Diktats such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) consign much tribal heritage to demolition, to reburial or to cloistered retention that forbids it being seen or studied by women, children, and non-tribal initiates, in direct opposition to universalistic Western principles. And NAGPRA leaves many Native American relics unclaimed.98 Unable to find tribes to whom human and funerary remains could be repatriated, some American and Australian museums have buried them themselves. Many foreign relics ruled illicitly imported pose similar dilemmas. Deploring the increasing ‘store of antiquities, moved illegally out of their country of origin since 1970, that the country of origin may not want to reclaim and that U.S. museums may not want to acquire’, archaeologist Neil Brodie wonders ‘What should happen to them?’99 Tribal insistence on keeping sacred heritage secret and hidden has its counterpart among archaeologists who anathematize collecting. They insist that artefacts contaminated by possible pillage be locked away unseen, lest their allure foster yet more pillage. Indeed, such items should not even be conserved, holds archaeological conservator Kathryn Tubb. ‘By rendering antiquities 97  Proust 1913–1927, vol. 1, 693–694. 98  Jenkins 2016, 262–267. 99  Brodie 2009.

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more aesthetically pleasing, more durable and less traceable, the conservator becomes complicit in an illicit trade that obtains the object at the expense of context, of the site, [amounting to] destruction of the past’. Archaeologists echo bygone inquisitors: ‘You don’t just have to prove something is not guilty, but show that it is innocent.’ National and tribal claims for art and antiquities supposed to have been exported illicitly leave manifold museum items in curatorial limbo, neither viewable nor disposable. Private collectors’ troves once commonly evolved by gift into public heritage, but legal uncertainties now condemn many to perpetual privacy. Museums today cannot risk acquiring anything without a simon-pure provenance, lest they become mired in costly litigation. And many artefacts already in museums languish uncurated and unconserved.100 3.5 Material Surrogates Images in paint or print or oral recall often begin as surrogates for material entities and may be preferred to them. The visitor sees Rome through centuries of Piranesi-shaped expectations, blotting out modern-day trivia and traffic. Memory supplies still more, as in Freud’s description of remembered Rome as a visual amalgam of all its pasts, a city of the mind ‘in which nothing once constructed had perished’. Where the Coliseum now stands, we could at the same time admire Nero’s vanished Golden House. On the Piazza of the Pantheon we should find not only the Pantheon of to-day … but, on the same site, the original edifice erected by Agrippa, [and on] the same piece of ground … the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the ancient temple over which it was built. Unlike actual ancient Rome, largely obliterated by destruction and erosion, ‘everything survives in one way or another, and [can be] brought to light again’.101 And confronting memory with physical reality often disappoints. Proust’s Marcel finds the statue of the Virgin at Balbec, long adored in his imagination, transformed into ‘a little old woman whose height I could measure and whose wrinkles I could count’. Screening out irrelevance and showing ancient monuments at awe-inspiring angles, coffee-table reproductions arouse anticipations often disappointed. Expecting solemn majesty at the Parthenon and columnar

100  Tubb 2013, 147; Neil Brodie quoted in Smale 2014; Blumenthal & Mashberg 2012; Ulph 2017. 101  Freud 1930, 21: 70.

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splendour at Persepolis, the visitor is shocked to see ‘isolated survivors arising out of something like a builder’s yard’.102 In China, surrogates were traditionally favoured. ‘We in the West tend to equate the antique presence with authentically ancient physical objects’, notes a sinologist. ‘China has no ruins comparable to the Roman Forum, or even to Angkor Wat, … because of a different attitude about how to achieve an enduring monument.’103 Memory, not physical persistence, suffused Chinese consciousness. Ancient cities such as Suzhou became repositories of the past not with ruins but by embodying or suggesting associations whose value lay beyond the material realm: ‘The past was a past of words, not of stones, … its imperishable elements’ in the mind. Suzhou’s Tang-dynasty Maple Bridge is famed in Chinese literary history. But it has little importance as an object. ‘No single poem refers … to its physical presence’; its enduring memory reflects ‘not the stones forming the span’ but its associations realized in words.104 We honour immortality not in lapidary monuments but in imperishable words and enduring thoughts. Revering ancestral memory and written tradition, the Chinese customarily held the past’s material traces in less regard. Devotion to linguistic and pictorial surrogates went hand in hand with recurrent destruction of physical remains. Mao’s orders to demolish most ancient monuments proved easy to carry out, for few historic structures had survived incessant past iconoclasm. That most antiquities were hoarded in central dynastic collections sped their demolition by those who toppled each dynasty in turn. Relics of ‘ancient’ vintage that sages refer to having seen rarely date back beyond a century or two. Wang Xizhi’s archetypal calligraphic ‘Preface to the poems composed at the Orchid Pavilion’ (ad 363) marked a fourth-century day of festival. Instantly famous, ‘Orchid Pavilion’ was copied again and again. The seventh-century Emperor Tang Taizong avidly collected these copies. Reputedly buried with him in 649, the original ‘Orchid Pavilion’ has not been seen since. But it was continually copied, new stone tablets carved from copies, then new rubbings taken from the stones; the pedigree of these copies of copies of copies was an arcane discipline. Five centuries later, ‘Orchid Pavilion’ gained further fame through calligrapher Mi Fu’s creations based on Wang’s style. Few ‘pure’ exemplars even of Mi Fu now remain. Refracted over a millennium only through ever-remoter emulations, Wang’s original now seems a likely fiction. In 1965 an archaeologist showed that the form and style of ‘Orchid Pavilion’ were much 102  Proust 1913–1927, vol. 1, 709–710; Chamberlin 1979, 66. 103  Wang 1985; Ryckmans 1986. 104  Mote 1973, 49–53; Botz-Bornstein 2012; Wu 2014.

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later than supposed; hence it could not have been written by Wang Xizhi. Thus ‘the sublime model which inspired the entire development of Chinese calligraphy’, concluded sinologist Pierre Ryckmans, ‘may in fact never have existed’. This is less cause for chagrin than congratulation. The ‘capacity for metamorphosis and adaptation’ over three and a half millennia shows that ‘tradition never let itself be trapped into set forms, static objects and things’.105 Even less material is a sixteenth-century Ming poem celebrating a landscape garden, the Wuyou Garden—literally, ‘the garden that does not exist’. The poet observes that most famed historic gardens now survive only in literary memory, their plantings and physical traces having wholly disappeared. But should it matter if they never actually existed? Why not dispense with the preliminary earth-bound garden and begin with the literary recollection, which is, after all, their ultimate end? It is tedious to search out and care for vestiges of an original garden, now long overgrown, its trees aged and its composition obscured; it is pedantic to dwell on comparisons between what it now is, what it once was, and what at various times has been portrayed.106 Materiality lumbers the mind, hobbles the imagination. Freed from the prosaic physical constraints, the garden in the mind’s eye is fructified by memory. Until recent nationalist zeal to recoup Chinese treasures from abroad, Buddhist-influenced Chinese generally regarded material possession as a burdensome vice. To amass, house and protect art objects and other relics tarnished creativity with commodity, demeaning both object and owner. Only the loss and ultimate dissolution of those objects could rectify the psychic damage their possession inflicted. Material curatorship can corrupt collections as well as collectors. A Western parallel to these Chinese examples is Siegfried Lenz’s The heritage, a World War II parable. Lenz’s protagonist Rogalla founds a museum of local arts and folkways in East Prussia’s Masurian borderland. Successive German and Russian invasions again and again force Rogalla to ‘remold the museum in the spirit of the new times’, now weeding out artefacts of Germanic provenance to emphasize Masuria’s Slavic links, now hiding Slavonic relics to stress Teutonic identity. A German commander bends the collection ‘to demonstrate that the Masurian has always seen himself as the advance guard of the Germanic spirit in the East’; Russian reconquest renders Teutonic relics not only tasteless but incriminating, while the decorated butter-crock and the toothed flax-scutcher from the Vistula become iconic. At the war’s end, the surviving remnant of 105  Ledderose 1979; Ryckmans 1986, 297–298. ‘Orchid Pavilion Park’ in Shaoxing, Hangzhou Bay, is a ‘holy land of calligraphy’ memorial to Wang Xizhi. 106  Ryckmans 1986, 298.

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Masurians flees to Schleswig. Rogalla re-establishes his museum there as a focus of Masurian identity and a reminder of the homeland. But even here German nationals and Polish visitors seek to control what is displayed and how it is attributed. Their chauvinism so subverts authenticity that Rogalla fears his relics will never be allowed to attest historical truth. In despair, he sets fire to them all, to ‘bring the collected witnesses to our past into safety, a final, irrevocable safety, from which they … could never again be exploited for this cause or that’. Originally gathered to enable the realities of the past to counter the violations of the present, the collection succumbs to the very corruptions it had sought to prevent. Better no material witnesses than relics readily turned into lies.107 Like theologians who blamed nature’s corruption on mankind’s sins, many attribute imperial collapse to moral perfidy. The ruination of the Parthenon, as portrayed by eighteenth-century painters, was seen as punishment for the sins Byzantium had attributed to pagan Greeks, and for which northern neoHellenists continued to blame modern Greeks. The destruction of Rome as detailed by Edward Gibbon and depicted by Thomas Cole’s Course of empire series (1833–1836) was ascribed to loss of civic virtue.108 That desecration withers and finally devastates precious relics is the moral of Brian Moore’s collection of Victorian memorabilia dreamed into existence in a California motel parking lot. ‘What more creative scholarship can anyone imagine’, cheers the historian-protagonist’s colleague, ‘than to re-create the artifacts of a period simply through an act of imagination?’ But ‘unlike the great places of antiquity, the Collection does not stand aloof, indifferent to philistine scrutiny. Rather, these objects … seem to entreat the tourists’ … respect. And they fail’. Subjected to the gaze of mindless mobs and the avarice of mendacious promoters, the relics degenerate ‘like invalids suffering some wasting disease: the dolls’ eyes no longer move, the damask and linen have brown stains’, the statuary cracks, ‘the musical instruments all give out false notes, the Ross telescope lens is misted’. Everything becomes mouldy, mildewed, moth-eaten. Authenticity too is lost. ‘The original materials now seem false’, their hallmarks utterly illegible; ‘I can’t tell any more whether it’s silver, or silver plate’; blocks of glass look like Lucite; obvious imitations and blatant shams spoil the ambience of the remaining ravaged originals, which finally lose all credibility.109 107  Lenz 1978, 452. Lenz, himself Masurian, depicts East Prussia during World War II, after which 90 per cent of the 80,000 Masurians were evicted or fled Sovietized Poland into Germany (Sakson 2005; Karczewska 2012). 108  Lowenthal 2015, 236–238; St Clair 2014, 93; Gibbon 1776–1988; Noble 1853, 310. 109  Moore 1975, 149, 203.

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Moore’s despoiled antiquities recall the foreboding of Hitler’s architect Albert Speer, at the thousand-year Reich’s 1934 Spandau conference site. Seeing structures already rusting, shuddering at centuries of neglect likely to come, Speer drew a future scene of fallen walls, collapsed pillars, and rampant ivy, reminiscent of ruined inscriptions, defaced statues and mouldering triumphal arches that had once celebrated Roman emperors or generals later fallen from favour.110 4 Conclusion In 1992 I attended the Dahlem Workshop on ‘Durability and Change’ in Berlin, discussing ‘the science, responsibility, and cost of sustaining cultural heritage’ with fifty conservators, curators and humanists. Conservators’ roles were hotly debated, the word itself problematic. Europeans termed curators conservateurs; restorers were considered mere technicians. Opposing opinions revealed ingrained differences in epistemology and scientific and scholarly language. Curators and humanists faced hard choices about which works to save at what cost for whom and for how long. Conservators were irked to be asked not only what they did but why they did it. ‘Just tell us what to preserve and leave us alone’ was their usual stance. They had strong views about when, why, and how much to intervene. But rationales for saving were taken for granted. Scientific detachment distanced conservators from the thorny social concerns of art historians and museums. Conservators refused even to discuss alternatives to preservation.111 Now they do so all the time, partly owing to the deliberately evanescent and rapidly degradable materials used by modern artists. The fiberglass, polyester resin, latex and cheesecloth of Eva Hesse’s Expanded expansion (1969), which initially could be bunched together accordion-like or expanded to 25 feet wide, within a few years darkened, stiffened and wrinkled into a rigid skin decomposing in a Guggenheim Museum warehouse.112 Worse still is the near-simultaneous demise of newer media. ‘Audiotapes demagnetize. CDs delaminate’, note Richard Rinehart and Jon Ippolito. ‘Film spontaneously combusts in its canister.’ Fluorescent lights and analog film date from the 1800s, video formats

110  Welzer 2005; Hedrick 2000, xiii. 111  Krumbein et al. 1994. The cleavage persists (Tomaszewski 2008, 33; Imhoff 2009). See Lowenthal 2010, 233, 240. 112  Coerver 2002; Barger 2007; Learner 2008.

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from the 1960s, web plugins from the 1990s, yet all now ‘seem to be dying at same time’. [That] all of the artworks born of twentieth-century media are due to expire right at the beginning of the twenty-first … has created a consciousness of the scope of the threat among museum conservators, film producers, art historians, and internet providers that transcends the usual disciplinary-bound enclaves of preservation. To salvage contemporary art, not storage but change—updating, emulation, media migration—is essential to survival.113 The supreme value formerly attached to durable stability, though by no means entirely jettisoned, is more and more called into question. Demise, dissolution and metamorphic transformation become accepted not only as sadly unavoidable but as potentially life-enhancing. Ongoing decay and evanescent transience are recognized as adjuncts to personal and cultural creativity. Curatorial decisions respect ‘the differing privileges of works that remain in their original pristine condition, of works that have a long and familiar history in some altered state’, notes historian Leonard Barkan, ‘and of works that are technologically returned to some earlier condition that we can only guess at’.114 Today’s anti-materialist credos, most strident in auto-destructive and performance art, are by no means wholly novel. They have precursors, as noted above, in classical antiquity and Asian aesthetics, and parallels in everyday obsolescence. All offer cautionary insights for curatorial management today. The topics just discussed—longevity, authorial intent, transience, locational context and surrogate images—profoundly affect how valued objects and scenes are seen, displayed, conserved and altered. Curatorial treatment varies with the nature of objects and images both in acts and agencies of creation and in subsequent veneration, burial, exhumation, theft, repatriation, iconoclasm and restoration. Presumed original artefacts and works of art are prized mainly as iconic creations, for sanctifying special sites and mythic and historic events or persons, or as exemplars of specific genres. Their conservation stresses integrity of form and fabric and staves off deterioration as demeaning and ultimately intolerable. Over time, curatorial intervention is needed to compensate material

113  Rinehart & Ippolito 2014, 3–4, 11, 46; Beerkens 2016. 114  Barkan 1999, 187.

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deliquescence, to accommodate new historical insights, and to cope either with diminished relevance or revitalized popularity. Derivatives, replications, parodies and fakes are prized both for links with iconic objects and for their own histories. Their conservation underscores material differences from the originals. Such differences may be mandated to protect the authenticity of the original, or they may be imposed by altered material. With Donald Judd’s galvanized steel Untitled (1967), the absence of lead in plated steel by 2000 made it impossible to recreate in the copy the original’s icefrosted surface. Henk Peeters’s 2005 remake of his 1959 Pyrography was made defective by the fire retardant in present-day PUR (rigid polyurethane) foam. Curation highlights ongoing public reception and artworks’ changing identities as historical evidence emerges. Plaster casts, Parthenon replicas, plastic Eiffel Towers, Mona Lisa’s moustache (L.H.O.O.Q, 1919), and Jan van Meegeren’s fabricated Vermeers share a common auxiliary notoriety, lending some credence to conceptual artist Jonathon Keats’s claim that ‘fakes are arguably the most authentic’ modern masterpieces, and ‘forgers are the foremost artists of our age’.115 Piero Manzoni’s Merde d’artiste (1961), art-as-waste’s quintessential parodic expression, remains a curatorial dilemma. Manzoni’s 90 sealed, signed and dated canisters of his own excrement were sold for sums equal to their weight in gold. The build-up of anaerobic bacterial gas is rumoured to have exploded half of the canisters, as Manzoni intended, and to endanger the rest. Cynics contend they contain not shit but plaster. But opening them to find out would destroy their art value. Non-destructive testing on Tate Modern’s ‘Can 004’ proved inconclusive. Merde d’artiste is art’s equivalent of Erwin Schrödinger’s dead-or-alive cat in quantum physics: what matters is the uncertainty of its existence. And perhaps that of viewers, should the shit canister shatter.116 Visual and literary depictions call for no conservation of represented scenes or objects, although they often inspire efforts to protect or restore them (Piranesi’s Rome, Canaletto’s Venice, Monet’s Giverny, Thoreau’s Walden Pond, Constable’s Suffolk, Hardy’s ‘Egdon Heath’). But drawings, paintings and photographs are valued both as works of art in their own right and as records or evocations of valued scenes and structures. Curators and conservators are apt to focus on one of these diverse aims—as art, as verisimilar record, as creative enhancement—to the neglect and detriment of others. For prose and poetry, 115  Beerkens 2007; Keats 2013, 4–5. 116  Milner 2002; Miodownik 2007.

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the choice may depend on whether texts are seen as art forms (calligraphy, handwriting, woodcuts) rather than simply as literature (in infinitely replicable print or digital form). Processual creations. Auto-destructive art stresses evanescent, episodic or lethal metamorphosis but remains essentially material-based, hence conservators’ remit. ‘Even for artifacts meant to decay, conservators can facilitate having them decay the right way.’117 Conservation is integral to its display, controlling the pace of decay and renewing needed components. Deciding how much change can be allowed before the work becomes quite another piece requires balancing pace of change against recognizability. How should Dan Flavin’s fluorescent-light works be redisplayed, after his original standard cherry-red bulbs ceased being manufactured because they were toxic? Should old bulbs be stockpiled for limited future use, or new bulbs of different appearance substituted, or red gels be wrapped around white fluorescent tubes? Storage condemns Flavin’s sculptures to imminent perish; other options relegate them to material perversion.118 Similar dilemmas constrain performance art, which, despite being different on every occasion, must keep some identifiable connection with its initial conception. The deceased Cuban artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s 1990s candy spills—piles of candies individually wrapped in multicoloured cellophane— invited viewers to take and eat pieces on site. Gonzales-Torres mandated that the piles be replenished at stated intervals. Left unclear is whether curatorial additions should replicate the original piles’ size or shape, the cellophane wrappings’ colour ratio or balance, or the candy type and flavour, and whether other candy piles might be displayed elsewhere either simultaneously or serially.119 Auditory kinetic works pose analogous problems. Claes Oldenburg’s Ice bag—Scale C (1971) wheezingly inflated and deflated as if alive. A year later the Whitney Museum of American Art acquired it wholly unaware (as was Oldenburg, who never saw it in action) of its hazardous design flaws. It functioned only briefly and erratically. Meant ‘to tilt back and forth, faulty wiring … caused it to turn in one direction only, … pull[ing] the cap dramatically to one side, [like] a one-legged man trying to walk without crutches. [It] had broken gears, exuded noxious fumes, leaked oil, ripped its own fabric exterior, growled, squeaked, and set itself on fire’. Neither fabricators nor museum conservators could fix it, so Ice bag was consigned to storage until its 2009 117  Wharton & Molotch 2009, 219. 118  Rinehart & Ippolito 2014, 32–33; Gayford 2006. 119  Cherry 2007; Umathum 2011.

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resuscitation—‘we had to restore it’, said conservator Eleanora Nagy, ‘to figure out what it was’. Brought back to life with new 1970s–style machinery, Ice bag now works smoothly—too smoothly, say critics who bemoan the loss of the dysfunctional original parts. But Oldenburg had meant it to work, as in his 1970 film Sort of a commercial for an ice bag (1970), where he impersonated a ‘living’ ice bag ‘moving in a random, lopsided, and undulating manner … and making high- and lowpitched-humming sounds’.120 Contrariwise, Tinguely’s Gismo was not only ‘supposed to look rickety and wobble when it moved, but the roughly welded rods should grate and squeak on un-greased bearings’ as if about to expire, coaxing viewers to identify with it as ‘a living thing’.121 Conservators must maintain and eventually replace Gismo’s defunct machine with an operative, run-down one while sustaining the illusion of non-intervention. Interactive and performative art pose further dilemmas. The cost of longterm upkeep of inherently unstable materials intended to undergo decay and suffer injury, and of replacing worn-out machinery, can be prohibitive. Museums accustomed to major expenditure at the onset of acquisition now incur heavy ongoing charges for remediation and stakeholder outreach well into the future. Uncertainties due to changes in artworks and their enactors and audiences negate fixed criteria of continuity and authenticity. Yet much discourse on contemporary art ignores or minimizes the dislocating forces that distance every work from its initial creation. One flaw is to envision the author’s demise as no impediment to the sanctity of authorial intent, presumably thence fixed in amber. Apart from classic dispute over intent—‘You play Bach your way’, Wanda Landowska reputedly told Pablo Casals, ‘and I’ll play Bach his way’—each generation reinterprets intent. And a creator-performer makes posthumous replication impossible. The Portuguese poet-composer Miguel Azguime’s electroacoustic opera Salt itinerary (1999–2006) is performed each time by Azguime himself. He foresees Salt itinerary presented by others, but no notation can translate Azguime’s unconventional vocal sounds. Similarly, The moon over the river on a spring night, Wang Dong Ling’s 2013 installation of six gigantic calligraphies while Wang dances with his brush to stress his energetic cursive script, is utterly sui generis.122 One need not agree that ‘artworks may only exist while the artists themselves are alive’ to accept that their death transforms how their works are apprehended; art may be partly replicated,

120  Nagy et al. 2011; Lerner 2016, 57–58. 121  Beerkens 1999. 122  Nogueira et al. 2016, 154; Liu et al. 2016, 121–123.

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but—Blade runner (1982) notwithstanding—not yet human beings.123 Another fallacy is to presume a later show with another audience could recapture an original response to an artwork. Too bad that Xu’s and Wang’s replicated events failed ‘to express the ideas that resonated with the original viewers’. If only the museums had acquired the apparatus and video recordings of their first performances!124 But this misses Baxandall’s vital point above: even given an exact replica, the timing and aura of new occasions and audiences necessarily evoke different responses. Weighing the need to preserve for the future against the realities of material and performative change transforms ‘what it means to be a museum, what it means to be an artist, and what it means to be an artwork’, especially when the institution becomes the sole or prime caretaker. ‘The museum itself becomes less a collector of things’, note Wharton and Molotch, ‘and more a mechanism of collaboration and an arranger of experiences.’ Conservators have long reshaped artworks’ ongoing life. For installation art their role is both more proactive—helping decide ‘whether replacing unstable components destroys the meaning of the work, or whether the institution should even acquire an installation [at] a high cost of future equipment purchase and media migration’. More exacting yet, Portuguese conservator Hélia Pereira Marçal asks conservators to become participants, learning performance skills to make ‘nuanced decisions’ about future embodiments of artworks. ‘It might seem unimaginable to require conservators to add ethnographic … practices to their already very interdisciplinary and broad skill set’, she concludes, ‘but this is in line with the role of the conservator as a mediator’ with ever more stakeholders.125 It is the exact obverse of how conservators at the Dahlem conference noted above narrowly circumscribed their role 25 years ago. No strict boundaries segregate all these kinds of art. Indeed, many works serve several functions at once, their emphases changing over time. Art’s multifarious purposes resemble those of certain iconic architectural structures. The French scholar Mona Ozouf chronicles the Paris Panthéon’s successive identities as Christian shrine, Enlightenment emblem, icon of national unity and Temple of Humanity. The British historian William St Clair documents the ideological visions that have beset the Parthenon, initially an emblem of Athenian power subsequently accursed by the Byzantines, becoming an Ottoman brothel and military storehouse, a source of plunder by local villagers and foreign antiquaries, and latterly an icon of Greek national pride and 123  Lawson & Cane 2016, 113. 124  Liu et al. 2016, 121, 122. 125  Wharton & Molotch 2009, 218–219; Pereira Marçal 2017, 102–104.

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transalpine neoclassicism. Hence the rationale behind Lord Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon frieze, for ‘it was but a small step from importing incorporeal aesthetic to exporting actual stones’.126 So we become aware that metamorphic change into something rich and strange is not only celebrated in, but also instigated by, imaginative imagery in pictorial depiction and textual description. And these sempiternal arts— drawing and painting, prose and poetry—immortalize alike the creation and the transience of bygone architecture and sculpture, just as they celebrate the Chinese garden that existed only in the mind’s eye. Bibliography Adler, Amy M., ‘Against moral rights’, California Law Review 97 (2009), 263–300. Anonymous, ‘Near faux pas for the Great Sphinx’, International Herald Tribune, 6 February 1980. Anonymous, ‘Artist delights in work’s limited life’, New York Times, 10 May 1982. Anonymous, ‘Modern art exhibit mistaken for trash and thrown away’, Reuters, 27 October 2015. Arendt, Hannah, The human condition (1958), 2nd edition, Chicago 1998. Aso, Noriko, Public properties. Museums in imperial Japan, Durham, NC 2013. Barger, Michelle, ‘Thoughts on replication and the work of Eva Hesse’. Tate Papers 8 (January 2007), online publication: https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/ tate-papers/08/thoughts-on-replication-and-the-work-of-eva-hesse. Barkan, Leonard, Unearthing the past. Archaeology and aesthetics in the making of Renaissance culture, New Haven 1999. Barnes, Julian, England, England, London 1998. Barron, James, ‘Trinity Church is sued for moving a sculpture’, New York Times, 11 April 2017. Bartlett, Christy, James-Henry Holland and Charly Iten, Flickwerk. The aesthetics of mended Japanese ceramics, Münster 2008. Bauman, Zygmunt, Mortality, immortality and other life strategies, Palo Alto 1992. Baxandall, Michael, Patterns of intention. On the historical explanation of pictures, New Haven 1985. Beck, James, with Michael Daley, Art restoration. The culture, the business, and the scandal, New York 1996.

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Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Goethe. Conversations and encounters, David Luke and Robert Pick (eds.), Washington, DC, 1966. Graham-Dixon, Andrew, Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, London 2008. Grimes, William, ‘Gustav Metzger, artist and provocateur, dies at 90’, New York Times, 12 March 2017. Guttormsen, Torgrim Sneve, and Knut Fageraas, ‘The social production of “attractive authenticity” at the World Heritage site of Røros, Norway’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 17 (2011), no. 5, 442–462. Hardy, Thomas, The return of the native (1878), New York 2012. Hardy, Thomas, Jude the obscure (1895), Oxford 1998. Haskell, Francis, and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the antique. The lure of classical sculpture 1500–1900, New Haven 1981. Haydon, Benjamin Robert, Diary, Cambridge, MA 1960. Hedrick, Charles W., Jr., History and silence. Purge and rehabilitation of memory in late antiquity, Austin 2000. Hensbergen, Gijs van, Guernica. The biography of a twentieth-century icon, London 2004. Hirst, Damien, Treasures from the wreck of the unbelievable, London 2017. Hochfield, Sylvia, ‘Sticks and stones and lemon cough drops. From Joseph Beuys to Eva Hesse to Zoe Leonard’, ARTnews 101 (2002), 116–123. Hoge, Warren, ‘Art imitates life, perhaps too closely’, New York Times, 20 October 2001. Holmes, Bobbi, ‘Lake Havasu City history’, Havasu Magazine (4 December 2009). Huyghe, René, ‘The Louvre Museum and the problem of cleaning old pictures’, Museum International 3 (1950), 191–206. Imhoff, Hans-Christoff von, ‘Aspects of the development of the conservator/restorer’s profession since World War II’, e-Conservation Magazine 8 (February 2009). James, Henry, The tragic muse (1890), London 1921. James, William, The principles of psychology, New York 1890. Jenkins, Tiffany, Keeping their marbles. How the treasures of the past ended up in museums … and why they should stay there, Oxford 2016. Jones, Jonathan, ‘Ghost world’, Guardian [London], 26 September 2003. Jones, Michael, ‘Røros as a World Heritage site’, in: Shaping the Land, Acta Geographica Trondheim series A No. 27 (1998), no. 1, 33–50. Juniper, Andrew, Wabi sabi. The Japanese art of impermanence, North Clarendon, VT 2011. Kammen, Michael, Visual shock. A history of art controversies in American culture, New York 2006. Karczewska, Malgorzata, ‘Cuius regio, eius memoria. World War I memorials in the territory of former East Prussia, now within Poland’, in: Józef Niżnik (ed.), Twentieth century wars in European memory, Frankfurt 2012, 231–249.

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Katz, Vincent, ‘A genteel iconoclasm’, Tate Etc. 8 (Autumn 2006), online publication: https://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/genteel-iconoclasm. Keats, Jonathon, Forged. Why fakes are the greatest art of our age, Oxford 2013. Kemp, Martin, ‘Looking at Leonardo’s Last Supper’, in: Peter Booth, Leslie Carlyle, Maurice Davies, Christine Leback Sitwill, Nicola Kalinsky, Anna Southall, Victoria Todd and Joyce Townshend (eds.), Appearance, opinion, change. Evaluating the look of paintings, London 1990, 14–21. Kerr, Robert, His Excellency the ambassador extraordinary, London 1879. Knight, Emma Louise, ‘The Kwakwaka’wakw potlatch collection and its many social contexts. Constructing a collection’s object biography’, University of Toronto 2013 (Master’s thesis). Kolbert, Elizabeth, ‘The lost world (Annals of extinction, part two)’, The New Yorker (15/30 October 2013), 48–56. Kreyling, Christine, Wesley Paine, Charles W. Warterfield and Susan Ford Wiltshire, Classical Nashville. Athens of the South, Nashville 1996. Krumbein, Wolfgang E., Peter Brimblecombe, Denis E. Cosgrove and Sarah Staniforth (eds.), Durability and change. The science, responsibility, and cost of sustaining cultural heritage [Dahlem, Berlin, 1992], London 1994. Lacey, Marc, ‘A red-letter day, and a party to match’, New York Times, 12 October 2011. Larsen, Knut Einar (ed.), Nara conference on authenticity in relation to the World Heritage Convention. Proceedings, Paris 1995. Latour, Bruno, and Adam Lowe, ‘The migration of the aura, or how to explore the original through its facsimiles’, in: Thomas Bartscherer and Roderick Coover (eds.), Switching codes. Thinking through new technologies in the humanities and the arts, Chicago 2011, 275–297. Lawson, Louise, and Simon Cane, ‘Do conservators dream of electric sheep? Replicas and replication’, Studies in Conservation 61 (2016), suppl. 2, 109–113. Layard, Austen H., Discoveries among the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, London 1853. Leader, Darian, Stealing the Mona Lisa. What art stops us from seeing, London 2002. Learner, Tom, ‘The object in transition: A cross disciplinary conference on the preservation and study of modern and contemporary art’, CeROArt—Conservation, exposition, restauration d’objets d’arts 2 (2008), online publication: https://journals .openedition.org/ceroart/425. Le Corbusier, The city of tomorrow and its planning (1925), London 1929. Le Corbusier, When the cathedrals were white (1937), New York 1964. Ledderose, Lothar, Mi Fu and the classical tradition of Chinese calligraphy, Princeton 1979. Lenz, Siegfried, The heritage (1978), New York 1981.

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Leonard, Mark (ed.), Personal viewpoints. Thoughts about paintings conservation, Los Angeles 2003. Lerner, Ben, ‘The custodians. How the Whitney is transforming the art of museum conservation’, The New Yorker (8 January 2016), 50–59. Levy, Leon, with Eugene Linden, The mind of Wall Street, New York 2002. Li, Ho, ‘An arrowhead from the ancient battlefield of Ch’ang-p’ing’, Kenyon Review New Series 6 (Spring 1984), no. 2, 72–73. Lichfield, John, ‘Pierre Pinoncelli: This man is not an artist’, Independent [London], 13 February 2006. Liu, Angela Wai-sum, Athena Kin-kam Wong and Evita So Yeung, ‘Challenges and approaches in conserving New Ink Art’, Studies in Conservation 61 (2016), suppl. 2, 120–125. Lowenthal, David, ‘Omens from the Mediterranean. Conservation nostrums in Mare Nostrum’, Studies in Conservation 55 (2010), 231–241. Lowenthal, David, The past is a foreign country—revisited, Cambridge, UK 2015. Luke, Ben, ‘Rubbish! Modern art dumped as trash for exhibition Art Bin’, Evening Standard [London], 28 January 2010. Malraux, André, The voices of silence, New York 1953. Mankowitz, Wolf, Wedgwood, London 1953. Mannheim, Patrick, Dreaming with his eyes open. A life of Diego Rivera, Berkeley 1998. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels, The Communist manifesto, London 1848. Meiss, Millard, ‘The aesthetic and historical aspects of the presentation of damaged pictures’ (1963), in: David Bomford and Mark Leonard (eds.), Issues in the conservation of paintings, Los Angeles 2004, 370–390. Metzger, Gustav, Auto-destructive art, London 1965. Milner, Catherine, ‘The Tate values excrement more highly than gold’, Telegraph [London], 30 June 2002. Miodownik, Mark, ‘Is modern art sh!t?’ Materials Today 10 (June 2007), no. 6, 6. Moomaw, Kate, ‘Collecting participatory art at the Denver Art Museum’, Studies in Conservation 61 (2016), suppl. 2, 130–136. Moore, Brian, The great Victorian collection, London 1975. Morris, William, ‘Manifesto of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings’ (1877), in: Nicholas Stanley Price, Mansfield Kirby Talley and Alexandra Melluco Vaccaro (eds.), Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage, Los Angeles 1996, 319–321. Mote, Frederick W., ‘A millennium of Chinese urban history. Form, time, and space concepts in Soochow’, Rice University Studies 59 (1973), no. 4, 35–66. Muller, Jeffrey M., ‘Rubens’s theory and practice of the imitation of art’, Art Bulletin 64 (1982), 229–247.

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Muschamp, Herb, ‘After the decay of decay, a new modernity’, New York Times, 7 February 2004. Nagy, Eleonora, Steven Berger, Ken Parker, Vladimir Schuster, Julian Miller, Jan Girard and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro (eds.), ‘Treatment of Claes Oldenburg’s Ice Bag—Scale C, an interdisciplinary approach’, Modern Materials and Contemporary Art, ICOM Committee for Conservation, 16th triennial conference, Lisbon 2011. Nicolson, Harold, ‘Bombing works of art’, Spectator [London], 25 February 1944. Noble, Louis Legrand, The life and works of Thomas Cole (1853), Cambridge, MA 1964. Nogueira, Andreia, Rita Macedo and Isabel Pires. ‘Where contemporary art and contemporary music preservation practices meet. The case of Salt Itinerary’, Studies in Conservation 61 (2016), suppl. 2, 153–159. O’Reilly, Emily, Rose Miller and Judit Bodor, ‘Curation, conservation, and the artist in Silent Explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art’, Studies in Conservation 61 (2016), suppl. 2, 167–173. Owen, Stephen, Remembrances. The experience of the past in classical Chinese literature, Cambridge, MA 1986. Ozouf, Mona, ‘Le Panthéon’, in: Pierre Nora, comp., Les lieux de mémoire, vol. 1, Paris 1984, 139–166. Parezo, Nancy J., Navajo sandpainting. From religious act to commercial art, Tucson 1983. Pereira Marçal, Hélia, ‘Conservation in an era of participation’, Journal of the Institute of Conservation (2017), 97–104. Phillips, Charles, ‘Greenfield’s changing past’, History News 37 (1982), no. 11, 8–14. Pietrangeli, Carlo, Michael Hirst, Gianluigi Colalucci, Fabrizio Mancinelli, John Shearman, Matthias Winner Edward Maeder, Nazzareno Gabrielli, Piernicola Pagliari and Pierluigi De Vecchi, The Sistine Chapel. A glorious restoration, New York 1994. Piper, John, ‘Pleasing decay’ (1947), in: Buildings and prospects, London 1948, 89–116. Podany, Jerry, email to David Lowenthal, 17 December 2017. Pogue, David, ‘The lessons of 10 years of talking tech’, New York Times, 24 November 2010. Pretzer, William S., (ed.), Working at inventing. Thomas A. Edison and the Menlo Park experience (1989), Baltimore 2002. Proust, Marcel, Remembrance of things past (1913–1927), London 1983. Raez, Imogen, ‘Cornelia Parker’s Thirty Pieces of Silver’, in: Jennifer Walden (ed.), Art and destruction, Newcastle upon Tyne 2013, 45–56. Rich, Motoko, ‘Japan’s sand museum, ephemeral treasures and indelible memories’, New York Times, 11 April 2017. Richardson, John, ‘Crimes against the Cubists’, New York Review of Books, 16 June 1983, 32–34.

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Chapter 2

The Present, the Past, and the Material Object Paul Eggert To edit is to present, to make the text of a work present for readers. Something so simple in principle ought to be straightforward in practice, but it is not. A partially documented past and the variousness of the present are tricky to keep in a sensible relation to one another. This is true as much for conservators of art objects and historic buildings as it is for scholarly editors of literary works and musicologists editing musical scores. It is a matter of articulating, before one can begin sensibly to balance, the competing demands of the past and the present in the moment that the editor or conservator intervenes between them. The following poem nicely localizes the general problem. Published in 1902 in a volume entitled Poems of the past and the present, ‘The Self Unseeing’ is deceptively simple. It was written by a man in his early sixties, Thomas Hardy, famously the author of the novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The poem is about returning to his childhood home, a large thatched cottage at Higher Bockhampton in Dorset in the southwest of England. Hardy’s father had been a successful builder locally; but, as he worked with his hands, he could not be considered a gentleman. Hardy’s mother was determined the son would do better. So, in due course, the young Hardy became an architect and worked in London; as a professional, he rose in the world. This younger Hardy, the architect, specialized for a time in the restoration of medieval churches. The later and much better-known Hardy—the novelist and poet—ceaselessly returned in imagination and spirit to the scenes of his childhood and young manhood. He breathed deeply of the air of the past. He was at his most alive there. But he refused the tempting consolations of nostalgia and sentimentality as delusions. This refusal of easy familiarity is evident in the poem. Its attempt to bring the past into the present is riddled with paradox, even though at first reading the situation seems simpler than that: The Self-Unseeing Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in.

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She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. Childlike, I danced in a dream; Blessings emblazoned that day; Everything glowed with a dream; Yet we were looking away!1 The sense of place is wonderfully firm. It is registered with the firm trochaic beat on the opening word ‘Here’—‘Here is the ancient floor’—a confident note repeated at the beginning of the third line. Security of place in the old family home prompts the experience of the past. But time is nowhere near as obliging as place. Rather, it shifts, extends, withdraws, as the gaze of the visitor-poet to his old home wanders across the scene, which becomes both present and past simultaneously. There is, there can be, the poem seems to say, no clear temporal differentiation since the past is only available in the present. The quandary is apparent in the very first line where we read that ancientness ‘is’: ‘Here is the ancient floor’. This is odd. The floor that is ‘footworn and hollowed and thin’ is in that condition in the poem’s present. On the other hand, the door is now a ‘former door’, but is it formerness in the present or in the past? Chronology half falls into place, but not quite, when, in the following line, it is troubled by this dislocating locution: ‘Here was the former door / Where the dead feet walked in’. It is a chastening, grim, almost horrible thought. They were not dead as they walked in, but yet they are now; and the metonymy (feet standing in for people) is dehumanizing, suggesting that a stoic refusal of connection to the dead is happening here. Coarsening the expression in this way evidently helps the poet, in the act of writing, to steady himself so as to keep at bay an unbidden wave of sentimentality that might otherwise cloud his vision. Despite this instinctive precaution, the emotionally irruptive threat of the past remains in place, and the present courts its return. As we soon see in the next stanza, defended against or not, the past will not be walled in, even if entry to it has to be earned. In this second stanza, we are granted the simplicity of the ordinary past tense, with the domestic scene of memory now uncomplicatedly in the past. It is a welcome and touching release after the sombreness of the first stanza: 1  Hynes 1982–1995, vol. 1, 206. The original publication was in Hardy 1902.

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She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. Hardy’s father, in fact, was an amateur musician. He played at weddings and harvest festivals as part of a village group in a still essentially pre-industrial Dorset to which the modernizing railway system had not reached until Hardy, who was born in 1840, turned seven. Hardy’s own roots were firmly in that past. He returned repeatedly to it for the subject matter of his novels and poems. When he gave up architecture in London and returned to live in Dorset, he took up his abode in a modern house that he had designed himself: this one had plans and was of the Victorian present.2 It served as his staging post for his forays into the past of Wessex, the locale he invented and gradually elaborated in his novels based on Dorset and its surrounding counties. Hardy had already begun cultivating antiquarian interests, reading Hutchins’s History and antiquities of the county of Dorset in the late 1870s. When he moved back to Dorset permanently in 1883, he joined the local antiquarian club, served on the governing board of the Dorset County Museum, and read systematically through the Dorset County Chronicle, starting at 1826. Then, in autumn 1888, he undertook a walking tour to explore the countryside where Tess of the D’Urbervilles would be set. For that novel, surface detail and local colour would have sufficed for his urban readers, but Hardy had too great a respect for the truth and its disconcerting paradoxes to take the shortcut. He knew well that the old way of rural living was fast slipping away, but, doggedly, Hardy would not give in to the allure of nostalgia, to merely subjective yearnings for that past or to a watery Romanticism about the beauties of a capital-N Nature in Dorset. In his living and in his imagination he was obliged to shuttle continually between a still-potent past and the unignorable present. As a young architect responsible for making decisions about the repair and restoration of medieval church buildings, he would have had in mind the self-conscious historicizing that such influential figures as Pugin, Scott, Butterfield, and Street imposed in England and Viollet-le-Duc in France.3 But Hardy was sceptical of its benefits 2  For biographical matters, see Millgate 2004. For his interest in restoration, see Hardy 1906, Hardy 1927, and Hardy 1962, 76–79. 3  Architects George Gilbert Scott (1811–1878), Augustus W. N. Pugin (1812–1852), William Butterfield (1814–1900), and George Edmund Street (1824–1881). Pugin was the chief theorist of the Gothic Revival in England, especially in his Contrast. Or, a parallel between the noble edifices of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and similar buildings of the present day,

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and in later years would become scathing about its effects. He must have lived the modern quandary of the simultaneous retrievability and irretrievability of the past, one that extends down to us today. The poem is just a case in small of the general condition to which he was acutely sensitized. Despite its blessed simplicity, the poem reveals some sophisticated lessons. The already noted use of the simple past tense in the second stanza is complicated in its second and fourth lines by the use of verbs in the present-continuous tense—‘Smiling’, ‘Bowing’—which refuse to remain in the past. At first they seem to reach forward into the present of observation, out of the past: but that illusion of their continuing presence, or present-ness, cannot survive as the last stanza pulls back from the intense recollection of that scene. It retreats to a more generalizing description where the past is, reluctantly, put back in its bottle: Childlike, I danced in a dream; Blessings emblazoned that day; Everything glowed with a gleam; Yet we were looking away! The distinct end-of-line pauses enacted through their semicolons counteract the potential for a comforting scene, a consoling flow of recollection, giving us instead a series of sensitized yet almost staccato realizations. The poem’s conclusion, ‘Yet we were looking away!’, marks a sobering retreat into reflection in the present. But the awareness itself, although of the present, is paradoxically about an entrapment in the past. Then, in the past, one could have the moment but could not know its meaning; now, in the present, one can know the meaning but cannot have the moment. It is a double helix of choice, like flypaper on which we are stuck and cannot break free. The past refuses to remain there. It haunts a present that cannot help but gravitate towards it. This is all within the force field of the human where pure subjectivity is not good enough but pure objectivity is not available. We are implicated in the past; it is implicated in us, now. That, I take it, is what the poem, at its most general, is saying. At the end of the day it is the object or the building, or perhaps the landscape, which carries one back. In other words, materiality—materiality construed in its widest shewing the present decay of taste (1836) and An apology for the revival of Christian architecture in England (1843). Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879) wrote the encyclopedic Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle. It appeared in ten volumes (1854–1868).

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sense—is the lifeline of the past. But it requires agency—human agency— to activate it. There are ways, and ways, of doing it. There are traps for young players. The mute testimony of objects can be redeemed by our mode of address to them. At its best, conservation, communicated by curation, is one of those modes. None of them is straightforward or unproblematic. Normally we assume that a poem, as an intangible work, may simultaneously take variant forms—versions—without affecting its identity. In fact, this one was originally called in manuscript ‘Unregarding’ before Hardy changed the title so felicitously, alliteratively, and purposefully to ‘The Self-Unseeing’. In contrast, and again traditionally at least, we tend to think that tangible artworks or buildings have a fixed physical identity, that the work is the object. As an architect and church restorer faced with the realities of buildings’ decay, Hardy knew that their identity was not stable. Similarly, in the poem, he cannot help registering the fact, as he returns to his childhood home, that a door, once in this position, has since been filled in. As Stewart Brand has eloquently reminded us, no house remains the same. All long-lived buildings yield to the comfort and necessities of their inhabitants. All architectural forms, especially folk forms, are in a slow process of change.4 Important public buildings decay, are repaired or not; a fortunate few are restored or adapted to new uses. Paintings darken with age, are damaged, remounted, repaired. Their earlier versions may be revealed by X-radiography and other techniques. Their identity is thus never fixed, just as Hardy’s younger self both is and is not him, now, in the moment of writing the poem. Tangible and intangible works share this fate. Performance art, oral literature, dance, and drama have especially fluid identities and yet may be apprehended as the same work, that is, up to the point where the ascription of sameness becomes impracticable or unproductive to maintain. These conclusions are what I now wish to tease out. They are what link conservation, curation, and scholarly editing. I invite readers to observe the naive or first-time editor at work. Let us say that the editor is male. He is editing a play of Shakespeare’s. He finds the first textual difference between two copies of the same early edition, the result of stoppress printing. And then he finds differences between two early editions. He is aware that his publisher requires him to come up with a single reading text, not multiple ones. Let us say that he, as an experienced reader and a good literary critic, prefers one variant reading to the other because, say, it nicely completes the line as a perfect iambic pentameter. He accepts the missing syllable into 4  Brand 1997.

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his reading text and the line now scans. He has judged the textual variants aesthetically, according to poetic form. So far, so good. His problem starts, however, when he strikes the second one, and then the third, until, somewhat aghast at the Pandora’s box he has opened, he finds there are some hundreds of them. Will his aesthetic sense that he has privileged in his first decision hold him in good stead throughout? Unless he is another Dr Johnson it will not.5 It is not his taste that readers have come to the edition to engage with. So he will soon be slipping and sliding as he tries to justify accepting this variant reading from the other edition but not those other few on the same page. To avoid this fate he brings bibliographic method to bear. He engages in very close study of the type and the flatbed printing and gathering of sheets in these early seventeenth-century editions. What is odd about the typesetting? Why is it cramped here but loose there? Why is the same word spelled in different ways? Why, in these early editions, do some characters exit the stage before they have made their entrance?6 Because Shakespeare’s original manuscripts are not extant, our editor tries to detect the sequence of typesetting stints and the habits of spelling of the compositors in this period before English spelling had become regular. To the extent that he can do it, he may be able to discount those habits so as to reveal some original features of Shakespeare’s lost manuscript. Our editor still has to assess the larger changes in wording among the early editions and extant copies. In doing so, he appeals continually to the evidence their variant versions reveal of how they were transmitted from manuscript to stage to print and which parties may have affected this passage. By these means and others, bibliography and stage history rationally limit his aesthetic preferences. But he is in no doubt about his aim, which is to approximate as nearly as he can the state of the text as it left the author’s hands. Therein lies its authenticity and thus, for him, its identity. The methodology and the nascent theory that I have been describing correspond to the situation up until the 1980s. A single reading text that would most truly present the work was the assumed requirement. Publishers wanted it, general readers wanted it, stage directors and interpreting literary critics wanted it so they could get on with their different jobs more confidently. The work was assumed to be an ideal object hovering behind the early editions. Its text 5  Samuel Johnson (and George Steevens) famously edited the works of Shakespeare in 1765. 6  Standard textbooks for postgraduate-level textual studies classes provide the answers, e.g., Kelemen 2009 and Greetham 1992. We have to imagine our first-time editor as having embarked on a steep learning curve here.

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could, in theory at least, be approximated more closely and reliably than before because of the more or less scientific bibliographic methods brought to bear on revealing and analysing the textual variation. But then in the 1980s the tide shifted, not just in editorial theory but in musicology, archaeological theory, and ultimately in building and fine-art conservation. Was it obvious any longer that, say, faced with the ruin of a magnificent building like the Parthenon, one would automatically aim, if one were given the chance, to restore it to its original form or originating moment as best one could? What of its two-and-a-half thousand years of worship, adaptation, military occupation, and other changes since? Was the evidence of those moments to be automatically effaced in favour of the original one? In the literary sphere, was it obvious any longer that the Shakespeare editor should efface, rather than preserve and editorially prefer, the evidence of those stage practices that had likely led to alteration in the lost manuscript sources of the widely variant early editions? And why exactly was Shakespeare-as-author the authenticating source rather than contemporaneous stage practice itself? His so-called ‘bad’ quartos, thought by previous editors to have been cobbled together for sale by actors anxious to make a few shillings, had been treated with suspicion as likely to be confusing and misleading. But if these memorial reconstructions were closer to the stagings that the actors had actually appeared in, were they not a better report of that stage practice? Would it not be better to reprint them, errors and all, rather than continue to draw on the ‘good’ quartos and the famous First Folio in an eclectic mixture, as had been the editorial norm?7 This summary shows that the source of authenticity that the editor or conservator might appeal to in making decisions was shifting. So was the nature of the work’s identity, which was no longer considered a reflection of some ideal. This was inevitable once the audience or the readership or the viewership was found to be not just relevant to, but actually constitutive of, the work. The Rembrandt painting or the Greek vase or the Shakespeare play was not identical with the object on the wall, or in the museum, or on stage, or as reported in this copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Rather there was, in each case as well, a transaction, some equivalent of a speech-act perhaps, or a phenomenological realization of the work on the part of the viewer or reader. That involvement formed part of the life of the work across time. This was additional to the work’s history of early composition or design or making, its revision and production, and then its history of editing or conservation, all 7  This was the aim of the Shakespearean Originals. First Editions series, edited by Holderness & Loughrey. See, for example, their 1992 edition of Hamlet, and De Grazia & Stallybrass 1993. For a reply, see Eggert 2009, chap. 7.

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of which interventions formed part of, as they also informed, that reception history. Works were always already in process. To think of them as static products, unquestioned in their objecthood, was to misrepresent their conditioned existence. That, in summary, was the breakthrough, or breakout, that we saw amongst the theorists and the more radical practitioners in the late 1980s and 1990s, the ongoing effects of which we have been working our way through until this day.8 The new realization, ironically enough, echoed John Ruskin’s in 1849. He had railed against the nineteenth-century vogue of restoring the medieval churches in England: [T]he word restoration … means the most total destruction which a building can suffer … a destruction with false description of the thing destroyed [i.e., that it is literally a restoration]…. [I]t is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture…. [T]hat spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled…. Do not then let us talk of restoration. The thing is a Lie from beginning to end.9 Of the buildings, he went on to declare: ‘We have no right whatever to touch them. They are not ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead still have their right in them.’ The walls ‘that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity’ only gradually acquire their living value—what he called ‘that golden stain of time’.10 To detach the work from its idealist grounding in the absent architect-author is therefore not necessarily to remove the basis of its identity. To think of the building or monument as a work unfolding over time rather than a static three-dimensional object is to recognize that its meanings are not fully determined in advance by builder or architect. They are also assigned by those who come into contact with the object. Semiotic appeals to meaning will be 8  For the shift in editorial theory, see, e.g., McGann 1985, McKenzie 1986, Shillingsburg 1986 and 1991, and Cohen 1991. For musicology, see, e.g., Goehr 1992 and Taruskin 1995 (a collection of previously published essays). Further commentary on the new musicology movement of the 1980s may be found in the writings of Joseph Kerman, Lawrence Kramer, Gary Tomlinson, Caroline Abbate, Roger Parker, Maynard Solomon, Michael Talbot, and Reinhard Strohm. For conservation, curation, and historic-house curation, see, e.g., Ramsey-Jolicoeur & Wainwright 1990, Broadbent 1986 and 1997. 9  Ruskin 1910, 353–358. 10  Ruskin 1910, 358, 339, 340.

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embedded in conventions of reading architecture, in the functions of buildings within broader circulating discourses, and they will be assigned variously and change over time. In other words, the building-as-work does not stay identical with itself. Conservators’ new acceptance of the authority of history cast further doubt over the old aesthetic ground for decision-making and the longstanding assumption about the objectivity of the work.11 These two bedfellows, long in uneasy alliance with one another, were now granted their divorce. But there remained—there remains—a problem. If the grounds of identity of works are expanded, if every stage of a work’s history is to be valued, if every generation’s rights in the work are to be respected, if every adaptation of it serves as historical evidence of that work-in-process, then what ground does the editor-conservator now have for changing anything? A hundred years after the restorations Ruskin was protesting, and that Hardy was also unhappy with, Victorian additions to the medieval churches now take their place in the long history of adaptation of those same buildings. They were originally an irruptive response to the building’s history, but who would remove them now?12 So also in literary studies. Scholarly editors realized that, for instance, the version of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Sons and lovers that nearly everyone from the 1960s until the 1980s read at school or university was actually an abridgement by a publisher’s gifted editor, Edward Garnett. The young Lawrence, grateful the abridgement had been done for him so that the novel could be published and he could be paid, revised the proofs of the abridgement. Generations of readers who had engaged with the novel had their right in the abridgement that they had read, and legions of literary critics wrote impressive and sensitized essays on the abridgement, assuming it to be the whole thing. Yet surely there should be grounds for restoring the version he originally wrote, for insisting on its primacy?13 Therein lay the new dilemma, which is still with us today. What firm ground can editors or conservators appeal to, if they believe in their heart of hearts that this thing needs altering? In their decision-making they do not want to be convicted of inconsistency. If they flip-flop as they make their hundreds of decisions about the words and punctuation of the new reading text or about 11  See, for instance, the discussion of the restoration of the country house Uppark in chap. 3 of Eggert 2009. 12  See Pevsner 1969 and 1976. 13  See Lawrence 1992 for editors Helen Baron and Carl Baron’s solution in Cambridge University Press’s Cambridge edition of the works of D. H. Lawrence series. They return to the longer version for their copy-text but incorporate into it Lawrence’s revisions of the abridgement’s proofs—a debatable approach.

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cleaning these passages but not those in a darkened or damaged painting, their readers and viewers will be ill served since they will not know how to read what the editors and conservators have done. The edition-as-work or the object-as-work will have become illegible. A more general model of the work is clearly needed, one that will acknowledge what has been learnt since the 1980s and that will, coherently, afford scope and justification for what conservators and editors feel the need to do now. To achieve this, I have argued elsewhere14 that we first need to distinguish, more firmly than the old idealist and objectivist assumptions required us to do, between the material form and the meanings it acquires—in the literary context, between the dimensions of document and text. They are forever locked together: each needs the other to secure its linked but different identity. They are in a negative dialectical relationship (after Theodor Adorno), one that unfolds over time rather than offering the work that emerges from the dialectic a transcendent status.15 There can be no text without document, but paper and ink do not become, for readers, a document until they begin to raise meaning from it. Once the meanings (the textual dimension) are acknowledged as relevant to the editorial purview, then the reader who realizes those meanings becomes—ineluctably, unavoidably—part of the equation. In this process of becoming, the edition runs parallel to conservation and curation. Understood as a single continuous activity, the edition’s contents (reading text, apparatus, textual essay, and commentary and explanatory notes) document and support one another. In effect, they argue one another’s case. Together they present the work to the reader. Curation and conservation are less intertwined. Their disciplinary bases are different and there can be tensions between the two; but the two fields are not completely separable in practice. This is because they must address one another’s findings to ascertain the viable argument (object and interpretation) that the exhibition presents to the visitor. The legibility of the object-as-work depends on this successful act of communication, this transaction, with the viewer. Because the work is completed, is realized, in the act of viewing, the conservation cannot be considered only as an act of homage to its maker, or as being in the service of some transcendent ideal conception of the object. Neither conservation nor curation can work in ignorance of this fact. Although object-directed in its material- and digital-science methodologies, conservation is ultimately in the service of the object’s viewership, both present and future. Curation draws out the object’s meanings, in display texts and 14  Eggert 2009. 15  Adorno 1973 (originally published in German in 1966).

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catalogues, by bringing to bear those contexts of interpretation currently deemed appropriate. Curation articulates the conservation. Together they present the work in its newly conserved state. The conditions of doing so are enabled but also constrained by available resources and current understandings. Thus the act of presenting the work implicitly envisages future, different arguments: new states of the work yet to come. I am now using the term ‘work’ where ‘object’ might have been expected. This is because it is the work-model that matters here. In my own field I have come to think of scholarly editions as embodied arguments about the constitution of the literary work. That is to say, editions are arguments in respect of something (typically original manuscripts or early editions carrying versions of the work) aimed at some contemporary audience. Editorial interventions in the texts of those versions are normally done with great pains and within a tradition that renders them legible. They are done for a purpose. A new or altered material object is created—the new edition—and it takes up its place in the long history of the work. The scholarly edition cannot, as we may mistakenly assume it does, stand in some Olympian position above or outside of that history. It cannot since it is subject to the same negative dialectic as every other edition. The new edition, aimed at an audience, enables the work to proceed into future decades—only, editors hope, in a better-informed way than before. The peculiar privilege and responsibility that editors and conservators share is to influence the terms of that transaction both through alteration and through curatorial or editorial explanation. Based on thorough research, a new edition or a new conservation procedure brings new information from the work’s history of documentary-textual or material-textual interchanges to bear. The conservator or editor proposes and then embodies a new state of the work. The proposed argument must be able to withstand the usual disciplinary tests, with their many sharp edges. Reviewers and commentators soon tell us if we get it wrong. And there is always the chance of a latter-day Ruskin or James Beck or John Kidd lying in wait just around the corner. As we work, he is, we fear, already breathing down our necks.16 When the conservator alters the fine-arts or decorative object, the alteration may not be fully reversible, even if that is the hope. Historic-building conservation is always in that predicament since the safety and other needs of modern visitors have to be literally built into the conservation. Adjustments may be made later, but there is no going back to a moment that has passed. I think of 16  See Beck 1993 for his campaign against the recent ‘restoration’ of the Sistine Chapel; see Kidd 1995 for his attack on Hans Walter Gabler’s synoptic-text edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses and Gabler 1996 for his reply.

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these forms of conservation as more heroic than mine. As a scholarly editor, I aim to alter, for the better, the terms and conditions under which the literary work is encountered: I aim to extend its fruitful life by so doing. I do this in the knowledge that, whatever the shortcomings of my edition, at least I will not have altered the original manuscripts, typescripts, proofs, or early rare editions upon which I draw, or at least, if I have done so, only in microscopic ways. This distinction between conservation and scholarly editing must be acknowledged of course; but it does not alter the fundamental parallel between them. They share a need for a model of the work to which both may appeal in justifying their interventions into its material condition or linguistic text. That model needs to acknowledge the ongoing life of the work, which in turn requires an acknowledgement of the role of readers and viewers—even passersby, as Ruskin says—in it. They realize—that is, they make real—the meanings of the work; and those realizations shift over time. It is into that essentially semiotic process of meaning-making that editors and conservators may justifiably intervene. Therefore we need a model of the work that embraces semiotics, that is, works as signs. To understand works as signs, I believe that it is to C. S. Peirce’s semiotics that conservators and editors can most profitably go because this pragmatist philosopher, writing around the turn of the twentieth century, gets us outside the subject–object binary. I cannot pursue Peirce’s account further here for the matter is too complex, except to say that he gives us a fresh account of the meaning of a thing over time: of its unrolling semiosis.17 Editors and conservators take part in this process. By their argued intervention they adjust the relation between material object and meaning. This awareness of meaning-making is, to invoke Hardy’s poem, their moment of self-unseeing now seen. Participating in the work in this agented way, rather than imagining themselves as enjoying an Olympian view above it, editors and conservators take on an ethical obligation to explain what they have done, to leave the viewer or reader in no doubt that what they now offer or present is not the so-called ‘work itself’. They cannot offer this since there is no such thing; that concept is far too vulnerable to survive the sceptical gaze of the post-1980s generation. But the work in its newly conserved state or edited 17  The meaning of the sign, as Peirce portrayed it, is a developing thing. Semiosis is diachronic in his scheme (taking place over time), not synchronic, not the effect of a structuralist system, say of language, at any one moment. The sign functions, according to Peirce, by calling out an interpretant, that is, a meaning that may itself stand as a sign to some later interpretant. Things may take on this relational function of the sign. Thus semiosis, according to Peirce, must be understood as an unrolling process over time. See Eggert 2009, chap. 10.

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version, understood as such, can and does defensibly emerge. Professional intervention to create it therefore must be legible via one means or another if viewers or readers are to understand what they are looking at or reading and where they now stand in relation to it. What then is the work? Borrowing from Immanuel Kant, I prefer to see the work not as the object itself or as a transcendent ideal implied by it but only as a regulative idea.18 Under the name of the work we perform our readings and then, as privileged professionals, give them material form. We should do this according to a coherent argument and using our highest skills. These arguments are interventions into an existing climate of opinion. We address an always already-existing concern to preserve the lifeline to the past that material objects, whether buildings, paintings, or books, afford us. They exist in our embodied world, which feels smaller and has less chronological reach, affords us less footing, if they are destroyed or damaged. We share this concern with potential viewers or readers. The edition or the conservation carries the work forth in embodied form into this shared human world. That is why the editionas-argument or the conservation-as-argument always matters. It is also why an ethics attends the acts of conservation and editing. We must be honest about what we do and claim. We may think of ourselves as standing outside the life of the work, but in truth we cannot help but edit or conserve within it, take our part in its ongoing life. Thus the conservation or the edition will never escape the contexts of its performance or of the capacities of the performer. They will forever inflect the meanings the material object or document acquires through our interventions. We should not despair at this conclusion. Works have lives: all being well, those lives are the conserved object’s passport into the future and they are ours into the past. That passport is not a constant, for works do not stand still. In his own way Hardy registered this over a hundred years ago and in the simplest and most telling of ways. He embraced the discomforting paradox with which we still struggle today. Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W., Negative dialectics (E. B. Ashton, trans.), New York 1973. Beck, James H. with Michael Daley, Art restoration. The culture, the business and the scandal, New York 1993.

18  Guyer & Matthews 2000.

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Brand, Stewart, How buildings learn. What happens after they’re built, New York and London 1994. Broadbent, James, ‘Past imperfect’, Vogue Living (August 1986), 152. Broadbent, James, The Australian colonial house. Architecture and society in New South Wales. 1788–1842, Pott’s Point, nsw 1997. Cohen, Philip G. (ed.), Devils and angels. Textual editing and literary theory, Charlottesville, VA 1991. De Grazia, Margreta and Peter Stallybrass, ‘The materiality of the Shakespearean text’, Shakespeare Quarterly 44 (1993), 255–283. Dorset County Chronicle, Dorchester 1824–1857. Eggert, Paul, Securing the past. Conservation in art, architecture and literature, Cambridge, UK 2009. Gabler, Hans Walter (ed.), James Joyce. Ulysses. A critical and synoptic edition, New York 1984, 3 vols. Gabler, Hans Walter, ‘A response to John Kidd, “Errors of execution in the 1984 Ulysses”’ Studies in the Novel, 22 (1990), 250–256. Goehr, Lydia, The imaginary museum of musical works. An essay in the philosophy of music, Oxford 1992. Greetham, David C., Textual scholarship. An introduction, New York 1992. Guyer, Paul (ed.) and Eric Matthews (trans.), Critique of the power of judgment. The Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge 2000. Hardy, Thomas, Poems of the past and the present, London and New York 1902. Hardy, Thomas, ‘Memories of church restoration’, in: Harold Orel (ed.), Thomas Hardy’s personal writings, London and Melbourne 1967, 203–217. Hardy, Thomas, ‘The ancient cottages of England’, in: Harold Orel (ed.), Thomas Hardy’s personal writings, London and Melbourne 1967, 233–235. Holderness, Graham and Bryan Loughrey (eds.), The tragicall historie of Hamlet prince of Denmark, Shakespearean originals. First editions, London, 1992. Hutchins, John, History and antiquities of the county of Dorset, London 1774, 2 vols. Hynes, Samuel (ed.), The complete poetical works of Thomas Hardy, Oxford 1982–1995, 5 vols. Johnson, Samuel and George Steevens (eds.), The plays of William Shakespeare, London 1765, 8 vols. Kelemen, Erick, Textual editing and criticism. An introduction, New York 2009. Kidd, John, ‘An inquiry into Ulysses. The corrected text’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 82 (1988), 411–584. Lawrence, D. H., Sons and lovers (Helen Baron and Carl Baron, eds.), Cambridge, UK 1992. McGann, Jerome J., ‘“Ulysses” as a postmodern text. The Gabler edition’, Criticism, 27 (1985), 283–305.

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McKenzie, D. F., Bibliography and the sociology of texts. The Panizzi Lectures 1985, London 1986. Millgate, Michael, Thomas Hardy. A biography revisited, Oxford 2004. Pevsner, Nikolaus, Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc. Englishness and Frenchness in the appreciation of Gothic architecture, London 1969. Pevsner, Nikolaus, ‘Foreword’, in: Stephan Tschudi-Madsen, Restoration and anti-restoration. A study in English restoration philosophy, Oslo 1976, 7–8. Pugin, Augustus W. N., Contrasts, or, a parallel between the noble edifices of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and similar buildings of the present day, shewing the present decay of taste, London 1836. Pugin, Augustus W. N., An apology for the revival of Christian architecture in England, London 1843. Ramsay-Jolicoeur, Barbara A. and Ian N. M. Wainwright (eds.), Shared responsibility. Proceedings of a seminar for curators and conservators, Ottawa 1990. Ruskin, John, ‘The lamp of memory’, in: Seven lamps of architecture, 1849, 2nd edition 1880, London 1910. Shillingsburg, Peter L., Scholarly editing in the computer age. Theory and practice, Athens, GA 1986. Shillingsburg, Peter L., ‘Text as matter, concept, and action’, Studies in bibliography, 44 (1991), 31–82. Taruskin, Richard, ‘The pastness of the present and the presence of the past,” in: Text and act. Essays on music and performance, New York and Toronto 1995. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, Paris 1854–1868, 10 vols.

Chapter 3

Engaging with Materials Telling the Whole Story Elizabeth Pye 1

Introduction—Materials Matter

Materials matter! By materials I mean the substances, such as wood, steel, or plaster, from which objects are made, many of which exist in museums in the form of artefacts. I write as an archaeologist and conservator; my immediate and extended family has embraced designers and makers of many kinds: painters, architects, sculptors, shipwrights, bookbinders, and jewellers. So, throughout my life I have been familiar with the materials and processes of making artefacts. In this essay I take as a starting point the fact that materials and making are fascinating and that we should make this fascination explicit. The concept of biography has been used to portray the changes that objects may go through during their existence (their lives), including social encounters and changes in fashion and values, but greater emphasis could be given to material changes too. Material ‘life events’ embracing making, deterioration, repair, discard, and so on, all clearly shape the perception and significance of an object before it enters the museum. Added to these, the stories of objects continue in the museum where more information about their past—such as how, when or where they were made—can be revealed through scientific investigation, and their physical state may be further altered through conservation processes. Despite this potential richness of information, museum communication tends to focus on the cultural rather than material aspects of artefacts. The editors’ statement that ‘the engagement with materials still seems for many an antithesis of an intellectual endeavour’ is important. It may be this attitude which has affected the way artefacts are presented in many museums. In general there is little encouragement of the public to engage with how artefacts were made, how they have been affected through the vicissitudes of time and how they are scientifically investigated and conserved. By contrast, in wider society beyond the museum, there seems to be considerable (and growing) interest in materials and making and in aspects of science—whether through individual craft work or participation in large-scale science projects.

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I argue that this apparent failure of most museums to engage fully with materials may be influenced by some long-standing, and possibly unconscious, attitudes relating to the manual work of making and the science of investigation and conservation, both of which may be seen to belong to a different sphere from the abstract thought and philosophical consideration which more often shape the art historian’s or curator’s engagement with artefacts. In what follows, I attempt to communicate some of the fascinating material transformations which enrich the life stories of objects and enrich our understanding of the past. Using examples largely drawn from the study and conservation of archaeological artefacts, I show that scientific investigation and conservation play a crucial role in study and elucidation of materials and artefacts. I argue that museum displays and exhibitions should include more information on the physical life of artefacts, and I discuss examples of some recent exhibitions which have gone some way to doing this. In my view, by highlighting materials and making, and research through investigation and conservation, museums could provide new interest and inform and engage wider audiences. Note: I use the terms ‘artefact’ or ‘object’ to stand for any kind of item produced through human workmanship—from works of art to domestic equipment. 2

What Can Materials Tell Us?

We all own objects that we cherish because they provide a link with the past. Part of their charm may lie in the evidence of a life well lived, such as a battered but much-loved toy. The concept of biography provides a useful way to consider an object through time.1 Although normally focused on the history of human encounters, aspects of the biography of a physical object can be ‘read’ through exploration of its materials. Although not an artefact in the museum sense, my own home provides an example. It is a sixteenth-century building in Norfolk, UK, which originated as a prosperous merchant’s house but over the centuries declined in status. Eventually it was divided into two farm cottages, then became uninhabitable, and was used to rear farmyard chickens. Subsequently its early date was appreciated, it was rescued and reconstructed, and it is now a valued building officially designated (‘listed’) as national heritage. Its biography is ‘written’ in the materials—the quality of the original carved oak beams and terracotta details attest to its early prosperity; traces of 1  Kopytoff 1986; Marshall & Gosden 1999; Joy 2009.

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the nineteenth-century washhouse built against the Tudor brickwork witness its decline; the building materials of the 1960s indicate its rescue. Now it continues in active use as a family home. It seems that the cultural biography of museum artefacts is normally perceived to begin with the emergence of the finished object, whereas exploration of the materials and processes of making can take the life history further back to include how the object was formed. Furthermore, the biography can be extended into the present to include the continuing active life of the object in the museum and the results of material study. Such engagement with materials brings into focus the intellectual endeavours of scientific investigation and conservation, which enrich artefact biographies through new material discovery. 3

Attitudes to Materials and Processes

Engagement with artefacts and materials assumes different emphasis in different disciplines. In archaeology hypotheses about lives of past peoples may be almost wholly dependent on what can be learned from artefacts themselves, whereas historians and art historians have access also to documentary evidence and anthropologists to observation of social practice. Thus attitudes to the study of artefacts are varied. Writing in Dudley’s edited volume entitled Museum materialities, the anthropologist Howard Morphy reflected on the evolution of material culture studies: Material culture objects were treated in almost too material a way. In order to become part of the data of human societies they had to be made more abstract and reconnected to the societies that produced them. Material culture objects had to rejoin the world of ideas that they were part of and be joined to the people who used them and valued them.2 Here I would like to draw a distinction between ‘materials’ and the term ‘materiality’ used in the title of that book. Confusingly, materiality almost always seems to be used to indicate the intangible characteristics of objects rather than their physical presence. Artefacts certainly have the power to evoke emotional reactions and conjure ideas, so they hold multiple intangible meanings and values.3 But the material aspects of objects, such as what they are made of 2  Morphy 2010, 277. 3  Avrami et al. 2000; De La Torre 2002.

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and how they were made, were also intimately connected to the societies that produced and used them—that is, they are connected to human endeavour, technique and skill. Because of its ambivalent meaning, the term ‘materiality’ has been subject to criticism. In a chapter entitled ‘Materials against materiality’, the anthropologist Tim Ingold commented that: Literature in anthropology and archaeology that deals explicitly with the subjects of materiality and material culture seems to have hardly anything to do with materials. I mean by materials the stuff that things are made of.4 The specifics of the ‘stuff that things are made of’, such as types of pigment, components of metal alloys, or types and sources of clay used in ceramics, often receive little attention in museum displays. Museum labels tend to be rather one-dimensional in that they usually summarize the curatorial view of the cultural significance of the artefact. Although there may be brief mention of what an object is made of, less attention is paid to the methods of making, such as coil building or wheel throwing in ceramics or welding or soldering in metals, and to how these techniques affect the finished artefact. This may be because how things were made has not been considered particularly interesting or relevant, or perhaps because until recently it was assumed that the method of production was relatively common knowledge—after all, many traditional technologies such as painting, wood working, or weaving may appear superficially to have changed very little over time. But how many people today know that there are several different ways of making lace, one of which involves chemicals? How many people know that wrought iron has a grain, a bit like wood, and that the various ways of working it—including forging or rolling—not only change its form but also its properties? How many people now appreciate the characteristic physical properties of different species of wood:5 the flexibility of yew wood (Taxus baccata), exploited for highly effective medieval English long bows;6 the toughness of elm (Ulmus spp), exploited for wheel hubs and chair seats;7 the extreme density of the tropical wood lignum vitae (Guaiacum officinale), exploited for eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury British naval pulley blocks?8 Access to such information on materials 4  Ingold 2011, 20. 5  Hoadley 2000. 6  Strickland & Hardy 2005. 7  Mursell 2009. 8  Clark 1976.

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and processes can profoundly enrich the meanings that visitors can make when encountering objects in museums.9 Is this lack of engagement with the material aspects of museum artefacts because most curators are trained in the traditional way, focused on the humanities, where knowledge of methods and materials is often marginalized? Is it because unprocessed materials are unfamiliar, or so unlike the final product that their potential is difficult to perceive? The phrase ‘raw materials’ conjures up the physicality, the crude and dirty nature of the unrefined stuff that objects are made of (such as iron ore or fresh animal skin). But the ingenuity and skill of makers in the exploitation of the potential and versatility of materials are crucial features of human history and development. Views about materials and making may be affected by the old distinction between ‘hand’ and ‘brain’—that working with materials is manual work and does not require the brain, when in fact we know now that our brains are engaged in everything we do. Manual work tends to be less well-appreciated than ‘intellectual’ work, and this takes us back to the editors’ statement that ‘the engagement with materials still seems for many an antithesis of an intellectual endeavour’. This (outmoded) attitude ignores the increasing understanding of the human brain and human senses. It also ignores the importance of the highly refined empirical and embodied knowledge that an experienced maker draws on when making an intellectual judgement about the work in hand and the almost instinctive cognitive reaction to the materials he or she works with. Tim Ingold commented that there are three points about skill which are … common to the practice of any craft. First, the practitioner operates within a field of forces set up through his or her engagement with the material; secondly, the work does not merely involve the mechanical application of external force but calls for care, judgment and dexterity; and thirdly, the action has a narrative quality, in the sense that every movement, like every line in a story, grows rhythmically out of the one before and lays the groundwork for the next.10 What Ingold describes here are tacit knowledge and skills, so the actions of a skilled and experienced maker are neither necessarily easy to analyse (even by him or herself) nor reduce to a set of neat instructions or descriptions. This, too, marks a difference from ‘academic’ practice, as does the relative lack of

9  Pierce 1994; Hein 1998; Hooper Greenhill 1992; Hooper Greenhill 2013. 10  Ingold 2009, 89.

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academic publication by makers themselves—the product of their work is the finished object rather than a published paper. Also outside many curators’ experience may be the scientific method, which focuses on establishing facts through systematic testing and analysis of results. In 1959 British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow gave a now-famous lecture at the University of Cambridge, entitled ‘The two cultures and the scientific revolution’, in which he described the sciences and the humanities as two separate cultures so far apart that there was little mutual understanding.11 Today, however, scientists are increasingly writing for an interested public in an effort to promote wider understanding of science, and this phenomenon has been considered evidence of a ‘Third Culture’. Even so, more than 50 years later, an Internet search using the phrase ‘The Two Cultures’ reveals that this concept continues to promote discussion and re-evaluation. Although Snow’s lecture contained much more than this, does this notion of two separate cultures still linger and colour attitudes to the potential of the sciences? When the emphasis in museums is on studying and communicating stylistic and iconographic characteristics, and social meaning, does communicating the results of scientific analysis of materials seem irrelevant? 4

New Material Interests, New Audiences

While some of the attitudes discussed above may linger, interest in materials and making is growing. The Victoria and Albert Museum, a leading museum of art and design (established in 1852 as the Museum of Manufacturers), held an exhibition in 2012 entitled The power of making. Its message was that making—the processes of creating artefacts—can be not only pleasurable but a way of thinking, leading to innovation and industrial application. In other words, making is not just part of a nostalgic past but part of the future.12 The exhibition featured an eclectic mix of objects ranging from an ‘anemone’ hat made of textile, straw, banana fibre and feathers, to a surgical implant made by embroidering nickel–titanium alloy wire and intended to encourage the growth of human connective tissue. In the introduction to the accompanying publication, design educator Daniel Charny stated that the ability to make things is bound up with the way in which we have developed as humans but emphasized that today few of us know how things are made:

11  Snow 1959. 12  Charny 2011a.

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Almost all of us can make. It is one of the strongest of human impulses and one of the most significant means of human expression…. Yet despite all the value that exists in making, fewer and fewer people know how to make the things they use, need or want; or even how these things were made.13 In fact most of us are now ‘de-skilled’ in that we no longer have to make in order to survive. In the same volume the anthropologist Daniel Miller agreed: ‘Today an education in the basics of production is needed more than ever. We have become extraordinarily distant from our own material culture.’14 Certainly in the UK, there is a general resurgence of interest in craftsmanship and the traditional crafts and a growing enthusiasm for making objects of all kinds, such as clothes, wooden furniture, and baskets.15 This is encouraged by successful television programmes focused on, for example, sewing or pottery making and by flourishing social crafting groups. It is possible to find a large variety of craft materials through the Internet as well as practical advice in the form of YouTube videos on anything from knitting to building a wooden boat. At the same time, the ‘lowly’ status of ‘craft’ is changing with a new appreciation of ‘hand-made’ and craft traditions. Tapping into this interest, London Craft Week was started in 2014 to provide opportunities for visitors to watch sophisticated craft practices such as tailoring or glass-blowing. Guy Salter, Chairman of London Craft Week, saw the event as ‘a response to a renaissance in the appreciation of creativity and craft; to the role of hand, head, unique skills and true talent’.16 This interest in making is paralleled by a new interest in materials, evident in three ways: makers are encouraged to use new materials in traditional ways, use traditional materials in new ways, or give used materials a new life. So instead of plant materials such as rushes, rattan or willow, baskets are made from telephone wire, polypropylene industrial strapping, or rolled strips of newspaper, and clothes are remade to more fashionable shapes to extend their use. An institution at the forefront of material studies, and collecting and displaying a variety of traditional and non-traditional materials, is the Institute of Making at University College London. ‘A multidisciplinary research club for those interested in the made world: from makers of molecules to makers of buildings, 13  Charny 2011b, 7. 14  Miller 2011, 20. 15  Sennett 2008; Charny 2011a; Gauntlett 2011. 16  Quoted on the website for London Craft Week at www.londoncraftweek.com [accessed 8 April 2017].

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synthetic skin to spacecraft, soup to diamonds, socks to cities’,17 the Institute houses a materials library that is a source of inspiration for makers and designers, where the qualities of a huge range of synthetic and natural materials can be explored. Public events encourage people to learn new skills such as papermaking and to learn about the research projects the Institute supports. The versatility of materials is celebrated through the popular annual Festival of Stuff. At the same time, certainly in the UK, there is new and growing interest and involvement in aspects of science developing alongside the increased involvement in making. There are equally successful television programmes on subjects such as the atom or astronomy, and there is the rapidly growing phenomenon of harnessing this public enthusiasm through Citizen Science projects.18 These enable both scholars and interested individuals to contribute to large-scale scientific endeavours by involving them in gathering data on a scale not possible for a small team. For instance, the website of Zooniverse— ‘the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research’— lists a huge diversity of projects ranging from detection of plastics and marine litter on beaches to transcribing handwritten documents of Shakespeare’s time or counting wild birds.19 Given these new interests in making and in science, museums can offer a huge and exciting array of materials and artefacts, each carrying information, each with a story to tell.20 5

Scientific Investigation: Revealing Materials and Making

Evidence of materials and of past technological sophistication that would fascinate many museum visitors is preserved in different ways within the objects but can be made accessible through scientific investigation and the interpretation of materials specialists.21 Although we can learn much from surface characteristics of artefacts such as shape, form, colour and decoration—in other words, what can be detected through looking at external characteristics— investigation of minute surface detail and internal structure of artefacts can 17  See the website for the Institute of Making at www.instituteofmaking.org.uk [accessed 7 November 2017]. 18  Tweddle et al. 2012. 19  See the website for Zooniverse at www.zooniverse.org [accessed 7 November 2017]. 20  Pearce 1994; Keene 2005. 21  Kingery & Vandiver 1986; True & Podany 1990; Bowman 1991; Freestone 2005; Caple 2006; Baillie 2015.

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often tell us much more. Close examination and technical analysis can help to answer questions such as ‘What was it made of?’, ‘How was it made?’, ‘What did it look like?’, or even ‘How was it used?’ Working techniques may leave characteristic and identifiable features. When shape is achieved by working with a material in liquid form, as in moulding metal or blowing glass, each technique leaves typical features (metal objects may retain ‘seam’ lines indicating joints in a mould, glass may contain bubbles and flow lines). When wood is cut and shaped or the surface of a metal is engraved, each tool leaves characteristic marks.22 It was identification of the shallow scooped tool marks typically left by an adze (an axe-like tool with a curved blade) that helped to confirm that an oak cabinet owned by the J. Paul Getty Museum and once suspected of being a nineteenth-century fake, almost certainly dates from the sixteenth century.23 The fascinating biography of the cabinet was revealed not only through investigation of the tool marks but also through dendrochronological dating (examination of the pattern of growth rings in the oak wood of the cabinet) together with documentary study of a sixteenth-century household inventory. Microscopes are indispensable in examining objects, particularly stereomicroscopes and scanning electron microscopes, which make it possible to explore surface micro-topography in minute detail and to work out how shape and decoration were achieved—they open up a new world of material information.24 Techniques such as X-radiography or CT scanning (computerized tomography)—which most of us may associate only with hospitals—can be applied to objects to see beneath the surface and reveal sub-surface construction, such as repairs to the wood of Egyptian mummy cases concealed under layers of paint.25 Tiny samples taken from the surface of an object can be remarkably informative. Prepared as cross sections and examined under a microscope, they can reveal the stratigraphy of the superimposed materials that make up a painting, revealing the artist’s choices and technique, or the microstructure of metals, indicating the way the metal was heated and hammered or treated to achieve specific effects.26 Using scientific techniques, it may be possible to work out what an object may have looked like originally. Detailed study of the early medieval stone 22  Sands 1997. 23  See the website for A Renaissance cabinet rediscovered, an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from 22 November 2005 to 5 August 2007, at www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/ cabinet [accessed 4 August 2017]. 24  Oddy 1996. 25  Lang & Middleton 2005; O’Connor & Brooks 2007; Strudwick & Dawson 2016. 26  C. Smith 1981; Scott 1992; Caple 2006; Scott 2013.

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sculpture known as the Lichfield Angel, discovered during excavation at Lichfield Cathedral, UK, in 2003 and dating to around 800 ad, revealed traces of painted decoration. The pigment remains were identified as iron oxide red and yellow, lead white, and carbon black, with a possible trace of gold leaf on the angel’s halo. The pigments had been intermixed to produce a range of shades, and this evidence was used to prepare a striking digital virtual restoration showing an educated interpretation of what the carving may have looked like.27 This is particularly intriguing as so little stonework of this period retains its original paint. The Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire hoard, discovered in 2009, provides a powerful example of what can be learned of the sophistication and skill of early makers. Probably dating to the seventh or eighth century ad, the hoard consists of over 3,000 fragments of military equipment, many of exquisite workmanship, made of gold and ornamented with garnets or coloured glass. Analysis of samples of the gold revealed it to be an alloy with silver. To achieve an appearance of pure gold, the silver and other impurities had been dissolved from the surface, leaving a fine layer of gold alone (a sophisticated method known as surface enrichment).28 Intriguingly, analysis of the composition of some of the blue and white glass inlays suggests that they may have been reworked from Roman glass fragments, possibly tesserae (small cubes) from abandoned Roman mosaics (then, of course, already several centuries old).29 In elucidating early technologies, materials specialists may engage in experimental archaeology (a form of reverse engineering). After investigation of materials they form hypotheses about how and why certain effects were achieved, and to test these they attempt to replicate the effect.30 Many discoveries remain to be made about materials and early practices, such as why eighteenthcentury Portuguese gilders used what appeared to be an unnecessarily complicated and time-consuming double-layered gesso (calcium sulphate) ground when gilding the impressive carved and gilded altarpieces typical of many eighteenth-century Portuguese churches (figs. 3.1 and 3.2). Analysis, replication and testing showed that this preparatory ground provided exceptional durability as well as excellent surface qualities for burnishing gold leaf. Documentary research showed that the people commissioning the altarpieces in the eighteenth century understood the special qualities of this ground, and written contracts often stipulated its use. Modern Portuguese gilders (who now use a 27  Geary & Howe 2009; MacDonald 2006. 28  Blakelock et al. 2016. 29  Meek 2016. 30  Coles 1979.

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Figure 3.1 Nossa Senhora do Carmo altarpiece, 1735, gilded and painted wood, Carmo Church, Faro, Portugal photo: Paulo Catrica

single layered chalk, i.e., calcium carbonate, ground) were also invited to test this double ground and were impressed by its unique working qualities.31 All the above-mentioned examples are revealing of the makers’ intentions and skills. A specialist in the study of heritage objects can recognize, and admire, the working practices of an individual ancient potter or ancient metalsmith, much as an art historian may become intimately familiar with the ‘hand’ and palette of an individual artist. David Kingery, the materials scientist and historian of technology, summarized the almost personal encounter perfectly: 31  Pombo Cardoso & Pye 2017.

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Figure 3.2 Minute cross-section taken from the Nossa Senhora do Carmo altarpiece showing the thin gilding layer on top of the double-structured ground of fine-particled gesso mate over the coarser-grained gesso grosso, scanning electron microscopebackscattered (sem-bse) micrograph photo: Isabel Pombo Cardoso

Examining the macrostructure and microstructure and feeling the shape and form of an object that has been created at another time and in another place allows one to participate vicariously in and understand the human experience of its creation.32 In other words, exploring an artefact intimately can reveal a great deal about human ingenuity in the manipulation of materials, working choices, and working techniques. It can demonstrate technological sophistication resulting from long practice as well as evolution and refinement of technique—developments of technology that are for the most part overlooked by a focus on stylistic and other intangible values. It is perhaps not surprising that until even quite recently, little was ever written down by the makers themselves about exactly how materials were prepared and objects made—this knowledge was (and is) acquired through extensive practice and often simply passed on from experienced practitioner 32  Kingery 1996, 189.

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to novice (master to apprentice). Such tacit knowledge does not lend itself easily to written or even verbal documentation—it is notoriously difficult to teach some of the skills involved in making artefacts without demonstrating the techniques and equally difficult to develop the skills without acquiring a ‘feel’ for the material. For example, extensive practice is needed to learn at just what point the temperature of a wrought iron bar is ready for twisting or hammering and forging (normally judged by eye through assessing the colour, and thus the temperature, of the heated metal). While observation of materials and making is one aspect of this evocation of material significance, there is a further aspect which adds to the richness of material information encapsulated in artefacts—the fact that all matter undergoes changes over time. 6

The Complexities of Material Change

Materials are transformed into artefacts, but the materials of artefacts do not remain unchanged. Rather, they are subject to processes of deterioration and transition caused by external and internal factors. Such changes leave telltale traces in the materials themselves and shift the value, meaning, or function of artefacts, thus adding chapters to their biography. Propensity to change will vary; for example, certain rocks such as granite are extremely durable unless exposed to insistent wear by flowing or dripping water over extended periods of time, whereas organic materials such as silk or paper are particularly vulnerable and may deteriorate rapidly.33 Change may result through reaction to aspects of the environment such as light, humidity, temperature, pollution, dust, pests, burial, or simply neglect. Constant use may cause abrasion or accretions of dirt or polish from handling.34 Changes may be intentional and possibly damaging, as in defaced coinage or graffiti on stonework, or they may be practical modifications or repairs, such as the original patches riveted on to the late Bronze Age (c. 800 bc) copper-alloy Dowris bucket discovered in the 1820s in a peat bog in Ireland, now in the British Museum.35 Some changes may be confusing unless the properties of individual materials are understood. The Sutton Hoo burial assemblage—a remarkable Anglo-Saxon ship burial (dating to the early 600s ad) discovered in 1939 and now displayed at the British Museum—provides a telling example of the very 33  Krumbein et al. 1994; Lowenthal 1994; Hodkinson 1990; Michalski 1990; Cronyn 1990; Pye 2001; Selwyn 2004. 34  Pye 2001; Caple 2012. 35  See the introduction in Oddy 1992, 7.

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different reactions of certain materials to broadly the same burial environment. The ornate, great gold buckle is unblemished (gold is notably unreactive) and must look almost as it did when first made, but the iron of the helmet (which may once have appeared steely grey) is now brown and highly corroded (iron corrodes readily in damp conditions), and the fragile and evanescent traces of wood that were all that remained of the lyre can now be represented only by a replica.36 Another example is the attractive iridescent surface often seen on excavated glass: artists have copied it in modern glass without realizing that, although beautiful, in reality this is a product of decay. Composite objects—those made of more than one material—can become difficult to interpret because organic materials such as wood or textile may decay completely during burial. So the wooden handles of metal tools may have disappeared, leaving only the metal component such as an axe-head or arrow point. In some cases, traces of the organic material in contact with the metal may have been replaced (effectively ‘fossilized’) by metal corrosion products in the form of ‘pseudomorphs’ that can preserve enough of the structure of wood or textile for at least partial identification.37 The result is that the artefact displayed in the museum case is a distorted version of its original self but the effects of burial are not often fully explained. A similar distortion (also seldom explained) occurs when pigments are altered chemically, changing colour and thus unbalancing the original relationship of colours in a painting.38 Such alterations are responsible for the dark-brown appearance of originally green foliage painted with copper resinate in many Renaissance paintings. Chemical change may render an original material unrecognizable: this is a common phenomenon in archaeological artefacts. A good example that required technical elucidation is the elaborate decoration on the sheath of a Roman dagger from Chester, UK. Here the presence of decoration was revealed only through X-radiography, and the material forming the decoration was identified by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry as tin. Originally the ornament on the sheath would have been visible as shiny ‘white’ metal. However, during burial the tin corroded to a fragile grey powder and the voluminous corrosion products of the iron blade developed over the whole, turning it into a shapeless, brown, and rusty mass with no visible indication of original features (fig. 3.3a). The only way in which the decoration could be detected was through X-radiography because tin and iron corrosion products have different radio-opacities: the tin pattern showed up clearly against the iron (fig. 3.3b). 36  Evans 1986. 37  Cronyn 1990; Janaway 1987; Cameron 1991; Caple 2000; Pye 2001. 38  Hedley 1990.

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Figure 3.3a

Roman dagger and sheath (excavated in Chester, UK), iron; sheath approx. 5 cm across at widest point. The iron corrosion from the blade has completely enveloped the sheath. photo: Grosvenor Museum, Cheshire West and Chester Council

Figure 3.3b

X-radiograph of the Roman dagger and sheath showing the elaborate tin decoration on the sheath and the heads of rivets round the edge photo: Vanessa Fell and Grosvenor Museum, Cheshire West and Chester Council

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In addition, samples of the iron corrosion examined under a scanning electron microscope revealed pseudomorphs of horn, making it possible to identify the material and construction of the now-lost organic sheath (fig. 3.4).39 All these examples of material change add interest to the lives of artefacts and deserve to be explained more fully, together with the techniques used to detect and study them. Equally interesting are the challenges posed by the need to preserve these artefacts in the face of damaging change, as well as the deliberations involved in reaching conservation decisions. 7

Conservation: Meeting the Challenge of Material Change

Changes, of course, can result in loss of information. Conservation in the Western world generally aims to slow the rate of material change to minimize this potential loss and to enable an artefact to continue to transmit its message.40 However, objects are complex and can become more so through time. As a result of alteration of materials and accumulation of meanings, a single object may present multivariate conservation problems that are subject to many possible approaches, depending on the type of object and the nature of the collection to which it belongs. Reaching a decision on conservation involves consultation and collaboration with other specialists and interest groups. Some change to the material may be inevitable, and conservation processes cannot turn the clock back—it is possible only to influence change, not to stop it. Wherever possible, the first option is to manage the environment of an object.41 The corrosion of metals or cracking of wood or ivory can be minimized by controlling the relative humidity of the surrounding air. Fading of watercolours or textiles is largely averted by limiting the level of exposure to damaging ultraviolet radiation in light. The conservation rationale behind low light levels in museums could be explained more often to help visitors understand display choices. However, not all low lighting is driven by conservation concerns: in some exhibitions dim lighting is designed to provide ‘atmosphere’ at the cost, alas, of the full appreciation of the objects on view. Modifying the environment cannot prevent all material change nor reverse the effects of past change. To prolong the material existence of an object

39  D. Jones 2008. 40  Cronyn 1990; Caple 2000; Pye 2001; Muños Viñas 2005; Pye & Sully 2007; Pye 2009. 41  Caple 2012; Staniforth 2013; Staniforth 2014.

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Figure 3.4 Reconstruction drawing of the Roman dagger sheath showing how the components would be assembled. Structural details were established from the X-ray and from scanning electron microscope examination of the pseudomorph remains of horn. photo: Jacqui Watson and Historic England

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conservators often adopt remedial methods.42 These almost always involve either adding new materials, such as adhesives or ‘consolidants’, to strengthen (consolidate) the structure of the object or removing materials that may be causing damage (such as mould spores or salts that have leached into objects from the environment). These processes shift an object onto a new trajectory of induced material change. There are examples of objects, such as the Sutton Hoo helmet,43 or paintings, such as Rembrandt’s The anatomy lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632), that have been conserved more than once during their lives—each time moving them further from their original material state.44 Visitors may be intrigued to know the extent of work needed during an object’s lifetime in order to preserve it. Today’s conservation ethics require that the materials and values of each object, and the risks and benefits of each possible action, are weighed and debated before choosing a treatment.45 Because materials are—and contain— information, wherever feasible the normal aim is to do as little as possible to the physical integrity of an object, provided the conservation measure will stabilize the current condition and limit future damaging change.46 A preliminary conservation procedure that often reveals information is cleaning.47 In archaeological contexts cleaning is largely exploratory and is kept to a minimum, as the aim is not to achieve a really ‘clean’ appearance but to reveal material information.48 For example, the benefits of cleaning a mass of extremely degraded waterlogged textile (which looked initially almost like a lump of mud) excavated from the early medieval site of Llangorse near Brecon in South East Wales, UK, were first weighed against the very possible risks of material damage and loss of vital information (fig. 3.5). Eventually, working under a microscope, the conservator cautiously cleaned and unfolded the mass to yield evidence of a fragile, rare, and intricately patterned linen and silk textile (although now devoid of colour and extremely fragmented) (figs. 3.6 and 3.7). From a very unpromising and almost unrecognizable material mass, a highstatus textile was revealed.49

42  Caple 2000; Pye 2001; Muños Viñas 2005. 43  Williams 1992. 44  Williams 1992; Wadum & Noble 1999. 45  Ashley-Smith 1999. 46  Villers 2004; Muños Viñas 2009. 47  Caple 2000; Pye 2001. 48  Eastop & Brooks 1996. 49  Mumford 2006; Lane & Redknap forthcoming.

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Figure 3.5 Llangorse, Wales, medieval textile, linen and silk, max. diam. 20 cm. The waterlogged mass is almost unrecognizable after limited cleaning. photo: Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales

Figure 3.6 Medieval textile from Llangorse after detailed cleaning and conservation, showing features of both woven pattern and stitching photo: Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales

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Figure 3.7 Fragments of the medieval textile from Llangorse laid out with a drawing superimposed to indicate the woven pattern photo: Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales

Cleaning of the famous Rosetta Stone, one of the most visited items in the British Museum, raised different issues—the need to evaluate the various surface accretions and decide which might be removed. The significance of the stela fragment lies in the inscription of a decree, dating from 196 bc and in three different scripts (hieroglyphic, Demotic and Greek), that played a crucial role in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Wax coatings and grease from handling over the centuries since its discovery in 1799 had blackened the surface, concealing the material character of the stone and obscuring the inscription. Selective removal of the wax and grease successfully revealed the grey and pink colour of the granodiorite stone, but it was decided to preserve the white chalk applied in the nineteenth century to make the incised scripts more legible, seen as important evidence of the later life story of the stone.50 50  Parkinson 2005.

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Despite the information gained through judicious cleaning, there are many examples of controversies following the cleaning of sculpture or paintings, often because the effect of removing surface accretions, ‘the cherished patina of time’, to reveal an unfamiliarly ‘bright’ appearance jars with a long-held aesthetic perception of the work of art.51 Museums might provide more explanation for visitors of the nuanced challenges of cleaning, the ethical debates and dialogues between conservators, curators, and other experts, and the considerable skill and judgement needed to undertake such interventions. Damaged or fragmented artefacts may require some form of reconstruction to regain their original shape. The Roman glass Portland Vase, a rare example of Roman cameo glass that dates to between 5 and 25 ad, has been on display in the British Museum since 1810. It was vandalized and shattered in 1845 and has been reconstructed three times since then. The history of its treatments reflects not only the shift in conservation approaches and development of new skills but also the progressive improvement of adhesives, which—like most materials—also inevitably deteriorate over time. The materials research linked to the development of conservation materials, such as adhesives, is often derived from scientific discoveries in other fields.52 Cleaning and reconstruction may be considered as processes of ‘restoration’. They cannot, in fact, restore an object to an earlier material state, but they can bring it closer to what may be thought to be its original appearance. A distinction can be made between ‘conservation’, which normally aims to minimize change in the remaining materials of an artefact, and the further processes of ‘restoration’, which focus on rendering the object understandable visually. Restoration may involve not only cleaning but reassembling fragments, introducing materials to fill gaps caused by damage or loss, and ‘cosmetic’ treatments such as painting these newly filled areas to make them blend in with the surrounding original surfaces. Although restoration of paintings may aim to mask damage and re-establish the original image, the archaeological approach to restoration generally leaves the history of material change apparent. Thus, for instance, areas of loss in ceramics or early wall paintings are filled and tinted to reduce any visual distractions resulting from contrasting fill material but not precisely matched to the original in colour or design.53 Repeating patterns may be reconstructed, but missing figurative detail for which there is no remaining evidence may be left ‘blank’. A good example is the British Museum’s highly decorated, black-figure ceramic dinos (wine bowl) attributed 51  Bomford 1994. 52  Smith 1992; Horie 1987. 53  Pye 2009.

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to the painter Sophilos and dated to the sixth century bc, in which the filled areas were simply painted in a flat buff colour similar to that of the clay body of the piece.54 For fellow professionals it is obvious that these blank areas are restorations, but this is not necessarily true for visitors, and this form of material change deserves to be explained. Conservators are often presented with dilemmas because artefacts enjoy interesting, varied lives and therefore may now embody several different, sometimes conflicting, values.55 Is revealing the inscription on an object such as a coin more important than preserving its overlying layers of patina—which may contain other types of evidence?56 Should ancient silver be cleaned to a polished ‘silvery’ appearance so that its status as silver is visible even though this involves removing patina—and even if other metals might not be polished? Should an object such as an early clock or motorcar be restored to a functioning state even though this may involve replacing original, but now worn, moving parts?57 How these sometimes competing parts of an object’s life story are manifested in the material character of the object is weighed before choosing what to prioritize in the process of conservation. For example, an eighteenthcentury silk dress may have been remodelled after a time to accord with later fashion. While the evidence for the earlier shape, which is largely preserved in the original stitch lines piercing the textile, is valuable (and could aid reconstruction), so is the evidence of the remodelling which tells of thrift and of interest in keeping up with fashion.58 Such later modifications or additions may be considered to be either interesting features of the object or, conversely, detractions from understanding the original. Furthermore, views on the value of additions may shift. Until the advent of modern adhesives, metal rivets (staples) were often used to reconstruct broken ceramics. While these were regularly removed by conservators forty or fifty years ago because they were considered ugly and distracting, now in many cases they are retained as evidence of a past skilled repair technique and a visible reminder of the biography of the object. The British Museum’s Piranesi vase provides an example of retaining modifications. The large marble urn incorporates fragments of Roman sculpture that were imaginatively ‘restored’ in the eighteenth century by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778). The eighteenth-century additions have not been removed as they are essential to 54  Fisher 1992. 55  Brooks et al. 1996; Eastop 2000; Clavir 2002; Jones 2006. 56  Pye 2013. 57  Pye 2016. 58  Richmond & Bracker 2009.

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the character of the vessel and represent both eighteenth-century taste and the work of Piranesi, who, although better known as an etcher and engraver, also ran a workshop producing pastiche ‘ancient’ objects.59 By contrast, the so-called ‘Mornauer portrait’ in the National Gallery, London, serves as an example of a work in which later additions were removed. The striking portrait of Alexander Mornauer, town clerk of Landshut in Bavaria, dating to between 1464 and 1488, is an oil painting on wood that was modified, probably in the eighteenth century, seemingly to resemble the work of Hans Holbein the Younger. At that time the original background of wood grain was painted over in blue and the shape of the sitter’s hat was altered. Technical examination revealed the blue paint to be Prussian blue pigment in poppyseed oil, both anachronistic materials for a fifteenth-century work. (Prussian blue was discovered in the early 1700s in Berlin.) The later blue background could have been retained, but it was removed to bring the work closer to its maker’s original intent by revealing the original background and the earlier shape of the sitter’s hat.60 8

Exhibiting Conservation and Technical Study

Although they would surely hold appeal to a wider audience, the fascinating technical discoveries and conservation choices epitomized by the examples discussed above are accessible almost exclusively through specialized literature. Brief information on material investigations and conservation procedures is sometimes included in wider exhibitions, but detailed technical information is normally limited to rarer, specialized displays such as Conservation in focus, which took place at the British Museum in 2008.61 This exhibition emphasized collaboration between curators and conservators and the discoveries conservators make that enrich understanding of the objects they work on. Among the featured artefacts was the extraordinary cache of 12 Iron Age copper-alloy cauldrons, dating to between 200 bc and 100 ad and found in 2004 at Chiseldon, Wiltshire, UK.62 Made of thin sheets, they were unearthed in a crushed and heavily corroded state and were so fragile that they required special excavation 59  Miller 1992. 60  Wiesman 2010. 61  Podany & Maish 1993; Drago 2011. 62  See ‘Chiseldon cauldrons. Unearthing and conserving an Iron Age feast’, at www.british museum.org/research/research_projects/all_current_projects/chiseldon_cauldrons/disco very_and_excavation.aspx [accessed 8 September 2017].

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techniques. Speaking of Alexandra Baldwin’s investigation and conservation of the cauldrons, Jody Joy, then curator of the Iron Age collections, said: Alex will be able to re-construct how the cauldrons looked. This is fascinating as we don’t know what cauldrons from this period looked like. Her research will also help explain what the cauldrons were used for and why so many were deposited in a pit …63 Close examination: fakes, mistakes and discoveries, an exhibition held in 2010 at the National Gallery, London, emphasized the work of museum scientists.64 Case studies showed that the close investigation of under-drawings can reveal much about artists’ working practices. They also demonstrated that identification of grounds, pigments, media, and varnishes not only aids in attribution and dating but can also help to discriminate between legitimate copies and fakes. The Mornauer portrait, mentioned above, was featured as an example of a fifteenth-century painting modified in the eighteenth century to fit the taste and values of the day. Permanent exhibitions on technical investigation and conservation are rare. An important exception is the gallery devoted to ‘Restoring the past’ at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK, which conveys the complexities of material studies and conservation very imaginatively. The museum was the subject of major redevelopment (completed in 2009), and amongst the themes adopted for the new displays was ‘Crossing cultures’. Susan Walker, then Keeper of Antiquities, had been much involved in the project; she described this gallery: A suite of rooms introduces the theme of crossing arts and sciences, with examination of materials used to make objects from antiquity to the present day, and their fate once in the museum. Here visitors are invited to consider the dilemmas within the practice of conservation, current and historical.65 Such exhibitions highlight the intellectual work that takes place ‘behind the scenes’ in museums and galleries, which is seldom portrayed to visitors in the

63  Joy quoted in ‘Conservation in focus’, press release on British Museum’s website at http:// www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/press_releases/2008/conservation_ in_focus.aspx [accessed 27 August 2017]. 64  Wiesman 2010. 65  Walker 2014.

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main exhibition areas. But how can the complexities and fascination of materials and making be introduced more generally? 9

Exhibiting Materials and Making

Exhibitions focused on the art history or archaeology of individual materials provide an opportunity to present the properties of the materials themselves and the techniques involved in making artefacts. Bronze was the telling title of an exciting exhibition held at the Royal Academy, London, in 2012, which brought together an extraordinary range of bronze sculpture from many traditions and spanning a period from 3000 bc to the twenty-first century.66 On entering, visitors were greeted by the dramatic, over-life-size figure of the Dancing satyr, discovered by fishermen off the Straits of Sicily in 1998. Dating to the second half of the fourth century bc, it is possibly the work of the famous Greek sculptor Praxiteles. Many of the exhibits were equally spectacular and demonstrated both the beauty and variety of bronze sculpture. Although the emphasis was on artistry, one whole gallery was also devoted to models, diagrams, and videos demonstrating the various stages of lost-wax casting, the technique used to create many of the sculptures. To understand this process is to admire its ingenuity and recognize the impressive technological skill involved—particularly in creating the very largest sculptures. This understanding added a further dimension to the appreciation of the sculptures themselves. Plywood: material of the modern world, an exhibition held in 2017 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, took an apparently mundane material and made it compelling.67 Plywood’s construction (thin veneers of wood glued together, with the grain of each veneer oriented perpendicularly to the next) makes it a particularly strong and versatile material. The exhibition focused on its manufacture and use since the mid-nineteenth century, when the introduction of mechanical saws speeded up production of the veneers. In communicating the main production processes the exhibition showed that plywood’s material properties influenced both the design of objects and methods of production. Before the adhesive between the veneers cures, whole sheets can be moulded to ‘new’ curved shapes—vividly illustrated in the variety of twentieth-century chairs and other furniture on display. Perhaps the most remarkable end products were the aeroplane bodies made during the first half

66  Ekserdjian 2012. 67  Wilk 2017.

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of the twentieth century (including the ‘Mosquito’, made during World War II), which were strong, light, and quick to make. Both these exhibitions enhanced the visitors’ appreciation of the material by providing information on fabrication (in displays and in accompanying publication). But each could have taken the study of materials a step further to embrace the technical investigation and analysis of bronzes (copper alloys), for example, or the chemistry and other properties of adhesives suitable for wood. 10

Integrating Art Historical and Material Studies

I would argue that, in any exhibition or display, the ideal should be to integrate information on materials and making with archaeological or art historical presentation of each artefact itself. Death on the Nile. Uncovering the afterlife of ancient Egypt, an exhibition held in 2016 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, was an excellent example of how such integration can be achieved through collaboration between curators, conservators, and scientists in the presentation of the museum’s impressive collection of ancient Egyptian coffins.68 In both the exhibition and the accompanying publication, a technical discussion of the methods and materials used in making and decorating the coffins, and an introduction to the techniques of investigation used to uncover this information, complemented the curatorial discussion of the origin and development of the coffins. The display included materials and tools, illustrated details of the coffins’ construction, and explained the techniques used for the scientific investigation of the artefacts. In addition, in one area a temporary conservation laboratory was created, allowing visitors to watch a conservator at work and ask questions.69 Study of the coffins showed ‘how by clever manipulation of resources in construction and decoration a highly refined luxury product could be produced from unpromising starting materials’.70 The coffin of Userhet (probably 1855– 1790 bc) revealed the carpenters at work. The box and lid were each carved out of a solid piece of sycomore fig wood, but before the coffin was finished, the wood of the box split along its length. This was ingeniously mended by stitching at intervals with strips of rawhide (fresh skin). The carpenters knew that the rawhide would shrink and harden as it dried and pull the sides of the split together. Completely invisible on the exterior (masked with linen patches over 68  Strudwick & Dawson 2016. 69  Ibid. 70  Ibid., 184.

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the stitches and a layer of calcite-based paste) and on the interior (also covered with paste), the nature of the repair became fully apparent only when the coffin was X-rayed, revealing a clever response to a potentially disastrous split. The richly decorated inner coffin of Nespawershefyt (around 1070–890 bc) proved to be equally interesting when examined using CT scanning to reveal detail of construction beneath the paint (figs. 3.8 and 3.9). Wood was relatively scarce, so it was used conservatively; five types 0f wood were used for different features of the coffin and identified scientifically: sycomore fig (Ficus sycomorus), tamarisk (Tamarix aphylla), sidr (Ziziphus spina-christi), acacia (Acacia nilotica), and cedar (Cedrus libani). Some of the features were clearly parts of an earlier coffin. Construction involved mortise and tenon joints, dovetail joints, dowels, and a butterfly cramp to hold a short split together, all techniques still in use by skilled woodworkers today.71 What was exciting about this exhibition was the equal prominence given to the technical, the archaeological, and the stylistic study of the coffins. It thus provided a holistic view of these objects and presented visitors with vivid stories of life and death in ancient Egypt. The exhibition clearly demonstrated that objects can have an active ‘afterlife’ in the museum, viewed through the lens of scientific examination and conservation—museum research activities that are too often unseen. The compelling nature of the material information revealed was summed up by Julie Dawson, conservator and curator of the exhibition: The coffins in this exhibition represent a snapshot of Egyptian craftsmen … working with assurance within a long technical tradition, dealing with the constraints and limitations of the available materials and experimenting with new ones when these came along.72 While such specialized and in-depth exhibitions may be possible only occasionally, almost all museum labels could be extended to say more about materials and making. Considering some of the examples discussed earlier, labels could look more like this: This Bronze Age axe-head was formed by pouring molten copper alloy (a mix of copper and tin with other trace elements) into a mould (probably of stone). Its handle, almost certainly made of wood, rotted away during burial. Traditionally a resilient wood such as ash (Fraxinus excelsior) would have been used for this purpose …

71  Dawson 2018. 72  Dawson et al. 2016, 75.

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Figure 3.8 Egypt, coffin of Nespawershefyt, around 1070–890 bc, detail of the inner coffin box photo: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Figure 3.9 CT (computerised tomography) scanning image of the same part of the inner coffin of Nespawershefyt, showing that the profile of the head has been changed by cutting wood away from the inner side of the planks as well as building up the external wall. The positions of the mortises on the rims have been changed too, suggesting that these are reused pieces of wood, possibly from an earlier coffin. photo: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

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This corroded Roman dagger holds a range of now ‘invisible’ information! Examination of minute structures preserved in the corrosion shows that the sheath was made of horn, and analysis of traces of grey powder indicates that it was decorated with tin. The intricacy of the original decoration—no longer visible to the naked eye—is revealed by X-radiography … The Egyptian coffin was constructed of cedar wood (Cedrus libani) painted with naturally occurring earth pigments—iron oxide reds and yellows—together with Egyptian blue. The latter is considered the earliest synthetic pigment, made by heating silica (sand) with copper compounds to produce blue, glass-like calcium copper silicate, which can be ground to produce a slightly gritty blue pigment … This intricately patterned linen and silk textile from the Middle Ages was found as a shapeless, waterlogged lump. Using a microscope, conservators were able to separate the highly fragile layers while they were still wet; this prevented shrinkage and collapse, which would happen if the textile were allowed to dry. Between working sessions the textile was stored in a refrigerator to prevent further decay. The fibres of the textile were identified by examining the minute characteristic features of their structure, again using a microscope … To these labels could be added wording encouraging visitors to explore further. Evolving technological developments mean that access to images and other information available in online catalogues or in publications is becoming increasingly possible. The label next to the object should say enough to alert visitors to the fascinating story of its materials and making and to enable them to find out more while still viewing the object itself—for example, with the use of smart phones. 11

Conclusion: Telling Material Stories

The magic of museum objects is that they are the ‘real thing’ and can appeal to visitors on many different levels. In this essay I have tried to demonstrate that materials and material biographies play an important role in shaping the meaning and attraction of objects. If they are made more explicit, they can engage and fascinate visitors who are interested not just in how objects look but in how they were made and used and how they have survived. Writing in

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the foreword to Inspire. Highlights of UCL’s collections, the well-known sculptor Anthony Gormley emphasized the rich potential of museum objects: Objects carry information—they can be interpreted and read, but more importantly what was once an integrated part of other lives can now be part of ours—they bring a lost world closer to us: you can literally get in touch with another time.73 Materials and making are part of this allure! Acknowledgments I am grateful to David Pye for introducing me to making; Nick Balaam, Isolde Olcayto and my former students for their curiosity about materials; Susan Walker for a useful reference; colleagues and friends for allowing me to use the figures; and the editors of this volume for their constructive comments. Bibliography Anonymous, ‘Case Study 5.4. Roman dagger sheaths’, in: David Jones (ed.), Investigative conservation. Guidelines on how the detailed examination of artefacts from archaeological sites can shed light on their manufacture and use, London 2008, 17. Ashley-Smith, Jonathan, Risk assessment for object conservation, Oxford 1999. Avrami, Erica, Randall Mason and Marta de la Torre (eds.), Values and heritage conservation. Research report, Los Angeles 2000. Baillie, Mike, Tree-ring dating and archaeology, Oxford 2015. Blakelock, Eleanor, Susan La Niece and Chris Fern, ‘Secrets of the Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths. Analysis of gold objects from the Staffordshire Hoard’, Journal of Archaeological Science 72 (2016), 44–56. Bomford, David, ‘Conservation and controversy’, IIC Bulletin (April 1994), 3–4. Bowman, Sheridan (ed.), Science and the past, London 1991. Brooks, Mary, Alison Lister, Dinah Eastop and Tarja Bennett, ‘Artifact or information? Articulating the conflicts in conserving archaeological textiles’, in: Ashok Roy and Perry Smith (eds.), Archaeological conservation and its consequences. Preprints of the contributions to the Copenhagen Congress, London 1996, 16–21.

73  Gormley 2006.

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Cameron, Esther, ‘Identification of skin and leather preserved by iron corrosion products’, Journal of Archaeological Science, 18 (1991), 25–33. Caple, Chris, Conservation skills. Judgement, method and decision making, London and New York 2000. Caple, Chris, Objects. Reluctant witnesses to the past, Oxford 2006. Caple, Chris (ed.), Preventive conservation in museums, London 2012. Charny, Daniel (ed.), Power of making. The importance of being skilled, London 2011. Charny, Daniel, ‘Thinking of making’, in: Charny 2011a, 6–10. Clark, Gregory, ‘Naval blockmaking in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, The Mariner’s Mirror 62 (1976), 137–144. Clavir, Miriam, Preserving what is valued. Museums, conservation, and First Nations, Vancouver 2002. Coles, John, Experimental archaeology, London 1979. Cronyn, Janey M., The elements of archaeological conservation, London and New York 1990. Dawson, Julie, How to make an Egyptian coffin. The construction and decoration of Nespawershefyt’s coffin set, Cambridge 2018. Dawson, Julie, Jennifer Marchant and Eleanor von Aderkas, ‘Egyptian coffins. Materials construction and decoration’, in: Strudwick and Dawson 2016, 75–111. De La Torre, Marta (ed.), Assessing the values of cultural heritage, Research report, Los Angeles 2002. Drago, Amy, ‘“I feel included”. The Conservation in focus exhibition at the British Museum’, Journal of the Institute of Conservation 34 (2011), 28–38. Eastop, Dinah, ‘Textiles as multiple and competing histories’, in: Mary M. Brooks (ed.), Textiles revealed. Object lessons in historic textile and costume research, London 2000, 17–28. Eastop, Dinah and Mary M. Brooks, ‘To clean or not to clean. The value of soils and creases’, in: ICOM Committee for Conservation, Preprints of the 11th triennial meeting, Edinburgh, September 1996, London 1996, 687–691. Ekserdjian, David (ed.), Bronze, London 2012. Evans, Angela Care, The Sutton Hoo ship burial, London 1986. Falk, John H. and Lynn D. Dierking, Learning from museums. Visitor experiences and the making of meaning, Walnut Creek, CA 2000. Fisher, Penelope, ‘The Sophilos Vase’, in: Oddy 1992, 163–176. Freestone, Ian, ‘The provenance of ancient glass through compositional analysis’, in: Pamela B. Vandiver, Jennifer L. Mass and Alison Murray (eds.), Materials issues in art and archaeology VII. Materials Research Society symposium, November 30–December 3, 2004, Boston, MA, Warrendale, PA 2005, 195–208. Gauntlett, David, Making is connecting. The social meaning of creativity from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0, Cambridge, 2011.

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Geary, Angela and Emily Howe, ‘Three-dimensional documentation and virtual restoration of the Lichfield Angel’, Journal of the Institute of Conservation 32 (2009), 165–179. Gormley, Anthony, ‘Foreword’, in: Inspire. Highlights of UCL’s collections, London 2006, n.p. Hedley, Gerry, ‘Long lost relations and new found relativities. Issues in the cleaning of paintings’, in: Victoria Todd (ed.), Appearance, opinion, change. Evaluating the look of paintings, London 1990, 8–13. Hein, George E., Learning in the museum, Oxford 1998. Hoadley, R. Bruce, Understanding wood. A craftsman’s guide to wood technology, Newtown, CT 2000, revised edition. Hodges, Henry, Artifacts. An introduction to early materials and technology, London 1964. Hodkinson, Ian, ‘Man’s effect on paintings’, in: Ramsay-Jolicoeur and Wainwright 1990, 54–68. Hooper Greenhill, Eilean, Museums and the shaping of knowledge, London and New York 1992. Hooper Greenhill, Eilean, Museums and their visitors, Oxford 2013. Horie, C. Velson, Materials for conservation. Organic consolidants, adhesives and coatings, London 1987. Ingold, Tim, ‘On weaving a basket’, in: Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins (eds.), The object reader, London and New York 2009, 80–91. Ingold, Tim, Being alive. Essays on movement, knowledge and description, Oxford 2011. Janaway, Robert C., ‘The preservation of organic materials in association with metal artefacts deposited in inhumation graves,’ in: Andrew Boddington, Andrew N. Garland and Robert C. Janaway (eds.), Death, decay and reconstruction. Approaches to archaeology and forensic science, Manchester 1987, 127–148. Jones, Sian, ‘They made it a living thing didn’t they?’, in: Robert Layton, Stephen Shennan and Peter G. Stone (eds.), A future for archaeology, London 2006, 107–126. Joy, Jody, ‘Reinvigorating object biography. Reproducing the drama of object lives’, World Archaeology 41 (2009), 540–556. Keene, Suzanne, Fragments of the world. Uses of museum collections, Oxford 2005. Kingery, David and Pamela Vandiver, Ceramic masterpieces, London and New York 1986. Kingery, W. David, ‘Materials science and material culture’ in: David Kingery (ed.), Learning from things. Method and theory of material culture studies, Washington, DC and London 1996, 181–203.

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Kopytoff, Igor, ‘The cultural biography of things. Commoditization as process’, in: Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge 1986, 70–73. Krumbein, Wolfgang E., Peter Brimblecombe, Denis E. Cosgrove and Sarah Staniforth (eds.) Durability and change. The science, responsibility, and cost of sustaining cultural heritage, Chichester 1994. Lane, Alan and Mark Redknap, Llangorse Crannog: the excavation of an early medieval royal site in the kingdom of Brycheiniog, Cardiff forthcoming. Lang, Janet and Andrew Middleton (eds.), Radiography of cultural material, Oxford 2005. Lowenthal, David, ‘The value of age and decay’, in: Krumbein et al. 1994, 39–49. MacDonald, Lindsay (ed.), Digital heritage. Applying digital imaging to cultural heritage, Oxford 2006. Marshall, Yvonne and Chris Gosden (eds.), ‘The cultural biography of objects’, special issue, World Archaeology 31 (1999). Meek, Andrew, ‘Ion beam analysis of glass inlays from the Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon Hoard’, Journal of Archaeological Science. Reports 7 (2016), 324–329. Michalski, Stefan, ‘Time’s effect on paintings’, in Ramsay-Jolicoeur and Wainwright 1990, 39–53. Miller, Daniel, ‘The power of making’, in: Charny 2011a, 14–23. Miller, Eric, ‘The Piranesi vase’, in: Oddy 1992, 122–136. Morphy, Howard, ‘Afterword’, in: Sandra Dudley (ed.), Museum materialities. Objects, engagements, interpretations, Oxford 2010, 275–285. Mumford, Louise, ‘Material witness. Investigating an early medieval textile,’ in: Caroline Buttler and Mary Davis (eds.), Things fall apart … Museum conservation in practice, Cardiff 2006, 60–69. Muños Viñas, Salvador, Contemporary theory of conservation, Oxford 2005. Muños Viñas, Salvador, ‘Minimal Intervention revisited,’ in: Richmond and Bracker 2009, 47–59. Mursell, James, Windsor chairmaking, Ramsbury, UK 2009. O’Connor, Sonia and Mary M. Brooks, X-radiography of textiles, dress and related objects, Oxford 2007. Oddy, William Andrew, (ed.), The art of the conservator, London 1992. Oddy, William Andrew, ‘Jewelry under the microscope. A conservators’ guide to cataloguing’, in: Adriana Calinescu (ed.), Ancient jewelry and archaeology. Bloomington 1996, 185–197. Parkinson, Richard, The Rosetta stone, London 2005. Pearce, Susan (ed.), Interpreting objects and collections, London 1994.

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Podany, Jerry C. and Susan Lansing Maish, ‘Can the complex be made simple? Informing the public about conservation through museum exhibits’, Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 32 (1993), 101–108. Pombo Cardoso, Isabel and Elizabeth Pye, ‘Preparing the foundation for stable gilding. Baroque craftsmen’s empirical understanding of gesso gilding grounds’, Journal of Archaeological Science 79 (2017), 96–106. Pye, Elizabeth, Caring for the past. Issues in conservation for archaeology and museums, London 2001. Pye, Elizabeth, ‘Archaeological conservation. Scientific practice or social process?’, in: Richmond and Bracker 2009, 129–138. Pye, Elizabeth, ‘Writing conservation. The impact of text on conservation decisions and practice’, in: Kathryn E. Piquette and Ruth D. Whitehouse (eds.), Writing as material practice. Substance, surface and medium, London 2013, 319–333. Pye, Elizabeth, ‘Challenges of conservation. Working objects’, Science Museum Group Journal 6 (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.15180/160608 [accessed 4 August 2017]. Pye, Elizabeth and Dean Sully, ‘Evolving challenges, developing skills’, The Conservator 30 (2007), 19–37. Ramsay-Jolicoeur, Barbara A. and Ian N. M. Wainwright (eds.), Shared responsibility. Proceedings of a seminar for curators and conservators, Ottawa 1990. Richmond, Alison and Alison Bracker (eds.), Conservation principles, dilemmas and uncomfortable truths, London 2009. Sands, Robert, Prehistoric woodworking. The analysis and interpretation of Bronze and Iron Age toolmarks, London 1997. Scott, David, Metallography and microstructure in ancient and historic metals, London 1992. Scott, David, ‘The use of metallographic and metallurgical investigation methods in the preservation of metallic heritage artefacts’, in: Philippe Dillmann, David Watkinson, Emma Angelini and Annemie Adriaens (eds.), Corrosion and conservation of cultural heritage metallic artefacts, Cambridge 2013, 82–99. Selwyn, Lyndsie, Metals and corrosion. A handbook for the conservation professional, Ottawa 2004. Sennett, Richard, The craftsman, London 2008. Smith, Cyril Stanley, A search for structure, Cambridge, MA 1981. Smith, Sandra, ‘The Portland Vase’, in: Oddy 1992, 42–58. Snow, Charles P., The two cultures and the scientific revolution. The Rede lecture 1959, Cambridge 1959. Staniforth, Sarah (ed.), Historical perspectives on preventive conservation, Los Angeles 2013. Staniforth, Sarah, ‘Environmental conditions for the safeguarding of collections. Future trends’, Studies in Conservation 59 (2014), 213–217.

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Strickland, Matthew and Robert Hardy, The great warbow. From Hastings to the Mary Rose, Sutton 2005. Strudwick, Helen and Julie Dawson (eds.), Death on the Nile. Uncovering the afterlife of ancient Egypt, Cambridge 2016. True, Marion and Jerry Podany (eds.), Marble. Art historical and scientific perspectives on ancient sculpture, Malibu, CA 1990. Tweddle, John, Lucy Robinson, Michael Pocock and Helen Roy, Guide to Citizen Science. Developing, implementing and evaluating citizen science to study biodiversity and the environment in the UK, London 2012. Villers, Caroline, ‘Post minimal intervention’, The Conservator 28 (2004), 3–10. Wadum, Jørgen and Petria Noble, ‘Is there an ethical problem after the twenty-third treatment of Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp?’, in: Janet Bridgland (ed.), ICOM Committee for Conservation. Preprints of the 12th triennial meeting Lyon 29 August–3 September 1999, London 1999, 206–210. Walker, Susan, ‘Crossing cultures, crossing time. A transforming moment in the history of the Ashmolean Museum’, in: Larissa Förster (ed.), Transforming knowledge orders. Museums, collections and exhibitions, Paderborn 2014, 257–282. Wiesman, Marjorie, A closer look. Deceptions and discoveries, London 2010. Wilk, Christopher, Plywood. A material story, London 2017. Williams, Nigel, ‘The Sutton Hoo helmet’, in: Oddy 1992, 73–88.

Part 2 Explicating the Performative: Material, Medium, Object

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Chapter 4

The ‘Extended Life’ of Performance

Curating 1960s Multimedia Art in the Contemporary Museum Judit Bodor 1 Introduction* In this article, I offer an overview of different approaches to the preservation of historical performance art in a museum environment to discuss my curatorial approach to a performance artwork, Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, created by the Welsh artist Ivor Davies in 1968. The work was part of the retrospective Silent explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art at Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales, Cardiff (14 November 2015–20 March 2016). While we are accustomed to museums exhibiting artworks from their own or other collections, historical performance art presents different expectations insofar as its appearance in the museum rarely leads to the acquisition of these works into the collection. This is primarily for two reasons. Firstly, as art critic Boris Groys notes, the museum has ‘ceased to be a place for a permanent collection and became a stage for changing curatorial projects, guided tours, screenings, lectures, performances, etc.’1 and thus a space for events as well as objects. Secondly, a broadening range of curatorial approaches to performance art in the museum has developed in parallel with and through critical and theoretical positions exploring the materiality and objecthood of time-based media art. This materialist perspective signals a shift from what has been described by as ‘aesthetics of disappearance’ to ‘aesthetics of change’.2 Alongside the diversification of practical approaches to the collection, preservation, and exhibition of performance art in media art collections, the critical landscape of research surrounding the curating of these works by now encompasses disciplines as varied as art history, performance studies, new media conservation, and curatorial theory and practice. Within this landscape various notions such

*  I borrowed the phrase the ‘extended life’ from Ric Allsopp’s text On Dissemination to refer to ‘processes and environments of contemporary arts’ including ‘documentation, dissemination, curation, editing and cultural context.’ See Allsopp 2007, 4. 1  Groys 2016, 3. 2  Hölling 2015a, 80.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004396852_006

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as (non)reproducibility,3 documentation as act,4 partial truth,5 surrogacy,6 contextual materiality,7 ‘viral’ ontology,8 changeability,9 and variability10 are addressed. One of the aims of Silent explosion was to focus on Davies’s 1960s performances, which are representative of his lifelong interest in destruction as a form of material transformation. The broader challenge that the show tried to tackle was how, in a museum context, one might perpetuate a performance across artistic, curatorial, and conservation practices and cultures, especially if we consider not only Davies’s works but all performance art as an aesthetics of disappearance and of change—as I shall here. Taking on board both critical and theoretical dimensions, this paper describes and evaluates my curatorial approach to Davies’s work to explore the artwork’s ontology and identity while taking into account the material transformation that historical performance, events, and happenings inevitably undergo when they are exhibited. Museums have been anathema to avant-garde sensibilities since at least as long as the Futurists called for their destruction,11 and the Fluxus artist Ben Vautier’s Total art matchbox (1968) playfully provided the means of doing so. This anti-establishment position of artists is underpinned by the process-led, conceptual, event-based, manifold, and often multimedia material strategies of post avant-garde performances, environments, and happenings. These strategies problematize the notion of the artwork as a ‘portable object’12—a term proposed by conceptual artist Daniel Buren—and lend themselves to a conceptualization as a relationship between ‘the “thing” and its world, its event and its process’, as proposed by conservator and scholar Hanna Hölling.13 Institutions have begun to address this issue in recent years by developing preservation and presentation strategies in response to the ‘material multiplicity’14 of post-avant-garde practices that transcend a notion of the artwork as a physical object. These strategies attempt to recognize the centrality of situational, processual, and relational aspects of performance art in material terms. The exhibition Silent explosion was an experiment in precisely such a shift from 3  Phelan 1993; Phelan 2003. 4  Auslander 2006; Auslander 2014. 5  Jones 1997; Jones 2012a. 6  Real 2001. 7  Lillemose 2006. 8  Bedford 2012. 9  Hölling 2014; Hölling 2015a; Hölling 2015b; Hölling 2017. 10  Depocas et al. 2003; Rinehart & Ippolito 2014. 11  Marinetti 1909. 12  Buren 1971. 13  Hölling 2015, 16. 14  Lillemose 2006, 121.

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predominantly documenting performances to prioritizing ‘liveness’ and ‘presence’. The central work featured in this exhibition, Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, was conceived by Davies in 1968 as a multimedia and participatory performance environment that combined technological processes such as light and sound effects with live actions. In the 2015 museum exhibition this became Adam on St Agnes’ Eve 1968/2015, a remediated archival environment produced through collaboration between the artist, curators, conservators, and technicians, and an event entitled Adam on St Agnes’ Eve at 1:25, devised by artist Mike Pearson that reperformed Davies’s historical work on a 1:25 scale. My curatorial objective here was to explore how the 2015 remediation reinterprets, preserves, enhances, evolves, or even redirects the understanding of the historical work. 2 Exhibiting Adam on St Agnes’ Eve at National Museum Wales, Cardiff Davies’s performances in the 1960s ranged from sculptural demonstrations with explosions to large-scale theatre spectacles. Although these works have gained some attention in a few survey exhibitions of 1960s15 as examples of Destruction Art,16 they have yet to find their place in mainstream art histories.17 In the previous exhibitions, the historical events were presented as objects according to the largely orthodox format of exhibiting photographic documentation and material relics. Silent explosion, which focused on exploring the artist’s lifelong interest in destruction as a means of transformation across media, provided an opportunity to explore these works’ archival materiality further through interviews and primary research in the artist’s private archival collection located in his studio in Penarth, Wales. In 2013, at the start of our project, there was neither a definitive list of how many performances Davies had devised in the 1960s nor an inventory of the remaining documents, so part of the curatorial process was to locate, annotate, 15  Photographic and video documentation of Ivor Davies’s performances appeared in the exhibitions Blast to freeze. British art in the 20th century, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and Les Abbatoirs, Toulouse, 2002/2003; Art & the 60s. This was tomorrow, Tate Britain, London, 2004; I cannot escape this place / Ni allaf ddianc rhag hon, Amgueddffa Cymru—National Museum Wales, Cardiff, 2011; Art under attack, Tate Britain, 2013; and Exploding Utopia, Laure Genillard Gallery, London, 2013. 16  Regarding theories and practices of Destruction Art, see Stiles 1991; Stiles 1992; Stiles 2005; Stiles 2016. 17  Roms 2015, published to accompany the exhibition, is the first major and comprehensive critical assessment of the artist’s career including his performances.

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Figure 4.1 Ivor Davies, Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968; Ni allaf ddianc rhag hon (I cannot escape this place), 2011, installation view, Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales photo: Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales

and catalogue what constitutes these works’ material archive. The exhibition’s co-curator, Nicholas Thornton (Head of Fine & Contemporary Art, National Museum Wales), and I accessed folders of documents of the artist’s own performances kept alongside material relating to the 1966 Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS), London, that Davies co-organized as an active member of its International Organising Committee.18 While DIAS provided the direct context for only a few of Davies’s works, the theme of ‘destruction’ influenced further performances in Edinburgh, Bristol, and Swansea up until 1968. To exhibit Davies’s performances, we needed to engage both with issues of ephemerality at the heart of any historical performance but also with the artist’s explicit intention toward destruction as an aesthetic strategy that suggests that the destination of his performances was disappearance. In order to better understand 18  Davies’s practice is directly associated with late 1960s ‘destruction art’, which found its highest profile expression through the international Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS), London. Initiated by Gustav Metzger and produced with the help of an International Organising Committee, DIAS was a month-long event series in September 1966 including a three-day symposium and performances by artists such as Yoko Ono, the Viennese Actionists, John Latham and Barbara Steveni, Robin Page, Wolf Vostell, Al Hansen, Rafael Montañez Ortiz, and others.

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this strategy in relation to the ways in which performance was theorized, I will briefly venture into its main discursive strands. In her book Unmarked. The politics of performance (1993), the American performance scholar Peggy Phelan offers a seminal discussion of performance as an ephemeral, disappearing, and non-reproducible event that was useful to consider in this respect. Through an analysis of the politics of visibility in capitalist society, Phelan argues that as it disappears, performance (as a cultural practice including, but not limited to, performance art) has the power to resist the ‘reproductive representation necessary to the circulation of capital’ from its conception.19 She further argues that the ‘generative possibilities of disappearance’ in performance are therefore a strategic alternative to the ‘reproduction of the Other as the Same’ in the ‘representational economy’.20 In a 2003 interview Phelan returns to her argument to explain that her point was never to deny the usefulness of documentation in order to gather information about artworks but to emphasize that documentation fundamentally alters the work through its commoditized reproduction. She argues that an understanding of ephemerality (disappearance) is as fundamental to the experience of performance as awareness of ‘mortality’ is ‘fundamental to the experience of embodiment’.21 Amongst the more than 400 items we looked at in Davies’s archive were documents providing contextual information about events (flyers, posters, press cuttings, correspondence, prop lists, receipts), performance relics from events (such as slides and cardboard boxes often used as props in different performances), conceptual documents (such as scripts or ‘cue-sheets’, as Davies used to call them, and some drawings), photographic and film documentation, and material generated through the artist’s archival practice (including different versions of event descriptions) as well as through the work of researchers and curators (including oral history interviews and documents relating to exhibitions).22 While documents previously exhibited by museums were kept in pristine condition (either framed or wrapped in acid-free paper) and recirculated by Davies himself as ‘primary’ archival material of DIAS, the rest of the archive, including material related to his own works, was kept loosely in simple paper folders without any predetermined order. The archival collection also contained copies of photographs, films, and retrospective descriptions 19  Phelan 1993, 148. 20  Phelan 1993, 27, 148. 21  Phelan 2003, 293. 22  The catalogue of the collection has been published as an insert in the exhibition publication. See Bodor 2015a.

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of performances that Davies kept together with the ‘original’ material and annotated, altered, cut up, and reassembled as collages. These ‘annotations’ are important in not only manifesting Davies’s particular interest in material transformation as a form of creation but also in illustrating an on-going process of self-historicization whereby Davies reinterprets his own performances through the continuous production of variations and versions of existing documentary material. The idea of an opposing ontological relationship between a historical event and its documentation in performance as advanced by Phelan has been critiqued since the 1990s, including by media theorist Philip Auslander, who argues that documentation can also constitute, rather than substitute, an event.23 In this respect he discusses Vito Acconci’s Trademarks (1970), a limited series of lithographic prints produced by the artist from a private performance for the camera. These lithographs combine photographs of the artist sitting naked on the floor biting himself, the close-up images of the bite marks, his written commentary on the event, and the prints of bite-marks inked and stamped on paper and other surfaces. For Auslander, Acconci’s decision to include written commentary as an ‘act of documentation’ in the print ‘performatively frame[s] his actions as performance’.24 Art historian Amelia Jones also considers the function of documentation in performance and argues that neither the live encounter of an event nor the experience of its documentation ‘has a privileged relationship ‘to the historical “truth” of the performance’.25 Both produce only partial knowledge regarding the work’s immediate or wider social, political, cultural, and historical contexts. While Auslander and Jones’s perspectives might differ, they concur that documentation ensures knowledge of a performance and in some cases constitutes the artwork despite the disappearance of the event. For Jones, writing about performance combats ‘dangerous and purposeful erasures of evidence from the past’,26 while Auslander points out that many performances were documented even though they were not considered culturally significant at the time and that they became significant historically because they were documented in the first place.27 Speaking about the function of documentation, we could also add conservator and scholar William Real’s view that documentation—at least in the context of museums—is often considered as the primary 23  Auslander 2006; Auslander 2014. 24  Auslander 2014. 25  Jones 1997, 11. 26  Jones 2012a, 201. 27  Auslander 2014.

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work of performance, a ‘surrogate’ of the event, that serves both ‘an interpretive as well as a documentary purpose’.28 An example of this could be the four blackboards used in Joseph Beuys’s 1972 Information action at Tate Britain that in 1983 were moved from a store in the Education Department to become art objects in Tate’s permanent collection. Whether interpretive, documentary, or performative, material documentation of historical events often provides the basis for preserving and curating performance art while also turning it into a portable object. Documentation for Davies’s work has over the years become the focus of attention as both performative archival act through which he extends the life of his performances and as documentary material selected and authorized by him as evidence and to stand in for his historical performances in exhibitions. Davies’s 1968 ‘experimental theatre’29 event, Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, became significant in the context of Silent explosion at National Museum Wales as it was identified as an early example of performance art in Wales30 and the only performance of Davies’s in the 1960s that happened in Wales. That this multimedia work was score-based and has an extensive archive created an opportunity to explore the Museum’s capacity to introduce curatorial approaches beyond exhibiting the documentary evidence and remediate a multimedia and participatory event for contemporary spectators. The historical event occurred between 7:30 and 8:05 pm on the 21st of January 1968 in the Debates Chamber of University College Swansea, as part of an Arts Festival organized by then-student John Plant. According to the four slightly different versions of the remaining cue-sheets Davies prepared for the performers, we also know that, at least on paper, the event included simultaneous slide projections of art historical imagery and an unidentified film on a large paper screen; manually controlled green, red, and blue lights; pre-recorded sounds of birdsong, children playing, gunfire, silence, and male and female voices; and performers including a male and female nudes acting as Adam and Eve, a pianist, a rock and roll band, a surgeon, and others moving around wearing collaged cardboard boxes. The cue-sheets reveal Davis planned these actions to be punctuated by five explosions from which the audience participants would be ‘protected’ by wearing brown paper bags over their heads.

28  Real 2001, 221. 29  Davies never really used the word performance; instead he variously described his works as event, happening, demonstration, experimental theatre, or multimedia spectacle. All these in retrospect fall under the umbrella term of performance art or time-based media. 30  Roms 2009.

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Figure 4.2 Ivor Davies, cue-sheet for the performance Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968, Swansea, 21 January 1968 photo: Ivor Davies

Adam on St Agnes’ Eve was filmed by Alan Brooks, a staff member at the University, who gave the documentation to Davies after the event. This blackand-white 8 mm film records approximately six minutes of the performance, but the reel was subsequently spliced and reassembled sometime after the event. More recently the film has been digitized in preparation for exhibitions, and by now it exists in several formats and slightly different versions, including: – a VHS recording of a projection of the 8 mm film projected; – part of a looped-film that shows documentation of all of Davies’s 1960s performances in a non-consecutive order; – a DVD also including still photographs of the same event added to the film to fill gaps in the film sequence; and – a DVD made for the 2015 Silent explosion, with the sequence of the film reordered according to the artist’s contemporary recollection of the 1968 event. Each of these versions of the film has a different status in relation to the historical performance event. The version with the embedded still photographs and the version made for the 2015 exhibition are now in the artist’s private collection and used as his preferred and ‘authorized’ exhibition copies. The original

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8 mm film reel and the other variations, however, are only available as contextual research material, having been deposited at the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, Aberystwyth. Davies’s approach to archiving evokes the idea of the ‘citational act’ through which—according to performance and theatre scholar Rebecca Schneider—performances ‘remain differently’ to historical events.31 While the artist never chose to reperform the historical event, his continuous reworking of the remaining archive is arguably ‘citational’ in altering the work’s materiality by creating variations of its historical documentation. In this process of performative documentation knowledge about the work is generated through noticing the difference between these variations. To further explore Davies’s multimedia performances, an even broader perspective on materiality can be drawn from new media curator and critic Jacob Lillemose’s Conceptual transformation of art. From dematerialisation of the object to immateriality in networks (2006), in which the author rethinks the concept of ‘dematerialization’32 in relation to ‘post-object’ practices rooted in 1960s–1970s conceptual art. Unlike the understanding of dematerialization as the ‘critique of the object’ or the ‘dismissal of materiality’, Lillemose proposes we consider it as ‘material multiplicity’ or ‘contextual materiality’. He argues that such redefinition separates the notion of materiality from the physical object to allow a connection with processes such as ‘continuous conceptual recoding, reorganisation, redistribution, recontextualisation and reinterpretation’ as material elements.33 Schneider and Lillemose’s theories were instrumental to my curatorial thinking, as they opened up paths to explore a ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’ relationship between materiality and immateriality in performance. While Schneider redefines performance as that which remains but differently (through citational acts and ritual repetition), Lillemose redefines dematerialization as a predominantly material aesthetic, where temporality itself has a material ontology. Schneider’s extended notion of the archive (through which repetition can be considered as a form of documentation) and Lillemose’s extended notion of dematerialization (through which reinterpretation and recontextualization can be considered as materiality) merge in Christopher Bedford’s redefinition of performance itself as ‘viral’ ontology where the historical event ‘splinters, mutates, multiplies over time infinitely in the hands of various critical constituencies in a variety of media’.34

31  Schneider 2001, 103, 106. 32  Lippard 1973. 33  Lillemose 2006, 121. 34  Bedford 2012, 78.

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These emerging perspectives on performance art not only ‘shift the attention from the historical live event to its mediation and transmission’, as scholar Gabriela Giannachi argues,35 but also establish it as an ‘aesthetics of change’, as explored in Hölling’s writings through the critical framework of ‘changeability’ defined as ‘an artwork’s potential to transform from one condition, appearance, or constitution to another’.36 While changeability is often used to describe media art that needs to be reperformed or reinstalled every time anew to materialize (such as in the case of many Fluxus scores), the term can also refer to physical changes in the appearance of an artwork as the result of these works’ museification, including the replacement of obsolescent media components in multimedia installations, for instance, or the collection and presentation of previously active media or kinetic works as relics or documents. Hölling’s definition of changeability and Bedford’s idea of performance art as viral ontology further expands the material identity of performance as connected with the work’s historical production (the cultural biography of its objects) to include its proliferation through a variety of media (the work’s trajectory over time). Keen to bring contemporary discourses of changeability to bear on our approach to Silent explosion, I proposed to the artist and the co-curator to collaboratively reimagine how we could exhibit and integrate Adam on St Agnes’ Eve within the exhibition beyond the documentary film, in a way that collected the work’s archive, as drawn from both documentation and memory, and presented it according to the work’s character as multimedia event. Given, as performance scholar Heike Roms argues, the ‘deeply contingent nature of both documentation and memory’ in performance, where artists often ‘don’t remember or remember differently certain details of their past work that are revealed by the documentation’,37 a key issue to consider was how to maintain the conceptual and material identity of this work through its re-presentation. A practical framework that influenced our approach in addressing this was the Variable Media Approach developed initially by the American curator Jon Ippolito as a creative preservation strategy for the Guggenheim’s media art collections.38 The term ‘variable media’ refers to materially unstable, manifold, and inherently changeable contemporary art practices (including performance art) in collections as they enter the museum. The Variable Media Approach suggests that collecting data about the behavioural aspects of media artworks 35  Giannachi 2014. 36  Hölling 2017, 76. See also Hölling 2015. 37  Roms 2007, xi–xii. 38  Depocas et al. 2003.

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help maintain their integrity in collections even if the media historically used by the artist needs to change over time. The Variable Media Questionnaire has been developed for museums to record artists’ ideas about the work’s core characteristics and how these could be maintained, if at all, as part of collections. Depending on how open an artist is towards considering the material variability of artworks, their storage (protection of physical matter), emulation (imitation of the feel and look of artworks with different means than used by the artist), migration (upgrading the work’s technological elements), and even reinterpretation (reforming the ‘basic aspects of the work’s appearance in order to retain the original spirit’) can all be considered as options for preservation and—consequently—future presentation strategy.39 While we did not use the Variable Media Questionnaire directly in the exhibition project, the idea of media-independent preservation strategies and theories of performative archiving influenced my curatorial proposal. Alongside exhibiting the material archive of the 1968 event, we experimented with its reinterpretation through two different approaches to the archive, thus further constituting the work’s materiality through new variations. Such a curatorial approach seemed particularly fitting for presenting Davies’s performances, given that his own practice is characterized by a process of remaking and recycling material. The first approach I proposed was a form of ‘remediation’ whereby Davies, in collaboration with curators and other museum staff, including conservators and AV technicians, would define the present material formation of his historical performance, embracing its ‘spirit’ rather than historic appearance but adjusted to gallery context. The second was a commission to a ‘reperformance’ by another artist based on existing archival material. 3

The Remediation and Reperformance of Adam on St Agnes’ Eve

‘Remediation’, as coined by new media scholars Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, is the ‘repurposing’ or the ‘recycling of a particular subject matter taken from one medium within another medium without displaying a formal interaction between the two media’.40 A simple example of remediation is a film adaptation of a novel. In the context of performance art, remediation could be considered as an instance of the ‘proliferative preservation’ that Ippolito and Richard Rinehart proposed to consider the creative reinterpretations of media

39  Rinehart & Ippolito 2014, 9–10. 40  Bolter & Grusin 1999, 45.

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artworks as part of their material ‘genealogies’.41 Reinterpretations of a Fluxus score might exemplify a form of proliferative preservation in the histories of performance art, whereby artworks develop a cumulative but non-linear genealogy of their variations, creating an ever-changing authorship at every turn. The proposal of proliferative preservation in a museum context (collection or exhibition) would acknowledge such contingent complexity and hybridity of authorship and spectatorship in each instance of the work’s historical unfolding. While preservation through reinterpretation might comply with the behaviour of media artworks, these new perspectives on the material identity of performance artworks as changeable, viral, and manifold challenge museums’ long-held understanding of them as ‘non-material’ and therefore ‘uncollectable’ art.42 The impact of this is central to the recent shift from static displays of performance objects (relics and documentation) to an emphasis on ‘liveness’ and ‘presence’ (re-enactment, reperformance, restaging).43 Exhibitions that involve live performance, whether as repetition of a past event or as new work, are now increasingly prevalent—not least because of museums’ acknowledgement of the importance of ‘intangible heritage’44 and that which art historian Dorothea von Hantelmann describes as a ‘methodological shift in how we look at any artwork and in the way in which it produces meaning’ as a move from what an artwork ‘“says” to what it “does”’.45 To develop ideas for the remediation of Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, I invited Davies and Plant to visit the University of Swansea with me and record an interview. Being in the same place together after not seeing each other for almost fifty years rekindled their memories and, perhaps more importantly for our research, revealed the differences between Davies’s intentions (insofar as can be seen from the cue-sheet) and what actually happened during the event. Both remembered that the explosions that were planned to mark the change of actions during the event couldn’t be accommodated in the space, while other actions happened in spite of the artist’s written instructions as participants improvised. The interview also gave Davies a chance to reconsider the artwork in retrospect, which ultimately greatly informed the remediation process. His remark, for example, that the ‘unconscious actions’ of the participants were the ‘most effective’ part of the work was particularly interesting given his plan 41  Rinehart & Ippolito 2014, 181. 42  Laurenson & Van Saaze 2013. 43  Examples can be found in Berrebi & Folkerts 2015, Jones 2012b, and Guy 2016. 44   u nesco 2003, 2§1. 45  Von Hantelmann 2014.

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for the event was scripted and highly controlled.46 Both the artist’s recollection and the remaining cue-sheets pointed towards an idea for a work that seemed close to ‘a type of Happening’ that American critic Richard Kostelanetz described in 1968 as ‘kinetic environment’ that is ‘structurally open in time and, as form(s), capable of encouraging participational attention’.47 The next step in the process was to persuade the artist to use his 1968 cue-sheets and not the film documentation of the event as a starting point for remediation, despite his view of the film as its ‘authentic’ representation. By using the cue-sheet, I aimed to distinguish between his ideas for the performance and its historical materialization at a certain moment in time (the event) and open it up for a new interpretation adapted to the new museum context. The idea of reinterpretation provided an opportunity to consider the artist’s changing intentions in the exhibition of the work in 2015. In the interview and subsequent conversations, I particularly focused on what Davies himself might see as central to the artwork’s present experience. He described the work fundamentally as an environment in which the projection, sound, and light effects resemble ‘a beautiful, slightly strange, soothing but slightly disquieting forest of sound, shadows and birdsong’.48 Davies was keen to use what he called ‘authentic’ relics in the remediated environment, alongside replicas. This prompted discussions about the function of remediation as conservation and rematerialization strategies and about the primacy that the authentic object traditionally enjoys in the museum. Davies agreed that to focus on the experience of the artwork, the relics from 1968 should not be presented separately from the remediated environment. The relics in question were two cardboard boxes with collaged newspaper cuttings of ‘eyes’ and ‘lips’. These two boxes were worn by performers in different performances in the 1960s and, according to the cue-sheets, were also animated with pre-recorded sounds (this cannot be evidenced by the remaining film document) in Adam on St Agnes’ Eve. In 2013 we found the boxes in the artist’s studio, dismantled, stored flat, and wrapped in polythene. In order to use them in the remediated museum environment, conservators, curators, and the artist needed to first work out together how to return the now two-dimensional archival objects into three-dimensional shapes. Another challenge concerned how to re-form the cardboard into ‘talking’ boxes reanimated with hidden speakers as part of a synchronised sound and light environment of 14-minute duration to reflect their behaviour in the 1968 performance. Davies was keen 46  Davies in Bodor et al. 2015. 47  Kostelanetz 1968, 8. 48  Davies in Bodor et al. 2015.

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Figure 4.3 Ivor Davies and Emily O’Reilly, paper conservator, with relics from Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968, at the artist’s studio in Penarth, Wales photo: Judit Bodor, 2013

on cleaning the boxes in the process so they might look new in the exhibition, which seemed not only to potentially contradict his apparent interest in ‘destruction’ as obsolescence and material transformation but also impossible, as their ‘aging was irreversible’, in the opinion of the paper conservator.49 The next issue in the remediation process was how to adapt a historical event of 35 minutes’ duration to ‘gallery time’.50 The manually controlled sound and light processes could be replaced with a multi-screen synchronised projection, light, and sound environment presented on a loop, which pleased the artist. Regarding the actions of performers, there was the possibility of asking new artists to reinterpret the 1968 instructions within the remediated environment, but Davies was not keen on this idea. For example, the 1968 cue-sheet included instructions for hired performers to play the piano at certain moments and move around wearing boxes; a nude male and female figure to stand in front of the projection as ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’; an artist-friend (Ian Breakwell), acting as a 49  O’Reilly et al. 2016; Thornton 2015. 50  Bishop 2012, 231.

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surgeon, to read loudly and cut the projection screen; and viewer-spectators to wear paper bags on their heads. In the remediated version, the elements that were performed by hired performers and artists in 1968 had to be cut out, as the artist could only imagine these re-enacted with the ‘original’ participants. Ultimately, we agreed to address ‘liveness’ through allowing viewers’ spontaneous actions within the environment, which seemed to reflect Davies’s present idea of these actions as the work’s ‘most effective’ element rather than the instructions on the cue-sheet. The participants were free to play the piano, move the replica boxes around in the space, and experience the sound and light environment with paper bags on their heads. The remediated version adapted the artwork to the architecture of the gallery and the duration of the exhibition by using a mix of relics and replica elements in a room-sized installation focusing on the viewers’ experiential encounter with the kinetic environment. The relics were incorporated into the installation and only distinguishable from the replicas by being put on a low plinth. My second curatorial approach to reinterpretation was to revisit the historical event from the vantage point of an artist working in performance today. I was interested in repetition as embodied form of archiving and, in repositioning the historic event for a contemporary spectator, also to think laterally around ideas of reconstruction. I invited performance artist and theatre director Mike Pearson, whose method of ‘Theatre/Archaeology’ has been described by his collaborator, the archaeologist and scholar Michael Shanks, as the ‘rearticulation of fragments of the past as real-time event’.51 Theatre/Archaeology not only responded to my curatorial interest in alternative approaches to reinterpretation but seemed to have the capacity to deal with the theatrical characteristic of Davies’s multimedia performance. Inspired by model-making traditions in museums, architecture, and crime reconstructions, Pearson proposed to ‘remodel’ Adam on St Agnes’ Eve on 1:25 scale, to study, refabricate, and reperform—albeit in miniature—the artwork’s material identity. He worked with graduate theatre design students from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama to build a miniature architectural model of the 1968 performance and ‘remodel’ every possible material element of the event listed on the cue-sheet. The group tested the possibility of all of Davies’s instructions in real-time, including actions that were left out from the 1968 event, such as the explosions. In the gallery next to the remediated environment, we displayed the entirety of Davies’s now catalogued Destruction in art archive as contextual material for his 1960s performances. It was in this traditionally displayed documentary archival setting that on 21 January 2016—the 51  Shanks 2013.

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Figure 4.4 Q-lab cues for synchronised sound, visual and light elements in Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968/2015. From Silent explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art, 2015–2016. AV technician: Chris Hardwick photo: Judit Bodor

Figure 4.5 Spectator participation in Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968/2015. From Silent explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art, 2015–2016, Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales photo: Judit Bodor

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Figure 4.6 Adam on St Agnes’ Eve, 1968/2015, multimedia environment created by Ivor Davies, Judit Bodor and Nicholas Thornton (curators), Emily O’Reilly (conservator), Chris Hardwick (AV), Charlie Upton (sound), and Luned Aaron (artist) for Silent explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art, 2015–2016, Amgueddfa Cymru— National Museum Wales photo: Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales

anniversary of the historical event—Pearson and his collaborators reperformed Adam on St Agnes’ Eve at a 1:25 scale. Standing around the 1:25 model, the group manipulated the miniature props and figures by hand and used a micro-camera to plot a journey that would trace an ‘original’ viewer’s movement through space. The feed from the camera was projected onto a large screen so that the audience, seated in the same room around the group, could watch the ‘live’ documentation of the miniature performance and simultaneously experience the performers’ actions around the table. Before the event we also gave out replica paper masks and asked the audience members to put them on their heads to protect against the explosions, which in the case of the miniature performance—as opposed to the 1968 event—could actually be demonstrated. Once the reperformance was over, the architectural model, with props positioned according to the last scene of the performance, was carried from the archival room to the other gallery to complete the remediated environment of Adam on St Agnes’ Eve. To this end, my curatorial approach demonstrated an emphasis upon the behavioural—rather than media-specific—elements of the work’s material

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Figure 4.7 Adam on St Agnes’ Eve 1:25, 21 January 2016, devised and performed by Mike Pearson with Anna Kelsey and Sebastian Noel, Sam Barnes, Richard Huw Morgan, and John Rowley photo: Holly Heathcote

Figure 4.8 Adam on St Agnes’ Eve 1:25, 21 January 2016, devised and performed by Mike Pearson with Anna Kelsey and Sebastian Noel, Sam Barnes, Richard Huw Morgan, and John Rowley photo: Judit Bodor

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identity and an interest in generating a contemporary form of Adam on St Agnes’ Eve that reinvents this artwork for a museum environment. Through remediation and reperformance, the authenticity of the historical 1968 event was overridden—albeit on a different scale—in favour of the authenticity of the concept as revealed by the score. The remediation was a collaborative process of production with the artist based on our understanding of the material identity of the artwork and accommodating Davies’s changing intentions. Mike Pearson’s reperformance was based only on the material archive and prioritized the authenticity of the performers’ expression in interpreting the 1968 cue-sheet. While both remediation and reperformance integrated scenographic design with performance and used the event score (cue-sheet) as the basis of reinterpretation, they materialized the artwork very differently. Whereas the remediated human-scale environment rematerialized the work’s intangible archival elements as a temporal montage of light, sound, and projection, the reperformance foregrounded the work’s spatial reproduction and the actions of the performers—in miniature. The reperformance also articulated a complex indexical relationship on the one hand to another historical space and time and on the other to the projected image on the screen, thus presenting the microcosm and macrocosm from inside and outside of the event at once. It also reintroduced the spectator of the historical event as a scale figure whose actions could be followed by the seated audience in the gallery watching a projected video feed from a miniature camera. 4

Questions and Challenges

The exhibition raised questions about authorship and posterity in performance and highlighted that every past, present, and future materialization of the work needs contributors, mediators, and collaborators other than the artist, such as artists, curators, participants, conservators, and technicians. In the case of the reperformance Pearson got full credit for his variation of the performance; however, it remains a question how his work could ever be interpreted, re-exhibited, or collected in museums independently of Davies. In the case of the remediation, the wall text described the new environment as a collaboratively produced variation of the historical performance, entitled Adam on St Agnes’ Eve 1968/2015. However, after the exhibition, Davies only kept the material archive from the 1968 event, while the new multiscreen presentation created for the 2015 variation, including the new sound recordings created by Davies to animate the boxes, were left with the museum to be discarded with other elements of the installation. Given the status of Adam on St Agnes’ Eve

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as not yet being in any public collection, the piece is dependent on a changing and different set of rules and concerns than those performances already in collections. Davies has all the freedom to change or reimagine its elements and even allow museum curators to be his co-authors in resuscitating the work from the archives for experimental purposes. However, the artist’s disconnection from the remediated variation after the exhibition shows that while a temporary exhibition might be a context for collaboration and experimentation, the proliferative preservation of this performance would not be his choice in the case of the artwork’s future collection. While changing perceptions of the material identity of performance art raise questions about its collectability, different concerns also arise regarding a performance’s future ‘repeatability’52 once collected as ‘live art’. The issue of repetition in museums, however, is less to do with the transmission of cultural knowledge (as in the field of performance studies) and more with the transmission of authenticity and authorship. The issue, as noted by scholars Pip Laurenson and Hölling,53 lies in differentiation between types of authenticity that Denis Dutton described as ‘expressive authenticity’, or ‘faithfulness to the performer’s own self’54 versus ‘nominal authenticity’, or faithfulness to the artwork’s historical production.55 As performance art only comes into being in the moment of its unfolding in time, the question for museums is how to maintain the artist’s authorship over the re-production of these artworks without losing the integrity of the works as ‘changeable’ or going against institutional ethics of authorship. While methods of ‘proliferative preservation’ such as reinterpretation and remediation might provide means to preserve the artwork’s integrity through the authenticity of expression, such an approach remains ‘controversial’ in collections due to the loss of the artwork’s ‘original’ materiality and ‘authorial context’.56 Given these issues, artists and museums often favour the preservation of performance art through ‘delegated performance’, in which hired performers (amateur or professional) ‘undertake the job of being present and performing at a particular time and particular place on behalf of the artist, and following his/her instructions’.57 While delegated performance allows museums to maintain the artists’ authority and ensure ‘a certain potential for the work’s longevity, it’s not yet clear how the work can continue to survive unless the 52  Laurenson & Van Saaze 2013. 53  Laurenson 2006; Hölling 2014. 54  Kivy 1995, cited in Dutton 2003. 55  Dutton 2003. 56  Rinehart & Ippolito 2014. 57  Bishop 2012, 219.

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[museum] context can further adapt to its needs’.58 One of the challenges is that preservation through delegated performance freezes artworks materially, including the performers’ actions, and prevents any future creative reinterpretation. Preserving a work through delegated performance can also be a financially unsustainable option for many institutions, as the maintenance of artworks as ‘live’ art is not only logistically complex but also often very expensive. This can lead to museums’ inability to show the works again and thus the long-term invisibility of these artworks. The quest to find approaches to the exhibition, collection, and preservation of historical performance art that are sympathetic to both the artwork and the context of the museum continues to be challenging. 5

By Way of Conclusion

Overall, my curatorial approach focused on how an event-structured and multimedia artwork might live on in the context of a temporary exhibition. While issues of the artwork’s collectability are relevant, my primary interest was in exhibiting this historical event as a sensory interaction of the spectator with the environment to parallel the temporal, multimedia, and participatory nature of the artwork. As such, my curatorial work followed a ‘material culture’ (rather than ‘visual culture’ or ‘art historical’) approach to reinterpretation, influenced by notions of performance as ‘viral ontology’ and practical preservation strategies connected with ideas around the variability and changeability of contemporary art. The remediated environment and reperformance both radically transformed the appearance of the historical event but also remained faithful to the artwork’s ‘logic’ and ‘spirit’ as a scenographic multimedia performance environment. In the case of remediation, the collaborative production created an overlap between curatorial and artistic processes that might bring up the question of whether, as Groys argues, in contemporary art ‘a distinction between (curated) exhibition and (artistic) installation is … essentially obsolete’.59 While the reinterpretations did not provide a resolution for Davies in how his historical performance might continue in the future, the exhibition certainly provided a case study for exploring how such artworks could live on in museum contexts but differently. The remediated and reperformed versions of Adam on St Agnes’ Eve that visitors experienced in the exhibition were as mutable, partial, subject to change, and difficult to define as the historical 58  Wood 2014, 135. 59  Groys 2007.

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event had been, all three alternating between the ideal of the artwork as conceived by the artist on the 1968 cue-sheet and its appearance as encountered by spectators then, now, and in the future. While the material archive remains in the artist’s ownership, the remediated environment and the reperformance, just as the event in 1968, is now part of the artwork’s history and thus its explicit material. Bibliography Allsopp, Ric, On dissemination, 2007, online publication: www.lanimal.org/image/ memoria/139/pdf/071001-139-15%20.pdf [accessed 12 January 2017]. Auslander, Philip, ‘The performativity of performance documentation’, Performing Arts Journal 84 (2006), online publication: http://lmc.gatech.edu/~auslander/ publications/28.3auslander.pdf [accessed 7 April 2014]. Auslander, Philip, ‘Surrogate performances. Performance documentation and the New York avant-garde, ca. 1964–74’, in: Elizabeth Carpenter (ed.), On performativity (2014), online publication: http://walkerart.org/collections/publications/performa tivity/surrogate-performances [accessed 17 January 2017]. Bedford, Christopher, ‘The viral ontology of performance’, in: Jones and Heathfield 2012, 77–89. Berrebi, Sophie and Hendrik Folkerts, ‘The place of performance’, Stedeljik Studies 3 (2015), online publication: http://www.stedelijkstudies.com/journal/the-place-of -performance/ [accessed 17 January 2017]. Bodor, Judit, ‘Ivor Davies Destruction in Art (DIA) Archive’, in: Roms 2015, insert. Bodor, Judit, ‘Silent explosion. The making of an exhibition’, in: Roms 2015, 124–146. Bodor, Judit, in conversation with Ivor Davies (excerpt), Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales, Cardiff (camera: Rhodri Davies), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=gpVhKVueM-U [accessed 17 January 2017]. Bishop, Claire, Artificial hells. Participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, London 2012. Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin, Remediation. Understanding new media, Cambridge, MA 1999. Buren, Daniel, The function of the studio, 1971, online publication: www.bortolami gallery.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/buren_studio.pdf?x36627 [accessed 12 January 2017]. De Freitas, Karina, ‘Preservation of media arts. Interview with Jon Ippolito’, technoarte news, 24 July 2012, online publication: www.technoartenews.com/curadoria -de-conteudos-em-arte-contemporanea/preservation-of-media-arts-interview-with -jon-ippolito-by-karina-de-freitas-2/ [accessed 17 January 2017].

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Depocas, Alain, Jon Ippolito and Caitlin Jones (eds.), Permanence through change. The variable media initiative, 2003, online publication: www.variablemedia.net/e/ preserving/html/var_pub_index.html [accessed 12 January 2017]. Dutton, Denis, Authenticity in art, 2003, online publication: http://www.denisdutton. com/authenticity.htm [accessed 12 January 2017]. Fischer-Lichte, Erika, ‘Vom “Text” zur “Performance”—Der “Performative turn” in den Kulturwissenschaften’, Kunstforum International 152 (2000), 161–163. Giannachi, Gabriella, ‘Performance at Tate. The scholarly and museological context’, Tate Papers 8 (2014), online publication: www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/ articles/performance-at-tate-scholarly-museological-context [accessed 16 January 2017]. Groys, Boris, ‘Multiple authorship’, IDEA 26 (2007), online publication: http://idea.ro/ revista/?q=en/node/41&articol=469 [accessed 17 January 2017]. Groys, Boris, In the flow, London 2016. Guy, Georgina, Theatre, exhibition, and curation. Displayed & performed, New York 2016. Hao, Sophia and Matthew Hearn (eds.), NOTES on a return, Newcastle 2010. Hölling, Hanna B., ‘Seeking the authentic moment. De- and re-materialisations in Paik’s video and multimedia installations’, AICCM Bulletin 34 (2014), 85–92. Hölling, Hanna B., Revisions. Zen for film, New York 2015. Hölling, Hanna B., ‘The aesthetics of change. On the relative durations of the impermanent,’ in: Emma Hermens and Frances Robertson (eds.), Authenticity in transition. Changing practices in contemporary art making and conservation, London 2015, 13–24. Hölling, Hanna B., Paik’s virtual archive. Time, change, and materiality in media art, Berkeley 2017. Jones, Amelia, ‘“Presence” in absentia. Experiencing performance as documentation’, Art Journal 56 (1997), no. 4, 11–18. Jones, Amelia, ‘Temporal anxiety/“presence” in absentia. Experiencing performance as documentation’, in: Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks (eds.), Archaeologies of presence. London 2012, 197–222. Jones, Amelia, ‘Timeline of ideas. Live art in (art) history, a primarily European-USbased trajectory of debates and exhibitions relating to performance documentation and re-enactments’, in: Jones and Heathfield 2012, 425–434. Jones, Amelia and Adrian Heathfield (eds.), Perform, Repeat, Record. Live Art in History, London 2012. Kostelanetz, Richard, The mixed-means medium, 1968, online publication: http://www .belgiumishappening.net/home/publications/1968-00-00_kostelanetz_mixedmeans [accessed 17 January 2017]. Laurenson, Pip, ‘Authenticity, change and loss in the conservation of time-based media installations’, Tate Papers 6 (2006), online publication: https://www.tate.org.uk/

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research/publications/tate-papers/06/authenticity-change-and-loss-conservation -of-time-based-media-installations [accessed 12 January 2017]. Laurenson, Pip and Vivian van Saaze, ‘Collecting performance-based art. New challenges and shifting perspectives’, in: Outi Remes, Laura MacCulloch and Mariko Leino (eds.), Performativity in the gallery, London 2013, 27–41. Lillemose, Jacob, Conceptual transformations of art. From dematerialisation of the object to immateriality in networks, 2006, online publication: heavysideindustries.com/ wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Lillemose.pdf [accessed 12 January 2017]. Lippard, Lucy, Six years. The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972, London 1973. MacDonald, Corrina, ‘Scoring the work. Documenting practice and performance in variable media art’, Leonardo 42 (2009), no. 1, 59–63. Marinetti, Tomasso, ‘The first Futurist manifesto’, in: Christine Poggi and Laura Wittman (eds.), Futurism. An anthology, New Haven 2009, 49–54. O’Reilly, Emily, Rose Miller and Judit Bodor, ‘Curation, conservation and the artist in Silent explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art’, Studies in Conservation 61 (2016), 167–173. Pearson, Mike and Michael Shanks, Theatre/Archaeology. Disciplinary dialogues, London 2001. Petzold, Denise, ‘(Im)Materiality in the museum. Shaping Joseph Beuys’s information action through curating documentation’, paper given at NCCA conference, ‘Material Futures. Matter Memory and Loss in Contemporary Art Production and Preservation’, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 28–30 June 2017. Phelan, Peggy, Unmarked. The politics of performance, London 1993. Phelan, Peggy (in conversation with Marquard Smith), ‘Performance, live culture and things of the heart’, Journal of Visual Culture 2 (2003), no. 3, 291–302. Real, William A., ‘Toward guidelines for practice in the preservation and documentation of technology-based installation art’, Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 40 (2001), no. 3, 211–231, online publication: https://eai.org/resource guide/preservation/installation/pdf/william_real.pdf [accessed 17 January 2017]. Rinehart, Richard and Jon Ippolito, Re-collection. Art, new media, and social memory, Cambridge, MA 2014. Roms, Heike, What’s Welsh for performance? An oral history of performance art in Wales 1968–2008, vol. 1, Cardiff 2007. Roms, Heike, ‘Destruction in art. Interviewee: Ivor Davies’, in: An oral history of performance art in Wales—hanes llafar celfyddyd perfformio yng Nghymru, 2009, online publication: http://www.performance-wales.org/it-was-40-years-ago-today/inter views/40_Davies.htm [accessed 17 January 2017]. Roms, Heike (ed.), Silent explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art, London 2015.

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Schneider, Rebecca, ‘(Archives) performance remains’, Performance Research 6 (2001), 100–108. Schneider, Rebecca, ‘Performance remains’, in: Jones and Heathfield 2012, 137–140. Stiles, Kristine, ‘Survival ethos and destruction art’, Discourse. Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 14 (1992), no. 2, online publication: http://digitalcom mons.wayne.edu/discourse/vol14/iss2/5/ [accessed 17 January 2017]. Stiles, Kristine, ‘Essay on destruction art’, in: Alex Adriaansens, Joke Brouwer, Rik Delhaas and Eugenie den Uyl (eds.), Book for the unstable media, Hertogenbosch 1992, reprinted in Selected Comments on Destruction Art, online publication: http:// v2.nl/archive/articles/selected-comments-on-destruction-art [accessed 12 January 2017]. Stiles, Kristine, ‘Survival ethos and destruction art’, in: Concerning Consequences: Studies in Art, Destruction and Trauma, Chicago 2016, 29–47. Thornton, Nicholas, ‘Between studio and museum. How objects perform’, in: Roms 2015, 56–70. unesco, Convention for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage (Paris, 17 October 2003), online publication: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/ 001325/132540e.pdf [accessed 14 December 2016]. Von Hantelmann, Dorothea, ‘The experiential turn’, in: Elizabeth Carpenter (ed.), On performativity, 2014, online publication: http://walkerart.org/collections/publica tions/performativity/experiential-turn [accessed 17 January 2017]. Wood, Catherine, ‘In advance of the broken arm. Collecting live art and the museum’s changing game’, in: Theresa Calonje (ed.), Live forever. Collecting live art, London 2014, 123–147.

Chapter 5

Framing Intention

Presentation as Preservation Strategy in Video Art Katharina Ammann 1 Introduction1 When the word ‘presentation’ is used in relation to video, it can refer to at least three separate meanings: the core playback and display technology, the installation or spatial context conditioned by that technology, or the actual act of performance when the video is played back. The interplay of these factors creates a very specific condition of showing, which makes the medium of video such a fruitful example in the current discourse around materiality and art in the digital age. This paper will first discuss the concept of ‘presentation’ and then explore the boundaries between the video work, its context, and the space of its performance. Do we curators and conservators have to regard the mode of presentation of a video as an integral and constitutive part of the artwork? Moreover, what is the relationship between the material and semantic aspects of a video work? Starting from the current tensions within art scholarship between visual and material studies, and drawing on my curatorial background, I discuss various approaches to preservation that have been developed in recent years in response to the crucial challenges in preserving, presenting, and maintaining so-called time-based media (a notion that relates to media encompassing play back and display technology as well as performance art). Taking the work of David Claerbout (b. 1969 in Belgium) as a main focus of this essay, I will demonstrate that the medium of his work not only requires the implementation of a different set of preservation strategies but also asks us to consider a general realignment, or overlap, between the traditionally defined roles of artist, curator, conservator, and technician. Through these observations it will become apparent that the word ‘presentation’ in relation to video art can signify not only the three meanings mentioned above but also act as a synonym for preservation, since even the regular exhibition of a video work requires its continued migration onto successive playable formats.

1  This contribution has been translated from German by Kate Vanovitch.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004396852_007

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My emphasis here on video art, and specifically single-channel video,2 may appear almost conventional given the presence of this topic in contemporary art discourse in recent years in general and, in particular, the many publications relating to the close nexus of ‘conceive—curate—conserve’—a theme that goes well beyond the realm of video art alone.3 I focus on a single-channel video for two reasons: first, because the medium’s formal simplicity allows for a better assessment of theories related to the curatorial and conservation practice, and second, because video art, which can now look back on a 50-year history of its own, marks the point of origin for media art more generally and therefore has implications reaching far beyond itself. The rapid rate of obsolescence of video technology when compared to traditional media is at least one cause of increased interest we now see in the issue of interdisciplinary models of curatorial and conservation practice. 2

Video Presentation: Situation and Performance

In this discussion I will look at how Claerbout’s installation instructions for the projection of his video Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine) (2001) relate to the actual presentation of the work. Before delving further into the subject of Claerbout’s work, let me clarify what is 2  A single-channel video uses a single information source, a single playback device, and a single display mode, as opposed to multi-channel video works or video installations. 3  For instance, the 2010 essay collection Rethinking curating. Art after new media is based on the idea that our dealings with process-based, network-oriented, interactive media more generally both facilitate and require new approaches to curatorship, which Steve Dietz summarizes accordingly: ‘It’s not a book about new media, it’s about art: it’s not a book about curating new media, it’s about rethinking curating. Graham and Cook strategically define so-called new media as a set of behaviours, not as a medium.’ (Graham & Cook 2010, xiv). In Preserving and exhibiting media art (2013) strategies for retention and documentation are discussed—for instance, in the interview with conservator Pip Laurenson—in order to direct attention to the vitally essential and increasingly close collaboration between curators, art historians, and conservators (Noordegraaf et al. 2013, 282–290; see also Laurenson 2006). 2016 saw the publication of Authenticity in transition. Changing practices in art making and conservation, in which primarily practitioners of the conservation sciences but also curators and theoreticians reflect on the material challenges not only of media art but also contemporary art more generally. It also addresses the blurring of lines between conventional professional roles (Hermens & Robertson 2016). A ground-breaking theoretician in this field is Salvador Muñoz Viñas, who in 2002 and 2005 respectively identified the differences between the classical and contemporary theories of conservation (Muñoz Viñas 2002). He considers the long-established notion of an object’s truth and original condition to be too restrictive and advocates the more comprehensive notion of conservation as a social process.

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meant by the ‘presentation’ of artistic video—that is, let me for a moment centre on the significance of the electronic devices required to physically play it and on its aesthetic and historic dimensions. ‘Video’ does not necessarily mean that what is played back is a visual content of a videotape. The actual technology—the carrier of the image and the play back technology—varies depending on the type of storage of the video information and the decade from which it originated, ranging from open-reel or cassette players (for videos magnetically stored on tapes) to LaserDisc or DVD players (for optical disc storage formats) all the way to computers (using digital encoding formats). Without these playback and display devices that decipher the information carrier’s analogue or digital code, transform it into visual signals, and then reproduce them, the video image would remain invisible, although not non-existent. The importance of the presentation question in the case of video arises from the medium’s latency, with its inherent need for embodiment or materialization. On their own, neither the raw data nor the information carrier can be described as a work of art. The work of art can only be perceived by a viewer in the materialized form during a presentation. Of course, even a traditional medium such as a painting only becomes a visible public object through the act of exhibition. Even if one agrees with philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel or sociologist Pierre Bourdieu that art is only created in the eye of the beholder and thus that a painting must be presented before it can be perceived,4 once the presentation is over, back in storage or the climate-controlled crate, the painting maintains its materialized condition, self-identical over time. This is not to use the word ‘identity’ in an essentialist manner, since even these relatively stable objects are individual and hybrid constructs that intrinsically carry changeability within them, whether this is in relation to the material decay of their components or to changes in their meaning or value.5 On the other hand, those components of a video that can be physically stored—for instance, a VHS cassette and recorder or an MPEG-4 file on a hard drive—cannot on their own—that is, without being installed and played back—provide any kind of insight into the content of the work nor into its appearance or impact. This is one of the reasons why video is also known as an immaterial medium.6 4  Hegel 1925, 283; Bourdieu 1970, 181. 5  Eastop 2013, 516. 6  See, for example, the conference ‘Preserving the immaterial. A conference on variable media’, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 30–31 March 2001; transcripts available online: http://www.variablemedia.net/e/preserving/html/var_pre_index.html, [accessed 29 October 2017]; and Paul 2007, 251–274.

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That said, this notion of immateriality is derived more than anything from the video image itself. It is constantly changing and consequently never remains identical from one moment to the next, a quality the philosopher Boris Groys has described as ‘non-identity’,7 while philosopher Gilles Deleuze calls this flowing, impermanent medium an ‘immedium’.8 The notion of the immaterial image has been further reinforced by the projection set-up, which has evolved since the 1990s. Images projected inside ‘black boxes’ appear as if from nowhere, as the technological apparatus remains largely unseen. The concept of the black box emerged in response to the white cube, the customary gallery setting since the era of modernism.9 It signifies a separate space constructed within an exhibition area for projecting videos. This not only creates the required darkness but also simultaneously separates the image and sound of video from affecting other spaces of the exhibition. Although video was introduced as a means of artistic expression in the 1960s, it was only in the 1990s that video art rapidly spread in exhibitions, which can be attributed at least in part to projectors, with their attractive presentation potential, becoming affordable for artists and institutions alike.10 During the same period, faced with a flood of images that grew exponentially with each new medium, art history was gradually being redefined as visual culture studies to reflect the iconic turn in society and in human sciences. From the 1990s, critical attention has generally centred on the logos of the image and the meaningfulness of visual information of art, while the materiality of the image has faded into the background, very much like in black box projection. 3

‘Doing’ Presentation: Artist—Curator—Conservator

‘Presenting’ encompasses the technological and spatial installation of a work as well as the very act of showing, of performance, of letting it run. Any presentation of video—a time-based medium—is akin to a theatre performance or a concert, not only due to its temporal sequence but also because of the inherent changeability of its appearance.11 So for every screening of a video, the 7  Groys 2006a, 53. 8  Deleuze 1985, 346–347. Deleuze is referring to Couchot’s term ‘immedium’ as in Couchot 1984. 9  Breitwieser 1996; Beil 2001; Manovich 2005. 10  More on the relationship between the economic and artistic development of video art with projectors in Ammann 2009, 200–201; Daniels 2006, 40–49. 11  On the concept of the score in media installations and the affinity to music and performance, see Laurenson 2006.

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‘embodiment of code’12 must be considered afresh, and this in itself indicates that each and every presentation, however simple, is necessarily a deliberate act of staging. The following quotation from the technical instructions provided in 2003 by David Claerbout for Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine) (in the following abbreviated to Vietnam) makes it clear that presenting a video involves intricately linked artistic and curatorial decisions: Do not install ‘Vietnam, 1967 …’ with another artwork or object into one room. Make sure that the place is silent and the room is completely darkened. Walls inside the room are painted black (excl. ceiling). The dimensions of the room are minimal 400 by 700 cm (depending on lensfactor for the distance of the projector to the projection-wall.) and 300 cm high. Ceiling is closed. Use a professional videoscreen or leave a clean white surface of 400 by 300 cm open while masking it with black paint. Make sure the composition of the projected image is centered and in balance. The projected image must have a painterly quality … use 6500° kelvin colour temperature … install the dvd-player and line doubler so that nobody can touch it. Installation by the artist or by an assistant of the artist.13 It is virtually unimaginable, in the context of a collection or group exhibition, that any artist would attach similarly categorical conditions for the presentation of their painting or object as Claerbout does for the installation of his single-channel video. According to Electronic Art Intermix, single-channel refers to ‘video or media work that involves a single information source (such as a DVD), a single playback device (such as a DVD player) and a single display mode (such as a flat-screen monitor)’.14 However, Claerbout’s instructions exceed this purely technical definition of single-channel video and go on to prescribe the entire spatial context. Over the course of the 1990s, numerous artists began to describe these single-channel video projections as ‘installations’, although their immaterial 12  Huber 2006, 58–63. 13  These specifications are from a technical installation sheet that Claerbout put together for the Goetz Collection in Munich, which Stephan Urbaschek made available with the artist’s consent. See fig. 5.1 for the full instructions. More on this work in Goetz & Urbaschek 2003, 123. 14  The non-profit organization EAI has posted a comprehensive glossary with terms used in video and media art on its website: http://www.eai.org/resourceguide/glossary.html [accessed 28 July 2017].

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manifestation fundamentally distinguished them from the technoid aesthetic of earlier video sculptures and multimedia installations. The early pioneers of video, such as Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, or Steina and Woody Vasulka, made a particular point of exposing the technology underlying their video installations, seeking to address the material conditionality of the new medium but also its societal mechanisms. The badly battered televisions, the loose cables, the closed-circuit video camera installations, the deliberately distorted TV images can all be related in a certain, albeit simplified, sense to Marshall McLuhan’s famous declaration, ‘The medium is the message’.15 However, even the supposedly unpretentious presentation of a single-channel video on a monitor provokes questions related to its historicity and the technology that was initially used to present the work. The question of the historical ‘originality’ of the playback and display technology has been vehemently debated in the context of conserving electronic art since the early 2000s, and it marks ‘a fine line between authorized re-performance and historically informed interpretation’, in the words of conservator Joanna Phillips.16 Despite the existence of reference hardware pools for media archaeology, such as those maintained in Europe at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe and Bern University of the Arts (HKB),17 it was already apparent that this could not be a long-term preservation strategy and that the same problems were going to apply to other digital art forms, notably new media art. The above quote from Claerbout, which is only an extract from the A4 page on which the artist set out his instructions, testifies to the scope for artistic control over the presentation of a video (fig. 5.1). Conservator Pip Laurenson borrows Stephen Davis’s term ‘thickly specified’ to describe this idea.18 The role of curators is restricted to choosing where within their wider exhibition to place the black box, the self-contained space prescribed by the artist; but inside that space Claerbout largely attempts to direct the impact of his work himself. By formulating precise instructions for the presentation—his video must be shown in a separate, acoustically isolated room, walls painted black, using a specific projector—he is effectively curating the presentation and reception of his own video. This is underlined by his final instruction that the installation should only be carried out by the artist or his assistant. From this 15  McLuhan 1964. 16  Philipps 2009. 17  For collections of historical apparatus, see ‘Labor für antiquierte Videosysteme’ at ZKM in Germany, and HKB, Videocompany, Atelier für Videokonservierung in Switzerland. 18  Laurenson 2006.

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Figure 5.1 Installation instruction from David Claerbout for the single-channel projection Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine), 2001 (made available by Archiv Sammlung Goetz, Munich), transcription by Katharina Ammann. Claerbout’s most recent instruction mentions different player and projector types (see footnote 23).

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perspective, the video artist, in this instance Claerbout, seems to be exerting a degree of authority over the viewer as well as the curator, even usurping the role of the curator altogether—at least during his lifetime. Although Claerbout’s instructions might be interpreted as a means of artistic control, they are in fact also a farsighted attempt to preserve the work for the future. Since video began spread through exhibitions at an increasing pace and collections began to acquire them, the material preservation of these artworks has become a pressing issue, and this has grown steadily more evident in numerous initiatives and publications since the early 2000s.19 Paradoxically, it is the physical carrier of video—the rapidly aging technological components of this reputedly immaterial art—that pose a particular challenge for collection care and restoration practitioners. For one thing, the information carriers themselves, such as the magnetic tapes in videocassettes, are subject to decay, which can provoke sometimes irreparable image errors (sticky, creased, or scratched tapes or deformation, misalignment, time base error, hum trouble, and so forth).20 Next, the playback and display technologies, the projectors and computer programmes, soon become obsolete, since their development is closely bound up with the commercial consumer market. Moreover, the knowledge about the maintenance and operability of these technical devices needs to be sustained—the skill, competence, and memory of the technician. How then do we show a work of video today, and how will we be able to show it in five or ten years? These simple questions reveal how far video art compels an overlap between curation and conservation practice, as Jon Ippolito suggested in 2003 in his essay concerning the Variable Media Questionnaire: ‘They may cease to view the conservator’s job of preservation as independent from the curator’s job of presentation.’21 This is because, unlike a light-sensitive watercolour, which should be exhibited as rarely as possible, the most effective conservation strategy for video is the exact opposite. Even if the physical decay of magnetic tape can be delayed by taking suitable measures, like correct storage, it must be played back if only to assess its condition and prevent decay and distortions. In the ideal scenario, visual information should be stored, with minimum data loss and uncompressed, on a master tape (such as Digital Betacam) while safeguarding its replayability—with digital data, this is known 19  See, for example, the early conference records of ‘Wie haltbar ist Videokunst? How durable is video art?’, Wolfsburg 1997. Institutional initiatives for documenting media art include INCCA, The Variable Media Network, Matters in Media Art and DOCAM. For exemplary case studies, see Depocas et al. 2003; Schubiger 2009; Serexhe 2013. 20  Gfeller et al. 2012. 21  Ippolito 2003, 53.

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as migration. Measures like these are better described as prophylactic ‘preservation’ rather than ‘conservation’ in the classical sense of saving and securing the actual fabric of an old tape, or even restoring an earlier condition or, indeed, the original format (such as U-matic or VHS).22 In other words, the most effective way to ensure that a work can still be shown one or two generations later is to present it regularly. Thus, every time a curator selects a video work for exhibition, which means installing and playing it—assisted perhaps by the artist, the museum technician, the conservator or external specialists—this actively contributes to its preservation. The caveat is that this may sound simpler in theory than it is in practice, which takes us straight to the problem of who is actually responsible for the form in which a work of video is presented. Claerbout is an artist who takes up the responsibility for his work’s integrity as long as he can. As his instructions cited above date from more than 15 years ago, the technical equipment identified for the artwork has already become obsolete. In a constant attempt to follow technological developments, in order to play the video file, he currently suggests a different projector and a BrightSign player instead of a DVD.23 In his newest work, Olympia (2016), Claerbout overcomes even the constraints of his own lifespan by conceiving a run-time of one thousand years. Olympia aims to show the programmed decay of the digitally rendered Berlin Olympic Stadium in real time. The artist reflects on not being able to control the interpretation of his piece as he normally aspires to: ‘Well, I have to accommodate a different approach to archiving the work. Usually, I would try to put as much as possible on paper for future generations: the technical details, the idea behind the work, the spirit, leaving as little space as possible for interpretation. This time around I feel that this is not possible because I don’t have a clue how our software is going to develop over the next five years, let alone over the next twenty-five years or to the end of my life. So I have to write Olympia down in a different way. I have to write down a little bit more like a preliminary result and try not to be too literal about formal issues, such as projection size or the environment in which the work is shown. Because I have no idea who will be developing this work later.’24 22  Of course, tape restoration plays a decisive role if the information is no longer available anywhere else (through the artist or a collection) and would therefore be lost for good. See Gfeller et al. 2012. 23  ‘Projector: A 3‐chip DLP or LCD projector with minimum native WUXGA (1920 × 1200 pixels) resolution. The projector has a minimum light output of 5000 ansi lumen. Video Player: BrightSign HD223 or higher with fast MicroSDcard (class 10).’ Excerpt from instructions sent to the author on 28 August 2018. 24  Fiedler 2017, 82.

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Figure 5.2 David Claerbout, Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine), 2001, single-channel video projection, colour, silent, loop 3′39″, installation view at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2007 Courtesy the artist. Photo: Studio David Claerbout

Thus, seen from a less absolutist perspective and less as means of the artist’s control, of course, all instructions also constitute a knowledge transfer from the artist to the exhibition organizer, which is in the interest of all participants. This is because the artistic message, the artist’s oft-invoked intention, only emerges clearly through this interrelation of technology and content. Claerbout is a master of the subtlest changes and his works meander along the boundary between video and photography, between motion and stasis. In his three-minute work Vietnam he combines award-winning historical photographs by Japanese reporter Hiromichi Mine from 1967 with his own video recordings shot in the same location. The darkness and silence of the surrounding space is essential to understanding the contents of the video for several reasons: one is that the image of the transport plane, which has been accidentally shot down by friendly troops, looks like a still from a video, and the silence Claerbout insists upon inside the space underscores both the missing sound of the explosion as well as the airplane’s frozen motion. Furthermore, the artist’s specifications are relevant because the undisturbed, darkened environment he stipulates is needed for the viewer to even notice subtle changes in the cloud cover and lighting (fig. 5.2).

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The Video Image and Its Frame

At a theoretical level, the artist’s specifications raise a question about which elements actually make up a work such as Vietnam. After all, this is not a multimedia installation, where all the components must necessarily be regarded as part of the work, but a single-channel video, albeit one which creates a specific spatial context by means of its installation instructions. Do the black box architecture, the wall colour, the positioning of the video image on the wall belong to the work in the same way as the plants do in Nam June Paik’s TV Garden (1974)?25 Is the playback and display technology integral to the video, or is it related like a picture frame to the picture? And is a picture frame more part of the picture, or more of the surrounding wall, or does it form a category of its own, as the French philosopher Jacques Derrida suggests by invoking the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s concept of the ‘parergon’?26 In relation to the work (ergon), Derrida describes the parergon as an adjunct, a ‘supplementary hors d’oeuvre’27 that nevertheless belongs to the work as a predicative structure. He is drawing here on Kant’s reflections on the role of the picture frame (parergon) in his Critique of judgement of 1790. While it is possible—for instance, in a restoration studio—to look at a traditional painting without its frame, a video without that ‘first’ framing—the presentation equipment, such as a playback and display device—would remain in the invisible state of mere code, offering an unusually literal illustration of art historian Wolfgang Kemp’s statement, ‘The frame brings the work of art into existence’.28 In the case of video, then, the parergon discussion that explores the border between inside and outside the art object is a productive one. As stated at the beginning of this paper, the concept of presentation includes the necessary playback and display technology as well as the contingent spatial installation as a whole. It is ‘contingent’ because that initial choice of display mode determines the spatial context to a certain extent, in that a projected image calls for different spatial conditions from a monitor, for example. Thus the spatial context would also constitute a parergon, because ‘[it] 25  A detailed study on this work is provided in Hölling 2017, 23–29 and Hanhardt 2003, among others. 26  Derrida 1978. Parergon is an Ancient Greek word meaning supplement or annex. In his Kritik der Urteilskraft, §14, Berlin 1790, Immanuel Kant describes parerga as ornaments, additions that are not structurally part of the object but complement or highlight it. A discussion of the term ‘parergon’ in conjunction with the presentation of video art was also the subject of a chapter in Ammann 2009, 21–25. 27  Derrida & Owens 1979, 20. 28  Kemp 1996, 14. See also Reck 2002, 38–43.

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is not simply their exteriority that constitutes them as parerga, but the internal structural link by which they are inseparable from a lack within the ergon’.29 So if the ergon is Vietnam, the barely perceptible changes in the light could be identified as a ‘lack’—in the sense of a specific, ergonal quality of the work— structurally linked to the parergon that is the ‘darkened’ room. In the case of black box projection, it makes sense to speak of two parerga, two frames, the apparatus and the space. Although from a viewer’s perspective, the spatial installation is significantly more relevant than the equipment being used. This is because, while single-channel videos cannot be made visible without the technology, the latter is not always part of the visible end product, quite unlike the situation with video installations or video sculptures. In a black box, the projector is usually placed high above the visitors’ heads at the rear of the space, where it is hidden by the darkness, just as in the case of Claerbout’s installations (fig. 5.6). This means that the apparatus is a constituent part of the work, yet it no longer meets the criteria of the parergon in Derrida’s critique, which requires a visible, material picture frame. Instead we find ourselves returning to Kant’s earlier notion that the frame should be as inconspicuous as possible (and certainly not a gilded one) so that the image can in effect be viewed regardless of context or frame.30 Derrida’s idea that the frame should be a supplement between the image (inside) and its surroundings (outside) is thus negated in the cinematographic black boxes of the 1990s. Here, the immaterial impact of the projected image, framed only by darkness, creates a sense of immersion, and it is the entire black box arrangement which becomes the parergon to the video imagery.31 In the case of Claerbout’s video work, and of such single-channel projections more generally, the presentation technology (apparatus) does not necessarily form part of the visible end product processed by the viewer, whereas the presentation setting (spatial installation) as a whole, which is conditioned by that very same technology, certainly does. It follows that to present Claerbout’s projection correctly, even decades later, the curator’s primary task is to reconstruct the viewing situation of a darkened, undisturbed space. This means that preservation efforts must focus on the filmic material, which is retained by means of continuous migration onto playable formats so it can be shown. The viewing situation should remain 29  Derrida & Owens 1979, 24. 30  ‘But if the ornament does not consist itself in beautiful form, and if it is used as a golden frame is used, merely to recommend the painting by its charm, then it is called finery and injures genuine beauty.’ Kant 2000, 76. 31  Ursula Frohne sees this disappearance of the frame ‘which usually marks the picture as a picture’ as an opportunity to create the perfect illusion. Frohne 2001, 53.

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as self-identical as possible, while documenting earlier states would add little meaningful insight into the work, at least not for the audience. This is very different from those cases where the original apparatus or certain modes of functioning are inherent to the work’s statement and must be carried over. A useful example of the latter was the exhibition Seeing double at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2004,32 which showed six original video installations in juxtaposition with emulated versions of themselves. There are also interesting instances of rendering conservation practices visible, including some for traditional media, such as Mark Rothko’s Harvard murals (1961–1962), which could be described as having undergone reversible ‘restoration’. In order to recreate the original visual impact of the works, the team consisting of conservators, natural scientists, and curators developed a non-invasive highly complex coloured-light projection to compensate for the fading. During the ensuing exhibition of the murals at the Harvard Art Museums in 2014–2015, the projectors were turned off each day at 4 pm, allowing visitors to witness the paintings’ return to their current physical state— a metamorphosis that unexpectedly developed into a popular daily event.33 Both examples demonstrate highly elaborate but productive interdisciplinary collaboration between conservators and curators, a ‘refreshed practice’ in dealing with works, as Jill Sterrett, former director of collections and conservation at SFMoMA, formulates elsewhere.34 5

Presentation as Installation

While ‘video installation’ became an established term to describe single-channel videos during the 1990s, presentations of single-channel videos had already been sporadically described as video installations in the 1980s, even though at that time video projection was rarely an option. In 1984, curator Dorine Mignot explained that the exhibition The luminous image in the Stedelijk Museum had chosen to speak of ‘video installations’ rather than ‘videotapes’. Mignot used the term ‘video installation’ to describe multimedia, multi-screen and closedcircuit installations but also for presentations ‘consisting of a single video tape shown in a space that has been entirely designed by the artist’. While she 32  S eeing double. Emulation in theory and practice, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 19 March–16 May 2004; www.variablemedia.net/e/seeingdouble. 33  Mark Rothko’s Harvard murals, Harvard Art Museums, 16 November 2014–26 July 2015. See also Stenger et al. 2016a, Stenger et al. 2016b, and http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/ tour/art-science/stop/128. 34  Sterrett 2016.

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believed that calling these works ‘installations’ was rather ‘bombastic’,35 she anticipated a descriptive practice that became firmly rooted among artists and curators in the course of the 1990s. The way these large-scale projections filled the space and mobilized the viewer,36 and the increasingly precise directions given by artists for the installation or reinstallation of their videos, as can be seen in Claerbout’s case, both justified wider acceptance of the term video installation, which conveys the fundamental variability of the temporal, spatial, and social components.37 In the museum context, which is the primary focus here,38 installation as an artistic form takes on a very practical dimension. The aforementioned knowledge transfer from artist to curator is not only relevant to the content of Claerbout’s work but also affects a series of technical requirements, which the curator is unlikely to implement in person. The work will either be installed by the artist or their assistant, or by the museum’s exhibition technician; in most cases it will be done in collaboration. The curator’s own role in the installation of the work is often restricted to positioning it within the exhibition space, and in some instances even this decision cannot be made without consulting the technician, since the weight of the objects or the power supply required by the artist cannot be accommodated in all parts of the building. While the museum technician’s know-how and importance are rising with the challenges posed by electronic, multimedia, digital art, the role of the traditional curator, trained in art history, increasingly seems limited to inviting a media artist along or borrowing and mediating the work. In his discussion of multiple authorship and the increasing overlap between the roles of the artist and the curator, Boris Groys states, ‘A distinction between the (curated) exhibition and (artistic) installation is still commonly made, but it is essentially obsolete’,39 and the same could be said of our single-channel projection example, at least to a point. A fundamental truth of video art described by curator Christiane Paul in 2003 in her book Digital art40 and her essay ‘The myth of immateriality—presenting & preserving new media’41 is that the creation of media art always requires the action of a network of people possessing specific know-how. Alongside the 35  Mignot 1984, 10–11. 36  The term installation, as described by Juliane Rebentisch, not only requires that the viewer must be able to move around inside it but also obviates the notion that art can exist without a viewer’s perspective. Rebentisch 2003, 20–31. 37  Hölling 2017, 1–11; see also Van Saaze 2013. 38  For a discussion of curatorship inside and outside the institutional context, see Graham & Cook 2010. 39  Groys 2006b, 93–99. 40  Paul 2003. 41  Paul 2007.

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technician and conservator, the curator is merely another member of a team accustomed to working with the artist and external, specialist service providers.42 6

Curating Claerbout: a Personal Report

In this section, I report—based on my own curatorial experience—from a medium-size art museum with Swiss standards and a team, consisting of two technicians, the director, and one other art historian, that shares curatorial and conservation responsibilities. This empirical report considers two interrelated observations about Claerbout’s installation: first, on a discrepancy between his instructions and their implementation, and second, on the communication pathways between artist, artist’s assistant, curator, and technician. As is so often the case in museums of this size, there is no in-house conservator, let alone one specialized in art based on film and video. Claerbout’s written instructions for the installation may appear unambiguous, but his stipulations are not always followed to the letter by curators. This was the case when Claerbout’s work was presented at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen as part of the Im Auge des Zyklons exhibition in 2007. Within that historical architecture, the work was assigned its own large hall, whose white walls and domed ceiling bore no resemblance to the artist’s stipulated black box with black painted walls (figs. 5.2, 5.3). Nonetheless, the work was perfectly presented and well served by exactly the kind of visually and acoustically insulated space the artist had envisaged. Moreover, on several occasions the artist even allowed Vietnam to be shown in combination with other works of his in the same room (fig. 5.4). How does this jibe with his detailed instructions? In 2009, I integrated another of Claerbout’s video projections (Sections of a happy moment, 2007) into a thematic exhibition on frozen time at the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, and in the course of this collaboration I gained a better understanding of how particular presentations such as the one in St. Gallen and elsewhere come about.43 As with Vietnam, Claerbout’s directions for Sections of a happy moment also stipulate a discretely defined space, since this work too is concerned with making time visible. It consists of a complex montage of 180 real-time and still images, conceived as a repeating loop lasting 42  In Switzerland this includes Videocompany, Atelier für Videokonservierung, Hochschule der Künste Bern (HKB), Tweaklab, transfermedia.ch. 43  Gefrorene Momente: Daniel Spoerris Fallenbilder im Dialog mit Judith Albert, David Claerbout, Caro Niederer, Beat Streuli, Jeff Wall, Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, 27 June–13 September 2009.

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Figure 5.3 David Claerbout, Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine), 2001, single-channel video projection, colour, silent, loop 3’39”, installation view at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2007; the overexposed image shows the spatial setting Courtesy the artist. photo: Katharina Ammann

Figure 5.4 David Claerbout, Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine), 2001, single-channel video projection, colour, silent, loop 3’39”, installation view at Wiels, Brussels, 2011, together with Long Goodbye (2007) Courtesy the artist. photo: Jef Jacobs

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25’57”, a timeless, frozen moment showing a Chinese family from multiple angles.44 I made initial contact with Claerbout by email via the gallery Hauser & Wirth, attaching a concept for the artist, who responded favourably and put me in touch with his assistant Bram Vandeveire in Belgium. The latter told me over the phone that their experience of Swiss museums had been so positive, thanks to accurate installations and high-quality equipment, that he would not visit in person, which incidentally had the pleasant side effect of easing budgetary pressure on our exhibition. He would provide us with Claerbout’s instructions and we would respond to our spatial plan and the technical specifications of our projector type. At this point, I reached out to the museum’s principal technician, Stephan Schenk. Together we determined a suitable location for the work, and he then sent me cost-aware proposals for the exhibition architecture, carpets, seating area, audio system, projection surface, and so on, which I in turn forwarded to Claerbout’s assistant. After the latter indicated his approval, Schenk installed the work, showed me the result, and documented it in photographic form so that it could be presented to Vandeveire. By this time, the two of them were communicating directly, while as curator I did not actually meet Claerbout in person until I was invited to his gallery exhibition in London, when the exhibition in Switzerland was already underway. We spoke about his work and were both satisfied with our collaboration, of which scarcely any evidence remains beyond the exhibition catalogue and the installation photographs taken by the principal technician—who is fortunately also a trained photographer—and his records of what had been done (figs. 5.5 and 5.6). Hardly any other traces of the knowledge transfer and the understanding gained during the set-up process have survived in the institution itself, especially since neither the technician nor the curator work there anymore. Since Claerbout’s work was not acquired by the collection, there was no cause to establish a more systematic archive that could have collated all the relevant documents about this work, such as email correspondence, the artist’s instructions, or the installation plans and photographs created in the museum (though the installation plans and the photographs do survive there). Several points can be derived from this anecdotal report. The artist’s instructions are variable and exhibition organizers can make adjustments—as occurred in both St. Gallen and in Chur—to accommodate specific conditions, spatial or otherwise, provided that the intended effect is achieved. It follows that the same work will almost never be exhibited in an entirely identical fashion, demonstrating another reason, besides its time-based quality, why video is often described in terms of performance or staging and why Laurenson 44  Van Assche 2008, 134–143.

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Figure 5.5 David Claerbout, Sections of a happy moment, 2007, single-channel video projection, black and white, stereo audio, 25’57”, installation view at Bündner Kunstmuseum 2009; in the foreground are two tableaux-pièges by Daniel Spoerri. With the artist’s consent, the video was not shown in a closed black box here Courtesy the artist. photo: Stephan Schenk

compares artists’ installation instructions to musical scores or notation.45 In the case of single-channel videos, the role of the artist has increasingly shifted towards that of the curator, especially since projection has become affordable, lending single-channel video to installation,46 while curators are moving towards a communication and management role. The distance between the curator trained in art history and the material being negotiated in the current material culture studies discourse47 is particularly noticeable in the field of 45  Laurenson 2006. 46  In video art’s early years, single-channel videos were often shown using whichever equipment happened to be available from colleagues, curators, or institutions. Harald Szeemann described the situation at documenta 5: ‘In 1970 I purchased a set of AKAI equipment for the “Happening & Fluxus” exhibition. In 1971 this was taken over by documenta and used by Mr Blase for his visitor videos. Gerry Schum used the room on the plan for the video department. There was only ever the one monitor.’ Email from Harald Szeemann to the author on 18 September 2003. 47  Yonan 2011.

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Figure 5.6 Technical installation of David Claerbout, Sections of a happy moment, 2007, single-channel video projection, black and white, stereo audio, 25’57”, installation view at Bündner Kunstmuseum 2009; background projection by Beat Streuli Courtesy the artist. photo: Stephan Schenk

media art. Even conservation specialists are reaching the limits of their material knowledge, since video (and subsequently new media) is not just about the materiality of the hardware, as media historian Wolfgang Ernst observes in the context of media archaeological approach: ‘Media archaeology pleads for a material semantics of knowledge without shallow materialism. The internal value of all electronic technology lies in its configuration and circuitry. It intertwines statement and the material form of the transmission.’48 In this respect, the collections of historical playback technologies such as those maintained by ZKM and Videocompany provide a short-term solution to a curatorial problem, by allowing older videos to be migrated onto newer formats. However, in the medium term, it will be particularly important to understand their function from a media history perspective and to extrapolate appropriate conservation measures.49 48  Ernst 2008, 156. 49  The Variable Media Network belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Daniel Langlois Foundation laid out a theoretical foundation for conservatorship of media art in 2003 in the publication Permanence through change; for an early history of

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Claerbout’s installation was executed and maintained in situ by the curator and even more so by the technician, both of whose interpretative decisions, based on the specific institutional conditions, became a part of the work, at least in relation to this particular presentation in this particular exhibition.50 This endorses the claim by Erma Hermens and Frances Robertson in the preface to Authenticity in transition (2016) that ‘the expanded role of the artist (sometimes acting in a curatorial role) also forces an expanded role for curators and conservators’.51 However, the scope of this role in installing Claerbout’s work was not sufficiently great that it could be described as co-authorship or a form of participation intended by the artist conceptually.52 In the reported case, multi-way communication took place between four participants—no conservator was involved—along with information loss and blurring, so it could not be easily replicated later on due to a scarcity of documentation. Thus, after the exhibition ended, most of the knowledge pertaining to the process of installation accumulated by cooperating on Sections of a happy moment remained with the artist and his assistant. Of course, their knowledge of a work is not entirely static either: it undergoes changes with the experience of each exhibition of this work. Even the minimal technical details given for a work can change, on which note we return to the example of Vietnam. In his 2008 monograph, alongside his description of the contents, Claerbout provides the following technical details: large-screen video installation, 576 × 720 PAL interlaced, colour, silent, 3’33”. Details about the same work appear differently in Fast forward. Media art Sammlung Goetz, the book published by the collection in 2001: single-channel video installation / colour, no sound / Edition 3/3 (+1 a. p. + 1 a. c.) / 3’39”. Apart from the duration discrepancy, this description includes the first section of Claerbout’s comprehensive installation instructions (fig. 5.1). The instructions are contained in that volume because the collection’s curator had explicitly requested them from the artist. This approach demonstrates an awareness of the importance of such information, which is especially common among curators and conservators specialized in media art. By publishing these specifications, they are letting any interested curator, conservator, technician—but also any the video recorder, see Zielinski 1986 or Bruce Sterling’s project ‘Dead Media’ at www .deadmedia.org, a list begun in 1995 that is partly being continued today at http://culture andcommunication.org/deadmedia. 50  For an extensive analysis of the role of curators and technicans within this network of actors, see Wharton 2016, 34–35. 51  Hermens & Robertson 2016, ix. 52  In Hermens & Robertson 2016 various authors examine works of art in reference to Nelson Goodman’s term ‘allographic’. These are works based on instructions and thereby consciously admit multiple and collaborative realizations.

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art historian and theoretician—know that Claerbout intends Vietnam to be viewed in a very specific way. 7

Framing Intention—Conclusion

As long as the curator, conservator and technician are informed about the interrelation between content, form and intent in Claerbout’s video installation, and as long as technological developments can be incorporated with the artist’s participation and authorization, the work remains presentable. (Given that none of the participants—and this includes the artist—propose changes that lie so far outside the spectrum of accepted presentations that their impact would be art historically, conservatorially, legally, or artistically dubious or detrimental.) As has already been stated elsewhere,53 a work such as Claerbout’s video installation requires a significant amount of communication within a network due the inherent variability, instability, or ‘changeability’, as conservator and art historian Hanna Hölling calls it, that is specific to the medium. In fact, the view gaining traction in contemporary conservation discourse—especially in relation to ephemeral and performative art—is that the restoration paradigm of stabilization must give way to an acceptance of continuing adjustment. Learning how to deal with new media or digital art, of which video art was an early form, has also triggered more interdisciplinary convergence between curator and conservator and is breaking down the dualism of idea/ form versus material/technique—a dualism that has been strongly contested from within the field of material culture studies.54 Furthermore, conservation theories strive to thematize the artist’s intent, while the curatorial practice has been tentatively broaching issues of technology/material, since it has long become clear that art history cannot do this medium justice using the tools of hermeneutics and iconography alone. It seems plausible that the study of visual culture, which has dominated art history since the arrival of the digital age, is itself being challenged by material culture studies, which bear the stamp of anthropology and archaeology. If the iconic turn has made way for the material turn, then at least in part because 53  ‘Manifesto for the Unstable Media (1987)’, http://v2.nl/events/manifest-voor-de-insta biele-media/view, [accessed 16 June 2017]; Variable Media Network of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Depocas et al. 2003); Hölling 2013. 54  See interviews with Manuel DeLanda and Karen Barad in Dolphijn & Van der Ruin 2012; Wagner 2001, 11.

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media art—supposedly immaterial—has given rise to such urgent preservation issues. As curator Christiane Paul aptly remarks: While immateriality and dematerialization are important aspects of new media art, it would be highly problematic to ignore the art’s material components and the hardware that makes it accessible. Many of the issues surrounding the presentation and particularly preservation of new media art are related to its materiality.55 For curators and conservators handling Claerbout’s projection, it follows that the work needs to be documented in all its different exhibition settings to capture its specific openness and variability as a central feature and to make these insights available for future presentations. The exhibiting institution (even when, as in the case described, it does not own the work), any collection, and the artist himself have a responsibility to generate and archive documentary material and to pass it on when required.56 This is because the experiences of all participants, at whatever point they were involved, form part of the very variability that characterizes the medium. Their information and their correspondence—be it room plans, installation photos, descriptions of the presentation, equipment required, or installation instructions, as well as an evaluation of the overall impact that was sought and achieved—offer an irreplaceable basis for every kind of professional practice regarding both conservation and curation. Finally, all these documents help frame the artistic intent, providing legitimacy and foundations for future presentation and preservation strategies. Now, artistic intent—as discussed by conservator Glenn Wharton, art historians Ariane Noël de Tilly and sociologist Vivian van Saaze—may well be a problematic factor, given that it is itself subject to variation (including on the part of the artist), both when the intent is unknown and when it is supposedly known.57 In 1996 in ‘The artist’s intentions and the intentional fallacy in fine arts conservation’, conservator Steven W. Dykstra described a whole series of different definitions of the term ‘intent’, seeking to make it a fruitful concept for conservation practice. However, he also highlighted their ambiguity and concluded that interpreting artistic intentions needed to be an 55  Paul 2007, 252. 56  The free online Software Variable Media Questionnaire offers an optional basis for data collection: http://variablemediaquestionnaire.net [accessed 28 July 2017]; see also the ‘datasheet for cataloguing videotapes’ in Gfeller et al. 2012. 57  Wharton 2016, 34–35; Noël de Tilly 2016, 37–45. Vivian van Saaze summarizes in one chapter how many different things can be meant by the artist’s intent in the conservation context. See Van Saaze 2013, 48–59, 115–122.

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interdisciplinary task.58 This is all the more pertinent in the case of video, with the changeability specific to the medium, where each new presentation of a work is also an opportunity to renegotiate and set out a new frame, in both the literal and the metaphorical sense. Bibliography Ammann, Katharina, Video ausstellen. Potenziale der Präsentation, Bern 2009. Beil, Ralf, Black Box. Der Schwarzraum in der Kunst, Ostfildern-Ruit 2001. Bourdieu, Pierre, Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen, Frankfurt 1970. Breitwieser, Sabine, White cube/Black box, Vienna 1996. Couchot, Edmond, ‘Image puissance image’, Revue d’esthétique 7 (1984). Daniels, Dieter, ‘Video/Kunst/Markt’, in: Frieling and Herzogenrath 2006, 40–49. Deleuze, Gilles, L’image-temps, Paris 1985. Depocas, Alain Jon Ippolito and Caitlin Jones (eds.), Permanence through change. The variable media approach, New York 2003. Derrida, Jacques, La vérité en peinture, Paris 1978. Derrida, Jacques and Craig Owens, ‘The Parergon’, October 9 (Summer 1979), 3–41. Dolphijn, Rick and Iris van der Ruin (eds.), New materialism. Interviews & cartographies, Ann Arbor 2012. Dykstra, Steven W., ‘The artist’s intentions and the intentional fallacy in fine arts conservation’, Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 35 (1996) no. 3, 197–218. Eastop, Dinah, ‘Conservation as material culture’, in: Tilley et al. 2013, 516–533. Ernst, Wolfgang, ‘Time that adheres to media material. The knowledge to be gained from techno-archaeological hardware’, in: Schubiger 2009, 156. Fiedler, Andreas (ed.), David Claerbout. Olympia (the real-time disintegration into ruins of the Berlin Olympic Stadium over the course of a thousand years), Berlin 2017. Frieling, Rudolf and Wulf Herzogenrath (eds.), 40jahrevideokunst.de. Digitales Erbe. Videokunst in Deutschland von 1963 bis heute, Ostfildern 2006. Frohne, Ursula, ‘Ausbruch aus der weissen Zelle. Die Freisetzung des Bildes in cinematisierten Räumen’, in: Beil 2001, 51–64. Gfeller, Johannes, Agathe Jarczyk and Joanna Phillips, Compendium of image errors in analogue video, Zurich 2012. Goetz, Ingvild and Stephan Urbaschek (eds.), Fast forward. Media art Sammlung Goetz, Munich 2003.

58  Dykstra 1996, 197–218.

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Graham, Beryl and Sarah Cook (eds.), Rethinking curating. Art after new media, Cambridge, MA 2010. Grau, Oliver (ed.), MediaArtHistories, Cambridge, MA 2007. Groys, Boris, ‘Vom Bild zur Bilddatei—und zurück’, in: Frieling and Herzogenrath 2006a, 50–57. Groys, Boris, ‘Multiple authorship’, in: Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic (eds.), The Manifesta decade. Debates on contemporary exhibitions and biennials, Cambridge, MA 2006b, 93–99. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, vol. 1: Der Begriff der Religion, Leipzig 1925. Hermens, Erma and Frances Robertson (eds.), Authenticity in transition. Changing practices in art making and conservation, London 2016. Hölling, Hanna B., Paik’s virtual archive. Time, change, and materiality in media art, Oakland 2017. Huber, Hans Dieter, ‘Die Verkörperung von Code’, in: Frieling and Herzogenrath 2006, 58–63. Ippolito, Jon, ‘Accommodating the unpredictable. The Variable Media Questionnaire’, in: Depocas et al. 2003, 47–53. Kant, Immanuel, Critique of judgement (J. H. Bernhard, trans.), Amherst 2000. Laurenson, Pip, ‘Authenticity, change and loss in the conservation of time-based media installations’, Tate Papers 6 (2006), online publication: http://www.tate.org.uk/ research/publications/tate-papers/06/authenticity-change-and-loss-conservation -of-time-based-media-installations [accessed 11 June 2017]. Manovich, Lev, Black box—white cube, Berlin 2005. McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding media. The extensions of man, New York 1964. Muñoz Viñas, Salvador, ‘Contemporary theory of conservation’, Reviews in Conservation 3 (2002), 25–34. Noël de Tilly, Ariane, ‘Moving away from the artist’s sway: changes in the critical reception of Mike Kelley’s Day Is Done’, in: Hermens and Robertson 2016, 37–45. Noordegraaf, Julia, Cosetta G. Saba, Barbara Le Maître and Vinzenz Hediger (eds.), Preserving and exhibiting media art. Challenges and perspectives, Amsterdam 2013. Paul, Christiane, Digital art, London 2003. Paul, Christiane, ‘The myth of immateriality—presenting & preserving new media’, in: Grau 2007, 251–274. Philipps, Joanna, ‘The reconstruction of video art. A fine line between authorized reperformance and historically informed interpretation’, in: Schubiger 2009, 158–165. Rebentisch, Juliane, Ästhetik der Installation, Frankfurt 2003. Schubiger, Irene (ed.), Reconstructing Swiss video art from the 1970s and 1980s, Zurich 2009.

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Serexhe, Bernhard (ed.), Digital art conservation. Konservierung digitaler Kunst: Theorie und Praxis. Das Projekt digital art conservation, Vienna 2013. Stenger, Jens, Narayan Khandekar, Ramesh Raskar, Santiago Cuellar, Ankit Mohan, Rudolf Gschwind, Mary Schneider Enriquez, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro and Christina Rosenberger, ‘Non-invasive color restoration of Mark Rothko’s Harvard murals using light from a digital projector’, in: Rhiannon Clarricoates, Helen Dowding and Alexandra Gent (eds.), Colour change in paintings, London 2016a, 73–76. Stenger, Jens, Narayan Khandekar, Ramesh Raskar, Santiago Cuellar, Ankit Mohan and Rudolf Gschwind, ‘Conservation of a room. A treatment proposal for Mark Rothko’s Harvard murals’, Studies in Conservation 61 (2016b), no. 6, 348–361. Sterrett, Jill, ‘In the wings’, in: Hermens and Robertson 2016, 3–12. Tilley, Christopher, Webb Keane, Susanne Küchler, Mike Rowlands and Patricia Spyer, Handbook of material culture, Los Angeles 2013. Van Assche, Christine (ed.), David Claerbout. The shape of time, Zurich 2008. Van Saaze, Vivian, Installation art and the museum. Presentation and conservation of changing artworks, Amsterdam 2013. Wagner, Monika, Das Material der Kunst. Eine andere Geschichte der Moderne, Munich 2001. Wharton, Glenn, ‘Reconfiguring contemporary art in the museum’, in: Hermens and Robertson 2016, 34–35. Yonan, Michael, ‘Toward a fusion of art history and material culture studies’, West 86th. A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 18 (2011), no. 2, online publication: http://www.west86th.bgc.bard.edu/articles/yonan.html [accessed 18 June 2017]. Zielinski, Siegfried, Zur Geschichte des Videorecorders, Berlin 1986.

Chapter 6

Out of the Box

Preservation on Display Anna Schäffler

Figure 6.1 Anna Oppermann, working state of Ensemble with decoration (Modes of behavior towards people when affection plays a part), decoration with birches, pears, and frames, since 1980 (filiation) Courtesy Estate Anna Oppermann and Galerie Barbara Thumm

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Display Condition

Installation art must be exhibited in order to be preserved.1 At first this may sound paradoxical, since the best way to safeguard an artwork would seem to 1  This article builds on the growing body of literature on the conservation of installation art; see, for example, Scholte & Wharton 2011; Van Saaze 2013; Ferriani & Pugliese 2013; Buschmann & Caianiello 2013.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004396852_008

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be keeping it in a controlled storage environment and handling it as little as possible. Although institutions try to reduce possible risks—changing humidity, dust, or visitors—every exhibition in fact puts the material in danger. Each handling potentially speeds up the process of material degradation. To put it bluntly, the conservator has therefore gained a reputation as a notorious sceptic, if not a hindrance to curatorial exhibition ideas. But in order to experience installation art in time and space, it needs to be on display. There is therefore no possibility not to intervene. Exhibiting is an ontological condition of the work, which is linked to its aesthetic reception and the production of meaning by the spectator. At least since the 1960s, the presentation of the work has become an integral part of the artwork itself.2 Post-studio practices, in particular, not only dealt with the exhibition space as a place of presentation but also of actual production. Artists developed own display strategies and thus took on the curatorial role for their works.3 My understanding of installation art is based on an expanded notion. It is always both: the final installation and the process of its realization. Installation art is considered to be an art practice that engages conceptually with physical material and becomes explicit through spatial arrangement. Material and conceptual aspects are interrelated in various ways. With regard to preservation issues, this means a shift of perspective from solely maintaining the materiality to finding ways of mediating the artistic process and also the preservation practice itself, in order to maintain the ability to install the work.4 After the artist´s death, the respective collection institution also takes on the function of a producer of such artworks.5 Because the artwork’s history is always interlocked with the history of its presentations, these preservation practices must be taken into account when analysing the work of art. When presentation is a condition for the preservation of installation art, then formerly distinct curatorial tasks like arranging and contextualizing also become part of conservation practice. Consequently, preserving installation art means that the traditional dichotomy between conservation and curation becomes blurred, and in some respects the two professions might even merge. The use of the term ‘preservation’ in this text therefore allows for combining the two realms instead of speaking either of conservation or curation.

2  See, among others, De Leeuw 2005. 3  For a most recent discussion on display as part of artistic practice, see McGovern 2016. 4  See Jill Sterrett´s considerations during a discussion on the ethical dimensions of conservations in Getty Conservation Institute 2009. 5  Van Saaze 2013, 115, 185.

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Above all, preservation always entails creation as well, thus making it a focal point of the work.6 The act of installation can be regarded as the production of meaning. Depending on the respective decision-making process and what is identified as important, each installation differs. Consequently, the interpretation of material and conceptual aspects becomes a constituting element of the work’s identity. Acknowledging this interdependence between an artwork and its preservation expands the notions from single authorship and unique original to a more processual concept based on constant interpretation and variation.7 But it is not only the importance of physically handling the material that makes preservation essential here. Preservation itself becomes an increasingly significant subject of discourse, similar to the discussion of curatorial issues in the past. A consideration of the guiding motives of preservation ultimately raises questions about the core values—economical, institutional, personal, and so on—that determine the artwork.8 These practices need to be studied themselves, and in order to do so they have to become explicit. What has long been considered a behind-the-scenes domain,9 located within the institutional catacombs, is now gaining more and more visibility—both on display and as part of the artwork’s historicity. 2

Visibility of Preservation

Preservation practices are not just about analysing the materiality of an object but also about retracing certain actions and adopting attitudes; they become actions with a performative quality of their own, again raising questions with regard to their (self-)preservation. Hence it will be increasingly important to consider how these procedures are materialized and visualized and how practical knowledge and skills, both of the artist and the preserver, can be understood (and preserved). What I want to focus on here is the necessity to make preservation practices visible. Why is this so important? The focus on the object as the result of a practice involves both the materiality of an object and the conditions and context of production. The inclusion of the latter is particularly important for installation 6  On the threshold of co-creation and freeze-framing in conservation, see Hummelen 2008. 7  Depocas et al. 2003; Hölling 2016. 8  On conservation as a socially constructed activity, see Sully 2015. 9  On doing behind-the-scenes research from an ethnographic perspective, see Macdonald 2002. In regard to the self-image of the museum, see Van Saaze 2013, 20.

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works after the death of the artist because the often-discussed aesthetic reception is put into effect on a work that is not installed by the artist but results from a posthumous decision-making process by various persons in charge (the estate, curator, conservator, gallery, etc.). The politics of preservation and collection profoundly shape the presently shown work itself—and future encounters with it. This means that before any meaning-making begins on the part of the recipient, the installing person inscribes her or his interpretation of the material as well as the artistic concept on the work’s identity. Only if the modes of interpretation are accessible and become explicit can the preserved artwork be fully understood in the state of its actual existence. The interpretive act and the forms of its transmission need to be taken into account as constituting the work’s characteristics. This also includes the context in which the decisionmaking process has taken place. Beyond the conservation discourse this fact is mostly overlooked—not only because art historians, critics, or visitors hardly experience artistic and preservation practices themselves but also because it is not recorded or indicated in the display of a work. But only if the act of interpretation of an artwork is visible and the different preservation approaches are made transparent can the viewer’s reception take the ‘preserved status’ into account during the process of aesthetic reception. This also demands a modified attitude of the visitor towards the artwork. Analogous to an exhibition that is perceived as a conscious arrangement by the curator, the same happens now on the level of the artwork, which thus becomes subject to critical discussion. 3

Anna Oppermann and Her Ensemble Art

Comprehending installation art as the result of a practice (artistic or preservation—that is, conservation and curatorial practice) and as evolving over time thus implies shifting the attention to its performative and processual dimensions in addition to a material analysis of the objects. An outstanding example of how to make these processes transparent is the art of Anna Oppermann, who labelled both her final installation works as well as her artistic method from the 1960s onwards ‘ensembles’. Her space and process-based installation works can, of course, be discussed as another challenging case study for conservation par excellence.10 But what I want to suggest here is that her artistic

10  Schäffler 2012.

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Figures 6.2 and 6.3 Anna Oppermann, early working state of Ensemble with decoration (Modes of behavior towards people when affection plays a part), decoration with birches, pears, and frames, since 1980 (filiation), showing the iterative ensemble principle through different media (above) and drawing of this photograph (below) Courtesy Estate Anna Oppermann and Galerie Barbara Thumm

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method visualizes preservation approaches. At the same time, they also provide an ontological model for preserved artworks as processes.11 What makes Oppermann’s ensembles so exceptional in this context is that, first of all, she displayed her artistic practice as an integral part of her work, something that only very few artists have ever done.12 Above all, this artistic practice can be understood as a method of self-preservation and analysis, through which she consistently addressed the transitional nature of her works in progress. Comprised of found and ephemeral materials from different sources, objects, paintings, drawings, and photographs, each of her ensembles emerged in a cumulative and associative manner over a period of several years, starting from the mid-1960s until her early death in 1993. The instalments of each ensemble could change dramatically over the course of time and never looked the same. Constantly re-photographed and redrawn by Oppermann, previous installations were integrated into later ones. Various spaces and times therefore coexist within one presentation. Every ensemble shows the very process of being a work in progress. The ensembles became increasingly complex through re-editing and interpreting, often branching out into new ensembles, so-called ‘filiations’, but sometimes also being condensed as ‘reductions’— hence both growth and decrease are possible. At the time of her death, around 60 ensemble works could be differentiated, although during her lifetime they never existed separately but rather were interrelated. Despite her considerable exhibition history, including her participation in two documenta exhibitions in Kassel (1977 and 1987) and also in the 1980 Venice Biennale, very few institutions collected Oppermann’s works during her lifetime, and she has been overlooked by art historians, two facts that have begun to change only recently. 4

The Ontology of Preserved Artworks as Ensembles

Anna Oppermann developed a model through her ensembles to understand the continuity of change. Having been shown in different places, becoming divided and fragmented, getting partially lost, an ensemble keeps record of all these processes, which can then be studied through it. An ensemble not only shows what has been preserved and how but also addresses loss as an integral 11  Within conservation theory these processes have been described as trajectories or biographies of an artwork; see Latour & Lowe 2010; Van de Vall et al. 2011. 12  One might think of related artists such as Dieter Roth or Paul Thek, who integrated visual documentation of themselves doing the artwork in the artwork itself,; for example, Dieter Roth´s Gartenskulptur (1968) or Paul Thek’s Dwarf Parade Table (1969). On the visibility of artists’ production processes and its implications, also see Esner et al. 2013.

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Figures 6.4 and 6.5 Anna Oppermann, Ensemble with decoration (Modes of behavior towards people when affection plays a part), decoration with birches, pears, and frames, since 1980 (filiation), installation view at documenta 6, Kassel, 1977 (above) and at Serpentine Gallery 1983 (below) Courtesy Estate Anna Oppermann and Galerie Barbara Thumm

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aspect of preservation processes. It keeps this factual knowledge not only through its materialized traces but also through documentary material such as installation photos, installation plans, catalogue texts, and, above all, diagrams of the ensemble method. Seen as installation manuals, the ensembles also provide invaluable information to conservators for the works’ preservation. The artwork is revealed as relational accumulation of various aspects of its own history and becomes, as it were, a collection of itself.13 But an ensemble is also a synthesis of all of the above. Resembling a palimpsest, an ensemble, however, provides a different model as it unveils all previous conditions simultaneously. The degree of its complexity depends on the occasions in which it has been revisited and actualized. It is therefore always open-ended and indeterminate, never to reach a final state or an endpoint. What is important to note, however, is that there is no chronological order in which the objects of an ensemble can be placed. They do not carry numbers or dates or any kind of description, and the same is true for Oppermann’s own drawings or photographs. Time and space patterns are interrelated in a recursive way that does not show the work’s trajectory from A to B or from the past to the present.14 The structural principle of recursion describes a non-linear procedure over a period of time that pivots on itself through self-similar repetition. Within the visual arts, recursion is known as mise en abyme patterns and becomes most apparent in Oppermann’s artistic practice of photographing installed ensembles that consist of photographed installed ensembles and so on…. As obvious as it may sound: an ensemble consists of itself. Another acknowledged fact is that museums add new components to the works in their holdings through the routine practices of conservators and collections management professionals that include taking installation shots or adding new materials, which obtain an uncertain status between being part of the artwork or only having an informational nature.15 This also implies that the artwork loses its status of singularity and originality and starts existing in multiple perspectives.16 Expanding the ontological notion of an artwork expands the idea of a ‘true’ material original and its secondary (documentary, etc.) source to a coherent notion that is defined in terms of material, event, documentation, display, and preservation.

13  Hanna Hölling discusses this issue under the notion of the archive; see Hölling 2017. 14  On recursion as a model of history, see Ofak & Von Hilgers 2010. 15  See, for example, the renewal of the photographs of Joseph Kosuth’s Glass (one and three) (1965), discussed by Stigter 2011. 16  Van Saaze 2013, 80.

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The ensembles are ‘continuous creations’,17 and as Oppermann shows, we are always speaking of the material object and the process at the same time. Above all I would claim that an ensemble not only offers such an understanding for installation art based on process, time, media, etc., but that here we have an insight that can be generalized to also apply to paintings, sculptures, etc. By this I mean that all the different instantiations and interpretations have to be regarded as part of the ontology of an artwork. Every artwork can therefore be considered an ensemble that accumulates material and immaterial aspects over time: a process of creation, exhibition, conservation, reception, and provenance of an artwork that is described in a classical catalogue raisonné.18 For contemporary artworks such as installation, media, and performance art, I suggest that the form of an ensemble already exists as the (hidden) ontological structure. From an ontological perspective, every artwork can therefore be considered an ensemble that accumulates material and immaterial aspects over time. But the difference here is that an ensemble puts all these aspects on display that are usually scattered in various folders separately from the artwork’s material. 5

Ensemble Method—A Conscious Awareness Practice

Taking all these moments in the work’s trajectory into account can be conceptualized as a vehicle to which preservation approaches are attached—not only that of conservators in collaboration with curators but various other stakeholders like artists’ estates, galleries, insurance companies, and others, which together constitute so-called distributed ‘networks of care’.19 Analysing and self-recording on the basis of former analysis and records and including it again—this links preservation practices and the ensemble method, in which the analysing and recording become part of the work itself. On the question ‘What is an ensemble?’, Anna Oppermann stated: Ensemble is the name I give to the documentation of a particular method during perception and/or awareness exercises. The construction of an ensemble is the presentation of many efforts to recognize a piece of 17  C  ontinuous creation. Rooms by Robert Filliou, Bruce Lacey and Jill Bruce, Anna Oppermann, Paul Thek was the title of a group exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in 1981. 18  What kind of exhibition display a traditional artwork would produce to show its historicity needs further investigation. 19  Dekker 2014.

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Figure 6.6 Method diagram illustrating different phases of consciousness of Oppermann’s artistic procedure Courtesy Estate Anna Oppermann and Galerie Barbara Thumm

reality, to evaluate, and also to get a ‘grip’ on a problem. The documentation is a visualization, a securing of evidence, and an aid to recalling the psychical processes of different levels of consciousness, different systems of reference. In doing so, I also create a basis for investigation (by fixing shortcomings and making them conscious), with a view to possible corrections and modifications, which requires a relative openness of the arrangement…. And so, proceeding from a single point (from the relatively simple to the relatively complicated), the radius of the circle of interest grows wider and wider.20 It is crucial to understand that the term ‘ensemble’, coined by Oppermann in the early 1970s, defines both the installed work and her artistic practice. This is not just a linguistic coincidence but actually describes the key point I want to explore in depth: there is no separation between the artwork and the process 20  Oppermann 2007, 112–113.

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of its creation. So it is the product of a creative process as well as the method of production that brings the artwork into being. At the beginning, Oppermann’s impulses for new ensembles could be objects taken from nature (leaves or fruits) or certain encounters with people. Later on the subjects extended more explicitly to ‘Being an Artist’, ‘Being Different’, or ‘The Economic Aspect’, around which Oppermann assembled all kinds of materials that she associated with these topics. Her work not only bears witness to the often difficult situation of a struggling female artist between the 1960s and 1980s but also to the broader cultural context of the time period she is analysing through her method. As an auto-ethnographic approach, her critical reflection originates from an individual experience or conflict (being a mother, wife, lover, artist, outsider, etc.) and from there on reaches out to general assumptions and domains (psychoanalysis, philosophy, sociology, economics, politics, etc.). Handwritten citations, press clippings, printed matter from different sources, cross references to publications, and so on are interwoven with personal details and stories. She includes method diagrams, installation sketches, photos, and descriptions in order to mediate her artistic process. An ensemble, as Oppermann herself describes, is the documentation of practice as research, which shows knowledge building as a dialogical process. What makes Oppermann’s ensemble method so intriguing is that it is capable of allowing different points of views from various sources to be heard simultaneously—whether they are positive, (self-)critical, paradoxical, or contradictory. Being open-ended, the ensemble method allows for the integration of any context in which it exists today and thus continues to build on the existing structure of each ensemble. As an open synthesis, the ensemble is able to incorporate all of these variations and display them simultaneously. Different interpretations can be compared to each other, and similarities and differences become visible, not only in an abstract sense, but very concretely by juxtaposing them with previous arrangements through documentary photographs of past installations. 6

Applying the Method

Oppermann did not leave a written will or any recorded declared intention about what to do with her works and how to install them after her death.21 But I want to argue that her ensembles intrinsically offer such instruction, 21  Facing the multiple challenges of preserving such a processual work posthumously, the estate developed an unique approach called ‘Interpretative Re-Installation’ in the mid1990s; see Vorkoeper 2006 and Schäffler 2012.

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Figures 6.7 and 6.8 Drawing with personal notes on dealing with exhibition curators and artist scene (above) and drawing illustrating the formation of Ensemble with decoration (Modes of behavior towards people when affection plays a part), decoration with birches, pears, and frames, since 1980 (filiation) and Oppermann’s intentions (below) Courtesy Estate Anna Oppermann and Galerie Barbara Thumm

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that they actually are their own iteration report and therefore function as installation manuals in themselves. In this regard the ensembles can be called self-sustaining.22 As a processual artwork, an ensemble functions like a catalyst for preservation issues because it intensifies the pressure on the decision-making process and provokes interpretation. The interesting question that arises here is whether and where the limits of these innovations are, with regard to the artwork in this production process, independent of the artist. The act of interpretation has to be made visible because it must not be confused with the artist’s position, from which it may fundamentally differ. The disclosure of the selection process, the interests of each interpreter, what has been presented or not at certain moments—all of this can be derived from the material, which again can be installed and contextualized in another narrative arrangement. The only way to overcome the dilemma of not being the artist in relation to the installation of the ensembles is to adopt a personal attitude (which need not, and probably cannot, be identical with that of the artist) and above all to make this attitude explicit. The material itself is hung on the walls, laid out on the floor (German: etwas auslegen = to lay something out [literally], to interpret something [figuratively]), mounted on wooden bricks, nailed, pinned, folded, and above all repositioned over and over again. Construction methods, such as her use of nails for the wall or pins to fix material to the wooden bricks, can be derived from the tangible assets that bear traces of previous practices. Holes, kinks, spots, and any kind of ‘damage’ provide signs of wear and tear or age. This indexical relation not only contributes to the artwork’s trajectory as it applies to past handling. These traces also instruct future practices as points of references. Documentary material mediates previous installations and arrangements. The realization process actually consists in countless choices—how to position the material, which context to select, which corrections to make, etc. The ensembles explicitly deal with these processes of negotiation and contestation; they are, in fact, as Oppermann herself said in the above quote, the ‘documentation of a particular method during perception and/or awareness exercises’.23 To provide some examples from my own experience in installing Oppermann’s ensembles, I might emphasize certain aspects of an ensemble by bringing related material to the front, exposing it directly to the viewer, while other 22  Why and how this practice of self-preservation developed historically cannot be pursued further here. 23  Oppermann 2007, 112. This self-reflexive approach corresponds to the claim for a conservator’s testimony, as Sanneke Stigter argues; see Stigter 2016.

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aspects could remain hidden in the arrangement, in the background or elsewhere. Depending on my own value system or point of view, I could accentuate either a personal conflict of the artist or highlight the methodological aspects of the ensembles by juxtaposing the corresponding available material in the display. Concerning the processual aspects of the work, I could either decide to put a fresh piece of fruit in the ensemble or display the shrivelled one that Oppermann herself displayed years ago. This depends on my evaluation of the material and conceptual aspects of the work; each action implies a specific identification and interpretation beforehand.24 If I decide to follow the conceptual aspect by showing the ongoing historicity of the ensembles, this could consequently mean that there is a necessity to even posthumously integrate the photographic documentation of each instalment, for example, thereby adding new material each time the work is presented.25 The installation that is shown in the museum space is the result of an institutional decision-making process that depends on the power structures and authority within the group of stakeholders.26 Each interpretation attests to the notion of what is regarded as crucial for maintaining the work’s identity at that very moment. The question then is no longer: Is it still an original? The question becomes: How is the impression of originality staged, or how original is this staging?27 The preservation decisions may be subject to criticism due to different point of views. This may generate a stimulating discussion about various notions of value, artistic concepts, or even what a work of art actually is. Preservation can open the floor for such a debate, but it can only become a strong voice if it no longer hides behind the scenes but instead is put on display. This requires a change of display politics of the museum. One small step would be to indicate preservation actions on the label by naming the conservators that installed the artwork. But there are far more extensive ways one could think of to mediate not only preservation practices but also decision-making and negotiation processes themselves in an exhibition. In June 2017 I co-curated the exhibition In Obhut. Anhand von Anna Oppermann, dedicated to the visualizing of the confrontation between the artistic concept and the existing cache of

24  Intervention in the conceptual and material aspects of a work of art always is ‘a matter of interpretation’, as Renée van de Vall put it; see Van de Vall 2015. 25  Perpetuating the process of an artwork posthumously through preservation raises various critical topics concerning traditional notions of authenticity, originality, and authorship of a work of art. For a discussion of these issues in depth for Oppermann´s ensembles elsewhere, see Schäffler 2014. 26  On decision-making models, see Phillips 2015 and Giebeler & Heydenreich 2016. 27  On the performative dimension staging media art installations, see Caianiello 2013.

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Figures 6.9 and 6.10

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Recursive documentation of daily working states during installation of the exhibition In Obhut (Anhand von Anna Oppermann) (above) and final installation view of the ensemble staged as work in progress including the working table in the exhibition (below) photo: Anna Schäffler

materials.28 We tried to explore to what degree an ensemble would still being recognizable as a work of Oppermann and when would it be considered as a curatorial setting or gesture. Over the course of 10 days we experimented with 28  I n Obhut. Anhand von Anna Oppermann, co-curated by Anna Schäffler and Claudia Voit, 10 June–9 July 2017, Galerie Hollenstein Lustenau, Austria, publication scheduled 2018; also see https://galerie-hollenstein.lustenau.at/de/201702 [accessed 28 July 2017].

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different formats to mediate the construction and decision-making process, from unpacking the boxes to installing an ensemble. In the end the exhibition displayed its own making. 7 Conclusion Visibility is important because preservation practice can contribute epistemologically to the understanding of an artwork.29 Preservation can be regarded as a form of practiced research that comprehends the artistic work during the process of preservation. By engaging with the material, preservation contributes to the understanding of the historicity of an artwork. An examination of preservation processes offers insights into processes of knowledge building and generating meaning. Finally, preservation not only deals with historicity from a retrospective viewpoint but adds and contributes to the historicity of the work itself by producing ever-new iterations. Analysing the processes of preservation practices over time is not only crucial in regard to the artwork; it also supplies general evidence of the formation of cultural memory. Assuming that a medium becomes visible in times of crisis, finally I would like to argue that the increased visibility of preservation—understood as a medium of cultural memory—is symptomatic of the current crisis of representation in a broader cultural context.30 Oppermann’s ensembles are in line with postmodern thinking about the fragmentation of the world, while at the same time taking exactly this circumstance as an opportunity to constantly actualize memory through it—also keeping the history present in the work itself through recursive elements such as self-documentation. This is not so much about reconstruction but about the activation of an artwork through different instantiations. Each revision is contributing something new through each loop instead of being a mere repetition.31 Seen historiographically, the concept of recursion expands the perspective of preservation practice to be understood not only as the duty of taking care of the past but as a process of sketching the future in all of its possibilities. With her dynamic ensembles, Anna Oppermann anticipated some of this shift avant le lettre. 29  Laurenson 2016. 30  I mean this in a much broader sense, whereby not only the function of the museum as such is questioned but also in relation to current social and economic processes—theorists like Jacques Rancière observe the rejection of the representative in current protests of the precariat and predict the end of representational democracy. 31  See also on this topic Steyerl 2016.

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Bibliography Buschmann, Renate and Tiziana Caianiello, Media art installations. Preservation and presentation. Materializing the ephemeral, Berlin 2013. Caianiello, Tiziana, ‘Materializing the ephemeral. The preservation and presentation of media art installations’, in: Buschmann and Caianiello 2013, 207–229. ‘Competing commitments. A discussion about ethical dilemmas in the conservation of modern and contemporary art’, a discussion between Matthew Gale, Susan Lake, Jill Sterrett, Tom Learner and Jeffrey Levin, Getty Conservation Institute Newsletter 24 (Fall 2009), no. 2, online publication: http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publica tions_resources/newsletters/24_2/dialogue.html [accessed 20 February 2017]. De Leeuw, Riet, ‘The precarious reconstruction of installations’, in: Ijsbrand Hummelen and Dionne Sillé (eds.), Modern Art. Who cares? An interdisciplinary research project and international symposium on the conservation of modern and contemporary art, London 2005, 212–221. Dekker, Annet, ‘Assembling traces, or the conservation of net art’, NECSUS (Spring 2014), online publication: http://www.necsus-ejms.org/assembling-traces-conser vation-net-art/ [accessed 20 February 2017]. Depocas, Alain, Jon Ippolito and Caitlin Jones (eds.), Permanence through change. The variable media approach, New York 2003. Esner, Rachel, Sandra Kisters and Ann-Sophie Lehmann (eds.), Hiding making, showing creation. The studio from Turner to Tacita Dean, Amsterdam 2013. Ferriani, Barbara and Marina Pugliese (eds.), Ephemeral monuments. History and conservation of installation art, Los Angeles 2013. Giebeler, Julia and Gunnar Heydenreich, ‘Blind spots in contemporary art conservation? Results of an interdisciplinary workshop’, in: Erma Hermens and Frances Robertson (eds.), Authenticity in transition. Changing practices in contemporary art making and conservation, London 2016, 128–138. Hölling, Hanna B., ‘Transitional media: duration, recursion, and the paradigm of conservation’, Studies in Conservation 61 (2016), suppl. 2, 79–83. Hölling, Hanna B., Paik’s virtual archive. Time, change, and materiality in media art, Oakland 2017. Hummelen, Ijsbrand, ‘Symmetrical approaches in the conservation of contemporary art—an examination of the contemporary art work in the context of its technosocial network’, Lecture at the conference ‘Permanence in contemporary art— checking reality’, Statens Museum for Kunst, Denmark, 3–4 November 2008, lecture available online: http://www.smk.dk/en/explore-the-art/research/seminars-andconferences/seminar-on-contemporaryart/film-se-oplaeg/ysbrand-hummelen/ [accessed 20 February 2017].

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Latour, Bruno and Adam Lowe, ‘The migration of the aura—or How to explore the original through its facsimiles’, in: Thomas Bartscherer and Roderick Coover (eds.), Switching Codes. Thinking through digital technology in the humanities and the arts, Chicago 2011, available online: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/articles/article/108 -ADAMFACSIMILES-AL-BL.pdf [accessed 20 February 2017]. Laurenson, Pip, ‘Practice as research. Unfolding the objects of contemporary art conservation’, inaugural lecture at Maastricht University, 18 March 2016, available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEZzsg3OzJg&list=PLJ-vcx064cxtT9HtjJN 0L5QB1Ji7sS3I6&index=1 [accessed 20 February 2017]. Macdonald, Sharon, Behind the scenes at the science museum, Oxford 2002. McGovern, Fiona, Die Kunst zu zeigen, Künstlerische Ausstellungsdisplays bei Joseph Beuys, Martin Kippenberger, Mike Kelley und Manfred Pernice, Bielefeld 2016. Ofak, Ana and Philipp von Hilgers (eds.), Rekursionen. Von Faltungen des Wissens, Munich 2010. Oppermann, Anna, ‘What is an Ensemble?’, in: Ute Vorkoeper (ed.), Anna Opermann. Ensembles 1968–1992, Ostfildern 2007, 112–113. Phillips, Joanna, ‘Reporting iterations. A documentation model for time-based media art’, in: Lúcia Almeida Matos, Rita Macedo and Gunnar Heydenreich (eds.), ‘Performing documentation in the conservation of contemporary art,’ special issue, Revista de História da Arte, 4 (2015), 168–179. Schäffler, Anna, ‘Zum posthumen Umgang mit installativen Kunstwerken am Beispiel von Anna Oppermann’, Berlin 2012 (unpub. Master’s thesis, Free University, Berlin). Schäffler, Anna, ‘Variation & Interpretation. Zum posthumen Aufbau installativer Kunstwerke’, in: kunsttexte.de/Gegenwart 4 (2014), online publication: https://edoc .hu-berlin.de/handle/18452/7996 [accessed 20 February 2017]. Scholte, Tatja and Glenn Wharton (eds.), Inside installations. Theory and practice in the care of complex artworks, Amsterdam 2011. Steyerl, Hito, ‘A Tank on a pedestal. Museums in an age of planetary civil war’, e-flux journal 70 (February 2016, online publication: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/70/ 60543/a-tank-on-a-pedestal-museums-in-an-age-of-planetary-civil-war/ [accessed 20 February 2017]. Stigter, Sanneke, ‘How material is conceptual art? From certificate to materialization. Installation practices of Joseph Kosuth’s Glass (one and three)’, in: Scholte and Wharton 2011, 69–80. Stigter, Sanneke, ‘Autoethnography as a new approach in conservation’, Studies in Conservation 61 (2016), suppl. 2, 227–232. Sully, Dean, ‘Conservation theory and practice. Materials, values, and people in heritage conservation’, in: Conal McCarthy (ed.), Museum practice, Oxford 2015, 293–314 (International handbooks of museum studies, vol. 2).

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Van de Vall, Renée, ‘The devil and the details. The ontology of contemporary art in conservation theory and practice’, British Journal of Aesthetics 55 (July 2015), no. 3, 285–302. Van de Vall, Renée, Hanna Hölling, Tatja Scholte and Sanneke Stigter, ‘Reflections on a biographical approach to contemporary art conservation’, lecture presented at the 16th Triennial Conference, ICOM-CC, Lisbon, 19–23 September 2011, Proceedings 16th Triennial Conference—ICOM-CC, Lisbon 2011, 1–8. Van Saaze, Vivian, Installation art and the museum. Presentation and conservation of changing artworks, Amsterdam 2013. Vorkoeper, Ute, ‘After “the death of the author”. On re-installing Anna Oppermann’s processual and open ensembles’, lecture at the conference ‘Inside Installations’, S.M.A.K., Gent, 10 December 2006, online publication: http://www.deponat.de/ data/gent-vortrag_11_2006.pdf [accessed 20 February 2017].

Chapter 7

The Louvre on Celluloid

Curating, Disseminating, and Preserving the Louvre’s Collections in Mid-Twentieth-Century Art Documentaries Birgit Cleppe The post-war decades saw a massive production of art documentaries, a substantial number of which centred on museum collections. This fully coincided with the launch of UNESCO’s post-war programme to preserve the world’s cultural heritage, enhance cultural education, and show art to the broadest public possible. To achieve this ambiguous objective, where works of art had to be both as carefully preserved and as much and widely exhibited as possible, museums needed to develop new museological strategies. They were guided in their search by the then newly founded International Council of Museums (ICOM). Taking the post-war Louvre—ICOM’s showpiece of museum renewal—as a focal point, this paper aims to demonstrate that films such as Images de l’ancienne Egypte (dir. Maurice Cloche, 1951), Les femmes du Louvre (dir. Pierre Kast and Maurice Van Moppes, 1951), Les pierres vives (dir. Fernand Marzelle, 1952), or La double vie des chefs d’œuvre (dir. Claude Dagues and Madeleine Hours, 1959) can be considered valuable additions to the existing material display of the Louvre collection. Through the filmic reproduction of art, these documentaries established ‘immaterial exhibitions’ that could never have been produced in a material way. By adding movement, comparing details, or showing the artists, curators, or restorers at work, they could frame artworks differently than the material museum. Moreover, the films allowed for any number of virtual curations with minimal physical disturbance to the object. Cinematic exhibitions could be sent around the globe while the original material remained unharmed in its safe habitat. In dematerializing the museum collection as a cinematic reproduction, the art documentary thus accommodated a perfect compromise between curatorial flexibility and conservation rigour. On the other hand, the films are unique testimonies to those philosophies and have become material objects that need to be preserved in archives themselves. This paper explicitly relates the mid-twentieth-century art documentaries on the Louvre’s collection to the contemporary museum refurbishment of the Louvre. In order to come to a better understanding of the ambitions

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004396852_009

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and qualities of the art documentary as a museological instrument, this paper firsts investigate the main curatorial and conservation philosophies behind the reorganization of the museum, as discussed by several of its museum officials in ICOM’s periodical Museum. It then evaluates to what extent those philosophies are represented in the films, thereby shedding light on how the art documentary turned out to be the perfect playmaker at the intersection of the Louvre’s curatorial, pedagogical, and internationalist ambitions on the one hand and its new vistas on material culture and preservation on the other. Finally, this paper points out why and how the Louvre and ICOM played a key role in the promotion, production, and distribution of this new film genre by hosting the first International Conference on Art Films, where the Fédération Internationale du Film d’Art (FIFA) was established. 1

The Post-War Louvre: Mediating the Material

Between 1930 and 1950, the Louvre underwent a thorough museological transformation.1 Both the International Museums Office (IMO) and its postwar successor, ICOM, proclaimed the refurbishment of the Louvre as an absolute reference for museum renewal in their respective specialized international periodicals, Mouseion and Museum.2 All three subsequent directors-in-chief of the Louvre, Henri Verne (1926–1939), Jacques Jaujard (1940–1944), and Georges Salles (1945–1957), wrote important contributions on the reorganization of the Louvre.3 As Raymonde Frin, first editor of Museum, recalls in its fiftieth-anniversary edition, the scope of Museum was to emphasize ‘the development and progress that led to the modern version of museums’. Those modern museums needed to be ‘very active establishments’. New activities included ‘not only education, still little practised and often unfamiliar’, but also, for instance, ‘the cleaning of paintings—a highly controversial area’.4 Museum institutions really had to straddle the line between dissemination of knowledge and scientific conservation practices. In the very first issue of Museum, entirely dedicated to 1  The museum renewal of the Louvre was started by Louvre director Henri Verne in 1927 and interrupted during World War II, when a huge part of the collection was evacuated to the non-occupied part of France. It was only finished in 1950. For details on the original renewal project, see Verne 1934 and Verne 1936. 2  The IMO published Mouseion from 1927–1946. Subsequently ICOM published Museum, now Museum International, from 1948 onwards. For a thorough survey of ICOM’s history, see Baghly et al. 1998. 3  Verne 1930; Jaujard 1935; Salles 1948. 4  Frin 1998, 6.

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Figure 7.1 Henri Verne, ‘Le plan d’extension et de regroupement méthodique des collections du musée du Louvre. Les travaux de 1927 à 1934’, Bulletin des musées de France 1 (1934), 39 photo: Ghent University Library

‘The Museums of France’ and with many contributions especially focusing on the refurbishment of the Louvre,5 Georges Salles succinctly summarizes this gargantuan assignment: Like books and the radio, the museum is on the way to becoming one of the principle media of knowledge: it must therefore adapt itself to all subjects and all public to be at the same time a means of study and stimulating entertainment, a storehouse and an organ of widespread diffusion.6

5  Aubert 1948; Charbonneaux 1948; Huyghe 1948; Parrot 1948; Vandier 1948; Verlet 1948. 6  Salles 1948, 10.

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A Medium of Knowledge: Display the Material or Communicate Ideas? The new Louvre not only enhanced its function as a modern container for art treasures where its valuable material could be carefully stored, studied, and preserved, it now also deliberately aimed to become a mediator for that material. The main goal was not to display the material as such but rather to communicate ideas. As art historian Andrew McClellan points out in his book The art museum from Boullée to Bilbao, this tendency has to be related to the specific context of the interwar and post-war period. 1.1

The art museum standing as an oasis of high culture in a brutalized, materialistic world increased greatly during and after World War I … Though art and culture had failed to prevent the Second World War, they were called upon to soften its effects and remind people of what was worth fighting for … After the war, museums and exhibitions were asked to help rebuild the human spirit.7 The emphasis on the communication of ideas not only had a major impact on the new museum concept of the Louvre. It would even put the importance of the original material artwork in jeopardy. In an essay published in 2004, Duncan and Wallach suggest that the Louvre should be considered ‘the largest and most influential’ example of what they describe as a ‘Universal survey museum’.8 It claims ‘the heritage of the classical tradition for contemporary society and equates the tradition with the very notion of civilization itself’.9 In the refurbishment, the Louvre presented itself as the ultimate preserver of this civilization and curated its heritage in such a way that it would communicate this universalist message to the public. This matched tremendously well with UNESCO’s post-war programme, as its Director-General, Julian Huxley, declared on the very first page of the first issue of Museum: UNESCO takes pleasure in launching Museum for the benefit of the museums of the world, on whom UNESCO calls directly for co-operation in its programme and for aid in its work of establishing the intercultural and international understanding basic to the peace of the world.10 7  McClellan dedicates a big portion of his chapter ‘Ideals and mission’ to the impact of the two World Wars on the conception of museums and their increasing ambition to communicate universal values. McClellan 2008, 32–41. 8  Duncan & Wallach 2004, 53. 9  Duncan & Wallach 2004, 47. 10  Huxley 1948, 1.

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The new curatorial concept of the Louvre tried to heighten the international aspect of its collection through transhistorical combinations of masterpieces. In his article ‘Art museums and international understanding’, Paul Fierens, then president of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), chief curator of the Royal Museums of Fine Art in Brussels, and secretary to the Executive Council of ICOM, praised the reorganized Louvre as ‘the very type of the international museum’.11 Fierens especially appreciated the unusual method of presentation that had been adopted. Though masterpieces were still mainly grouped according to their native schools, some were unusually juxtaposed regardless of the time and space that separated them. Placing Ingres side by side with his friends the fifteenth-century Italians and confronting Delacroix with Rubens—his great predecessor, his model, his elder brother—enhanced the better understanding of their characteristics. According to Fierens, the general purpose of this new trend in museological theory, arranging the artworks without division into schools, was to ensure that the work of art shall be appreciated in itself for its own sake; … in fact, to treat the work of art not as a mere product of its environment, epoch and atmosphere, but simply as a testimony of the human spirit, a testimony of universal value, the finest that we can give of our dignity.12 He concludes, ‘Thus there was done, with wooden panels and canvases, what each one of us strives to achieve with the help of snatches of memory, or photographs.’ This ‘experiment’ of combining masterpieces of different styles, periods, and cultures in order to come to a better understanding of art history is reminiscent of the Musée imaginaire of André Malraux (French writer, art theorist, and France’s first Minister of Cultural Affairs) that was initially published in 1947.13 Malraux, however, deliberately turned away from the material museum. In his view, constructing an all-encompassing overview of the world’s heritage could only be achieved by means of reproductions. Malraux ‘analyses with the greatest care the difference between the original work and its reproduction…. The geographic distance between museums was also a mental distance. As Malraux so admirably states, “the comparison of a picture in the Louvre 11  Fierens 1954, 78–79. 12  Fierens 1954, 79. 13  Le musée imaginaire was originally published in 1947 as the first volume of Psychologie de l’art. Malraux 1947.

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with one in Madrid or Rome was between a picture and a thing remembered”’.14 According to Malraux, only photographic reproduction can meet the challenge of preserving a world heritage that far exceeds the collection of any one museum. The reproduction ‘removes the artwork from its original context only to enhance its aura immeasurably by revealing its immaterial affinities with world art as a whole’.15 The use of reproductions as exhibition material caused fierce discussions among museum officials and art critics at the time. In a burning editorial entitled ‘Unesco and the future of museums’, the Burlington Magazine excoriated the ideas of Euripide Foundoukidis in his pamphlet Cultural reconstruction of 1945, accusing him of relegating ‘the masterpiece to a subordinate place’.16 Foundoukidis, former secretary-general of the IMO and editor of Mouseion, had proposed a prefabricated museum, consisting of reproductions only, in order to quickly establish a ‘nucleus’ of museums ‘to develop the sense of Beauty in the masses’ as a means of cultural reconstruction after the atrocities of the war.17 Foundoukidis argued that ‘[m]asterpieces are very costly and relatively scarce whereas the Museums we have in view will be very numerous, for all towns of any importance and all centres will have one’.18 Reproduction could be understood in its widest sense. ‘[T]he progress made in films and record must not be overlooked’, Foundoukidis continued, and ‘[m]useums of the future are to be equipped with television-sets, with all kinds of projectors, for public or private use’.19 In a reaction to the editorial, Grace L. McCann Morley, who was in charge of UNESCO’s museums programme for the First General Conference in November 1947, wryly puts away the pamphlet as ‘a personal publication by Mr. Foundoukidis’, stating that ‘she is completely horrified by the picture of the Museum’ he conceived because ‘the essential quality of the art museum—the opportunity for direct contact with art—is completely lacking’.20 Within the scope of disseminating the knowledge of art to the masses, reproduction is increasingly recognized as a valuable addition to its original counterpart. Henri Verne mentions that reproductions were at the visitor’s disposal in the entrance hall of the Louvre.21 Notwithstanding this, in the refurbishment 14  Battro 2010, 140. 15  Smith 2004, 166. 16  Anonymous 1947, 29. 17  Foundoukidis 1945, as quoted in Anonymous 1947, 29. 18  Foundoukidis 1945, as quoted in Anonymous 1947, 29. 19  Foundoukidis 1945, as quoted in Anonymous 1947, 29. 20  McCann Morley 1947, 136–137. 21  Verne 1934, 16.

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of the Louvre, masterpieces were clearly not relegated to a subordinate place. On the contrary, the museum would do its utmost to enhance their appearance in the galleries, as we will see. Apart from the underlying internationalist message that is apparent in the way artworks are exhibited, the museum is also a conservation medium providing direct contact with the materiality of our cultural heritage. Because, in the end, the works of art themselves proved to be the most convincing messengers. As McCann Morley puts it: I think no art museum man or woman, and I should think no art teacher, would now confuse art history with art, any more than he would propose reproductions as substitutes for the unattainable originals of art for use in a museum. Certainly, UNESCO … does speak of Museums as agencies of education in the broadest sense, but … in regard to art museums it has in mind precisely that cultivation of the individual for greater aesthetic perception and sensibility, and contributing to the creation of art.22 1.2 A Means of Stimulating Entertainment This direct contact with the real masterpieces of the museum was one of the major assets within the scenographic reorganization of the Louvre. Henri Verne described the project in Mouseion in 1930.23 The countless aisles, floors, and mezzanines and the motley admixture of rooms, galleries, and cabinets of the Louvre had to be restructured into a coherent and instructive scenography. Verne wanted to create ‘a legible guide for a novice visitor’ along a primary circuit through the galleries that showcased a selection of exemplary masterpieces.24 In the adjacent rooms, a secondary circuit with less-famous artworks was meant to satisfy connoisseurs and aficionados. The new Louvre also no longer aimed merely at exhibiting an exhaustive history of art. Emphasis was put on contemplation in order to attract a broader public. Educating had to be done in an entertaining way. In order to intensify the physical encounter with the work of art in all its material glory, the materiality of the surrounding architecture was reduced as much as possible. Already in 1934, Verne had published before-and-after shots of the Salle des sept-mètres at the Louvre.25 One can distinguish a ‘turn to lighter walls, a reduction of the number of pictures and a more intimate viewing with removal of guard rails’.26 22  Verne 1934, 16. 23  Verne 1930. 24  Translation by the author. Original quote: ‘un guide lisible pour le visiteur novice’, in: Verne 1930, 5. 25  Verne 1934, 31. 26  McClellan 2008, 126–127.

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Figure 7.2 Before and after shot of the rearranged painting collection. Henri Verne, ‘Le plan d’extension et de regroupement méthodique des collections du musée du Louvre. Les travaux de 1927 à 1934’, Bulletin des musées de France 1 (1934), 30 photo: Ghent University Library

Following the current modernist trend, masterpieces had to be presented as unique, stand-alone works of art: they needed room to breathe, abstracted from their environment. Paintings were hung in single lines as much as possible instead of covering the entire wall. Similarly, individual sculptures were granted more space. The Venus de Milo received her own room, and sightlines on the sculpture were no longer hindered by other sculptures, which were now relegated to niches in the wall. Another thing Verne described as a ‘capital innovation’ was the lighting of sculptures. His successor, Jacques Jaujard, applauded the dramatic effect that was obtained for the Winged Victory of Samothrace thanks to powerful spotlights combined with concealed lighting. The surrounding walls, painted with flat colours, contrasted with the shiny white marble of the statue.27 In his article, Verne refers to the ‘pedagogical mission’ of the IMO during the interwar period. He gives examples of other museums with similar projects, like the archaeological museum in Berlin or the British Museum in London. 27  Jaujard 1935.

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Figure 7.3a

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The new arrangement of the Salle Jean Goujon in Henri Verne, ‘Le plan d’extension et de regroupement méthodique des collections du musée du Louvre. Les travaux de 1927 à 1934’, Bulletin des musées de France 1 (1934), 31 photo: Ghent University Library

Figure 7.3b Salle Jean Goujon in the Louvre as shown in Les Pierres vives—La sculpture française au Musée du Louvre (Fernand Marzelle, 1952). Digital film frame

Nevertheless, Verne’s project for the Louvre was perhaps aesthetical as much as it was educational, with a scenography transforming the museum visit into a sacral experience. In her book Civilizing rituals. Inside public art museums, museum history expert Carol Duncan cites Louvre curator Germain Bazin, who was closely associated with the 1930s refurbishment, comparing the art

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museum with a Temple where Time seems suspended.28 Other scenographic measures were taken to avoid what Georges Salles describes as the ‘danger of monotony’.29 The modern museum had to be lively, presenting its collections in a dynamic way, with a diversity of masterpieces and display methods, and provided ‘with all the appurtenances of modern museography—maps, photographs, explanatory notes, fittings and electric or other suitably modernized equipment’.30 Given that the museum wanted to improve its performance as a scientific institution as well, the refurbishment also provided considerable amount of space for the storage of its reserves, for research, and for conservation laboratories.31 In 1947 the Louvre officially created such a department—the Laboratoire du musée du Louvre, directed by conservation expert Madeleine Hours.32 In order to communicate the spectacular outcomes of its scientific activities to the public, Hours set up thematic exhibitions, like L’Œuvre d’art et les méthodes scientifiques in 1949.33 Beginning in 1956 the museum published the Bulletin du laboratoire du musée du Louvre. And in 1959 Hours collaborated with the French television channel RTF on the documentary La double vie des chefs d’œuvre and even got her own television series Les secrets des chefs-d’œuvre, that same year.34 Thus the wider public was introduced into the secret and invisible activities of the Louvre in a most entertaining way. 1.3 A Storehouse and an Organ of Widespread Diffusion The most conflicting ambitions of the museum proved to be the preservation of vulnerable artworks versus the greater diffusion of art worldwide. The production of exhibitions travelling around the world could partly solve this and was promoted by ICOM and UNESCO. But such exhibitions confronted museum institutions with numerous practical problems, like loan and import conditions, limited budgets, insurance costs, and conservation issues. In 1950 René Huyghe, then curator-in-chief at the Louvre’s painting department, published a report on behalf of ICOM regarding the coordination of international art exhibitions. He wrote about the importance of travelling exhibitions as a ‘visual means of communication … making people more and more ready to 28  Duncan 1995. 29  Salles 1948, 92. 30  Salles 1948, 92. 31  Verne 1934, 13. 32  Casedas 2010. 33  Hours 1949. 34  Hours 1964.

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learn through their eyes’.35 But Huyghe concurrently warned of the main hazard to travelling exhibitions for museum collections: ‘[M]useums are primarily designed to ensure the preservation of art treasures, the most serious risks to which the latter may be exposed is that of carriage.’36 After listing the potential dangers caused by changes of atmosphere and transportation, as well as a long account of specific examples of damage suffered as a result of certain exhibitions, Huyghe proposed to restrict the number of exhibitions and to create a list of works that were not to be moved. He summarized the limitations of the material museum in one question: ‘How can we satisfy the growing appetite of the public and avoid disappointing the highly desirable curiosity they are showing in works of art, while at the same time reducing the movement of works to the minimum?’37 2

The Art Documentary: a New Method of Revealing and Preserving Art

As he wrote the above-cited ICOM report in 1950, Huyghe had in mind an alternative to travelling exhibitions—one that could satisfy the appetite of the public and reduce the movement of works at the same time: the art documentary. Huyghe had himself already directed the art documentary Rubens et son temps in 1937, in the aftermath of the eponymous exhibition held the year before at the Musée de l’Orangerie, which was at the time affiliated with the Louvre. 111 paintings had been brought together for the exhibition. Only 17 of them were part of the Louvre’s collection. The others had been borrowed from museum institutions and private collections in Belgium, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.38 With the film, Huyghe grabbed the chance to produce a travelling exhibition on celluloid, without exposing the artworks over and over to the dangers of travel. L’Illustration, the periodical that sponsored the film and simultaneously edited a cabinet edition of the catalogue, called it ‘an unprecedented formula for the diffusion of art’.39 Released in 1938, the film was screened at the 35  Huyghe 1950a. 36  Ibid. 37  Ibid. 38  See ‘Index des prêteurs’ in: Sterling et al. 1936, 191–193. 39  Translation by the author. Original quote: ‘Mais l’oeuil qui les regarde se déplace. Il aperçoit d’abord un ensemble, puis un rapide travelling fixe son attention sur un détail, sur une expression. L’angle de vision, le plan sont modifiés, exactement comme pour un visiteur de musée qui se rapproche ou s’éloigne de la toile.’ Anonymous 1937, 240.

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École du Louvre and numerous cinemas in Paris. Numerous countries bought the copyright, and the film was selected for the Sixth Venice International Film Festival in 1938, together with two other epoch-making art documentaries: Michelangelo. Das Leben eines Titanen by Curt Oertel, and Thèmes d’inspiration by Charles Dekeukeleire. Apart from circumventing the traditional modes of exhibition-making with sincere consideration to the vulnerability of the artworks, the film Rubens et son temps has itself become part of our heritage. It is now a valuable testimony to the original exhibition in the Musée de l’Orangerie in the sense that the artworks on display may all have returned to their original settings in museums scattered around the world, but in the film they still form the carefully curated unity intended by the exhibition makers. Moreover, the voiceover was written and spoken by René Huyghe, curator of the exhibition. In this way, art documentaries have become conservation material themselves, documenting specific curatorial cultures of the time in which they were produced. Rubens et son temps was, however, far from a simple record of the exhibition. Huyghe, who was inexperienced when it came to filmmaking, made an appeal for technical support to the production company Art Et Couleur, film producer Alexandre Fabri, and Claire Parker, who was at the time experimenting with her husband Alexandre Alexeïef on the fairly new Gasparcolor technique.40 As a result, Rubens et son temps, dedicated to one of Europe’s major colourists, turned out to be one of the first art documentaries in colour.41 L’Illustration not only praised the truthfulness of the colours, it also placed the cinematographic reproduction above the photographic one because it evoked the experience of a real museum visit, stating, The eye that looks at the works of art is dynamic. At first it notices an entirety and then, after a travelling shot, fixes its attention on a detail, an expression. The angle of view of the camera exactly mimics the eye of a museum visitor approaching and distancing the canvas.42 Rubens et son temps was an early experiment of showing art on film. The genre became increasingly popular in the decades after World War II, with an 40  Gasparcolor was a colour print-making process invented by Hungarian chemist Bela Gaspar in 1933. It was one of the earliest techniques using a substractive three-colour process to produce colour films and was primarily used in animations in the 1930s and 1940s. Bendazzi 2001, 218. 41  Bendazzi 2001, 63–65. 42  Anonymous 1937, 240.

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abundant production of art documentaries in the 1940s and 1950s.43 In 1953 the American Federation of Arts and UNESCO published art documentary catalogues with an astounding 453 and 729 titles, respectively.44 That same year, the Italian art critic Carlo Ragghianti listed 1109 such films.45 Leading filmmakers, including Robert Flaherty, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jean Grémillon, Henri-Georges Clouzot, and Alain Resnais, among others, contributed to the development of this form, and several art documentaries won major film awards.46 In addition, prominent contemporary art critics and film theorists like André Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Rudolph Arnheim paid attention to the art documentary in their writings. The phenomenon was also discussed extensively in leading film journals such as Sight and sound, Bianco e nero, and Cahiers du cinéma. Museum institutions, meanwhile, also began to understand the enormous possibilities of the experimental art documentary. In 1948 the Louvre hosted the first ‘International Conference on Art Films’. The event was co-organized by ICOM and UNESCO, together with Les Amis de l’Art, the Cinématèque française, and the French Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs. The second issue of Museum, dealing with the topic of museum teaching, dedicated one of four chapters to ‘The Film and the Art Museum’.47 The editorial stated, ‘Art museums should take note of the outstanding developments in this new method of revealing art.’48 Also, UNESCO quickly recognized film as an essential instrument for the mass dissemination of ideas. ‘Practically speaking, many of UNESCO’s projects to teach the masses relied on some sort of media…. In the years before the widespread introduction of television broadcasting, film was an educator’s most important visual aid.’49 Clearly, the art documentary was much appreciated as an educational tool, but to what extent could they serve as fully fledged curatorial devices?

43  An insightful introduction to the post-war art documentary in Europe can be found in the first chapter of Jacobs 2011, 1–37. 44  For the catalogue of The American Federation of Arts, see Chapman 1953. For the UNESCO catalogue, see Bolen 1953. 45  Ragghianti 1953. 46  Jacobs 2011, 5. 47  Anonymous 1948. 48  Ibid., 196. 49  Druick 2011, 82.

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Curating a Museum’s Collection on Film: a Cinematic Pedestal for the Louvre Having identified the main principles on curation and conservation behind the reorganization of the Louvre between 1930 and 1950, it is possible to investigate whether and how these principles are articulated in contemporary art documentaries on the Louvre’s collection. One of the first productions after the war, L’art retrouvé (dir. Philippe Este, 1946), manifestly corresponds to one of the primary concerns ICOM expressed in Museum: ‘What was the status of museums when the war ended? How did this long interruption affect them?’50 L’art retrouvé celebrates the ‘liberation’ of the Louvre collection after it had been hidden in the Chambord castle during the Nazi occupation. According to Raymonde Frin, the way in which France’s museums had dealt with their heritage during the war was an absolute reference for ICOM: 2.1

France’s museums were being entirely reorganized—one might even say completely renovated—and valuable lessons were to be learnt. Irreplaceable experience was being acquired concerning the way objects that had been kept in safe storage were being handled and the problems encountered in putting them back on display.51 René Huyghe had assisted Jacques Jaujard in the evacuation operation of over 4,000 paintings to the non-occupied part of France. Accompanied by the sound of victory trumpets, the camera in L’art retrouvé proudly moves through the rooms of the Chambord castle, past piles of wooden crates with artworks, as if it were an exposition of the salvaged national heritage.52 In 1951 after the majority of the Louvre collection had been reinstalled, several interesting art documentaries were brought into being. Images de l’ancienne Egypte by Maurice Cloche introduced the viewer to a significantly extended department as the Egyptian collection of the Musée Guimet had been transferred to the Louvre. In return, the Chinese and Japanese collections of the Louvre were rehoused in the Musée Guimet. The idea behind this project was to present the Louvre collections as a coherent whole, grouping around Western civilization all those that directly or indirectly had a share in its birth.53 In the film the artworks were depicted as aesthetical objects and 50  Frin 1998, 6. 51  Ibid. 52  This documentary is not an art documentary. It has been added for the involvement of René Huyghe and to describe the impact of the war on the museum collection and will not be discussed in depth. 53  Vandier 1948, 33–36.

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poetically illuminated. A voice-over placed them in their historical context. As the chronological order that structured the museum display was adopted in the film as well, the documentary employed the same curatorial principles as the real Louvre. But in the film the camera framed the artworks individually and didn’t show their surrounding architectural context. This way, the film idealized the museum visit as an intimate encounter with the objects, where their facture became palpable. Meanwhile all the distractions of a real museum, like ambient noise, other visitors in the way, or reflections in the glass of showcases, were eliminated. According to the film credits, the documentary was made in close collaboration with the Louvre’s Department of Egyptian Antiquities and was supposed to be part of an educational series entitled L’histoire de l’art par les chefs-d’œuvre du musée du Louvre. Two other art documentaries produced around the same time were not confined to one specific period in art history. Les pierres vives (dir. Fernand Marzelle, 1952) dealt with French sculpture, and Les femmes du Louvre (dir. Pierre Kast and Maurice Van Moppes, 1951) focused on representations of women in the Louvre’s collection. Whereas the works in Images de l’ancienne Egypte could also be contemplated in the real museum as an ensemble, both Les pierres vives and Les femmes du Louvre only existed as coherent bodies in the universe of the films. The cinematic reproduction and montage of images and the transhistoricity of the collection enabled the creation of imaginary exhibitions that bring to mind Malraux’s Musée imaginaire in allowing for easy comparison of a great range of art works through reproduction.54 Built around a slightly anecdotal theme, Les femmes du Louvre was not intended to approach the artworks in a highly instructive and analytic way but rather tried to inveigle the viewer into the joys of looking at art. Suitably, the credits labelled the film as ‘Divertissement cinématographique au Musée du Louvre’ and can clearly be linked to Georges Salles’s efforts to create a highly entertaining atmosphere. Also, Les pierres vives aspired to depict the museum first and foremost as an exciting place, far removed from memories of dusty old-fashioned museums, as the voice-over states in the very first sentence. Of all the films mentioned above, only Les pierres vives somehow recalls the experience of a real museum visit to the Louvre: images show the works of art in relation to each other and to the museum space, the camera moving from one room to another, with a glimpse of the following room through the next doorway. The camera is often not positioned in an ideal central perspective, that is, right in front of the artworks. Instead it approaches them from the side, like a visitor would, walking along the sculptures on display. 54  Malraux 1947 & Malraux 1951.

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In Les pierres vives, the museum architecture is not merely a neutral background. It is carefully manipulated with lighting in order to intensify the theatrical, almost religious apparition of the exhibited objects. Sculptures too are dramatically illuminated with spotlights in darkened spaces, and animation techniques are used to extract details out of their context. Marzelle treats the architecture of the Louvre as a flexible film set, introducing scene shifts when necessary in order to keep the story going. At the end of the film, the camera brings the viewer to the Louvre’s basement, inaccessible to visitors, where a big part of the collection is stored due to a shortage of exhibition space. In this way, Les pierres vives suddenly throws the viewer back to the complex reality of the material museum and its architectural shortcomings. Notwithstanding the delirious words of Henri Verne in 1934, stating that the space for the museum reserves ‘are far from the obscure undergrounds where the museum absurdly hides its treasures’, the film exactly brings this cliché of museum reserves to life.55 La double vie des chefs d’œuvre (Claude Dagues and Madeleine Hours, 1959) also gives a glimpse into the publicly inaccessible parts of the Louvre. As the opening credits announce, the film is set ‘Live from the Conservation Department of the Louvre’.56 In a conversation with presenter Jean Thevenot, Madeleine Hours introduces the spectator into the different scientific methods used to examine the invisible secrets of a painting. The documentary thus visits architectural spaces that an average visitor never gets to see, showcasing the modern equipment of the laboratory. On screen the portrait Titus by Rembrandt dissolves into an image of a veiled woman leaning over a cradle. Underneath the painting’s top layer, there appears to be an invisible figure, which is revealed by X-ray examination. In this way, the documentary reveals imperceptible elements of the artwork that can never be put on display in the actual museum. It thus shows ‘the official condition’ of the painting, according to Hours.57 In her laboratory, she explains, ‘the invisible work of time’ and ‘the wrinkles of the artworks’ are exposed.58 Similarly, the bared breasts of the women in Le triomphe d’Henri IV dissolve into a more chaste image with dressed ladies: infrared photography traversing the varnish uncovered a later adjustment of the original painting. 55  Translation by the author. Original quote: ‘qui ne sont point les des-sous obscurs du musée où se cacheraient absurdement des trésors.’ Verne 1934, 13. 56  Translation by the author. Original quote: ‘En direct du laboratoire du Musée du Louvre.’ 57  Translation by the author. Original quote: ‘L’état officielle.’ 58  Translation by the author. Original quote: ‘Le travail invisible du temps’ and ‘Les rides du temps.’

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The documentary brings to mind the article by René Huyghe for Museum on the cleaning of paintings, which advocated a moderate attitude instead of removing all the varnishes.59 It is, he writes, the ‘lesser evil; for it will always be possible, and increasingly possible as technique becomes more advanced, to remove any surplus that we have left on the picture, where it would be impossible to replace what has been taken away’.60 Thanks to the use of X-ray images, the art documentary is able exhibit the underlying layers of the painting without having to radically remove the varnish. In this way, the painting can remain in its original state but the spectator is not excluded from its hidden secrets while also introduced to the most innovative restoration methods. 3

The Louvre: Ambassador of the Art Documentary, or Vice Versa?

Clearly, the abovementioned art documentaries are far from clear-cut recordings of an average museum visit at the Louvre. All of them represent the artworks in an idealized, highly manipulated way, impossible to mimic in real life. But being ‘the most valuable instruments we have for the spreading and appreciation of art,’ as Huyghe had put it, the art documentary had a lot to offer to the Louvre in return. Shown in museum auditoriums or school classrooms, instructive films like Images de l’ancienne Egypte fulfilled and expanded the educational role of the Louvre and introduced viewers to a carefully curated segment of its collection. By registering the world’s cultural heritage—filmic testimonials of works of art, of temporary exhibitions, or of museum’s collections—they became archival documents on celluloid and valuable contributions to the conservation of cultural goods. Thanks to the documentary, the works gathered for the exposition Rubens et son temps are now forever united in this cinematic exhibition. Furthermore, the cinematic reproduction and montage of images as in Les femmes du Louvre or Les pierres vives created infinite possibilities for curating and capturing virtual exhibitions that were otherwise impossible in a material museum setting. Much easier to distribute and reproduce, they also enhanced the international circulation of cultural goods throughout the world. And finally, the experimental nature of the cinematic language used in the films shed a different light on the works of art. Extreme close-ups were used to amplify their display, animations and split screens helped to analyse individual works of art or compare them to others, additional footage and information 59  Huyghe 1950b. 60  Ibid., 192.

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(interviews, registering their restoration, or showing the artist at work) added to appreciation and contextualization of the works shown and enriched the viewer’s understanding of the life of these objects. These films also portrayed the museum visit as a highly entertaining activity and could reveal more detail than could be seen with the human eye. Talking about his film Rubens et son temps, René Huyghe emphasized the extraordinary mobility and supersensitivity of the camera’s eye and its ability to magnify and isolate detail. The observer’s eye can thus be guided on a real tour of the picture so that, by revealing the balance of the composition, the secrets of technique, and the intrinsic vigour of the forms, the camera can impart a more profound understanding of both the artist’s intentions as the artworks’ condition and underlying secrets.61 Bibliography Anonymous, ‘Un film en couleurs sur Rubens et son temps’, L’Illustration 4938 (23 October 1937), 240. Anonymous, ‘Unesco and the future of museums’, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 89 (February 1947), 29–30. Anonymous, ‘The film and the art museum’, Museum 2 (1948), nos. 3–4, 196–208. Aubert, Marcel, ‘The Ecole du Louvre’, Museum 1 (1948), nos. 1–2, 38–39. Baghli, Sid Ahmed, Patrick Boylan and Yani Herreman, Histoire de l’ICOM (1946–1996), Paris 1998. Battro, Antonio, ‘From Malraux’s imaginary museum to the virtual museum’, in: Ross Parry, Museums in a digital age, London and New York 2010. Bendazzi, Giannalberto, Alexeieff. Itinerary of a master, Paris 2001. Bolen, Francis, ‘Films and the visual arts’, in: Francis Bolen and Denis Forman, Films on art. Panorama 1953, Paris 1953, 3–10. Casedas, Claire, ‘La conservation-restauration en spectacle. Les dessous des chefsd’œuvre révélés dans les expositions’, CeROArt 5 (2010), online publication: ceroart. revues.org/1473 [accessed 7 August 2017]. Chapman, William McK. (ed.), Films on art, New York 1952. Charbonneaux, Jean, ‘Reinstallation of the collections of Greek and Roman antiquities’, Museum 1 (1948), nos. 1–1, 24, 96–98. Druick, Zoë, ‘UNESCO, film, and education. Mediating postwar paradigms of communication,’ in: Charles R. Acland and Haidee Wasson (eds.), Useful cinema, Durham and London 2011. 61  Speech by René Huyghe at the First International Conference on the Art Film, as quoted in: Mirams et al. 1950, 8.

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Duncan, Carol, ‘The art museum as ritual’, in: Carol Duncan, Civilizing rituals. Inside public art museums, London 1995. Duncan, Carol and Alan Wallach, ‘The universal survey museum’, in: Bettina Messias Carbonell, Museum studies. An anthology of contexts, Malden 2004, 46–61. Fierens, Paul, ‘Art museums and international understanding’, Museum 7 (1954), no. 2, 78–82. Foundoukidis, Euripide, Cultural reconstruction. La reconstruction sur le plan culturel, Paris 1945. Frin, Raymonde, ‘Museum: “For the benefit of the museums of the world”’, Museum International 50 (1998), no. 1, 5–8. Hours, Madeleine, L’œuvre d’art et les méthodes scientifiques. Exposition Paris, Musée du Louvre, Salles de l’Orangerie, mars-avril 1949, Paris 1949. Hours, Madeleine, Les secrets des chefs-d’œuvre. L’ œuvre d’art est matière avant d’être message, Paris 1964, 1997. Huxley, Julian, ‘Foreword’, Museum 1 (1948), nos. 1–2, 1. Huyghe, René, ‘Changes in the Department of Paintings and the Grande Galerie’, Museum 1 (1948), nos. 1–2, 17–18, 94–96. Huyghe, René, ‘Coordination of international art exhibitions. Report of the second biennial conference, London 17–22 July 1950’, UNESCO/ICOM/BI/Conf. 2/17, Paris 1950. Huyghe, René, ‘The Louvre museum and the problem of the cleaning of old pictures’, Museum 3 (1950), no. 3, 191–199. Jacobs, Steven, Framing pictures. Film and the visual arts, Edinburgh 2011. Jaujard, Jacques, ‘Les principes muséographiques de la réorganisation du Louvre’, Mouseion 31–32 (1935), nos. 3–4, 7–30. Malraux, André, Psychologie de l’art, Geneva 1947. Malraux, André, Les voix du silence, Paris 1951. McCann Morley, Grace L., ‘Letters. UNESCO and the future of museums’, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 89 (May 1947), 136–137. McClellan, Andrew, The art museum. From Boullée to Bilbao, Berkeley 2008. Mirams, Gorden, Giulio Argan and Pierre Francastel, ‘Report on the first International Conference on Art Films, Paris, 26 June–2 July 1948’, UNESCO MCF/CONF. 1/1, Paris 1950. Parrot, André, ‘The Department of Oriental Antiquities’, Museum 1 (1948), nos. 1–2, 28–29, 98–99. Ragghianti, Carlo, Le film sur l’art. Répertoire général international des films sur les arts, Rome 1953. Salles, Georges, ‘The museums of France’, Museum 1 (1948), nos. 1–2, 10, 92. Smith, Douglas, ‘Moving pictures. The art documentaries of Alain Resnais and HenriGeorges Clouzot in theoretical context (Benjamin, Malraux and Bazin)’, Studies in European Cinema 1 (2004), 163–173.

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Sterling, Charles, René Huyghe, Charles de Kerchove de Denterghem and Paul Jamot, Rubens et son temps, Paris 1936. Vandier, Jacques, ‘The new arrangement of the Egyptian collections’, Museum 1 (1948), nos. 1–2, 36–37, 99. Verlet, Pierre, ‘The Department of objets d’art’, Museum 1 (1948), nos. 1–2, 30–99. Verne, Henri, ‘Projet de réorganisation du musée du Louvre’, Mouseion 10 (1930), 5–13. Verne, Henri, ‘Le plan d’extension et de regroupement méthodique des collections du musée du Louvre. Les travaux de 1927 à 1934’, Bulletin des musées de France 1 (1934), 1–18. Verne, Henri, ‘Les nouvelles installations du Louvre. Les travaux de 1934 à 1936’, Bulletin des musées de France 5 (1936), 66–68.

Part 3 The Making and Unmaking of Objects and Myths

⸪

Chapter 8

The Material Forms of the Past and the ‘Afterlives’ of the Compositiones variae Recovering, Conserving, and Exhibiting the Personal History of an Early Medieval Manuscript Thea Burns 1

Introduction: the Compositiones variae Today

The Compositiones variae, a late eighth-century manuscript pamphlet, contains about 120 anonymous recipes for preparing and working dyes and pigments, gilding, varnishes, solders, glues, minerals, stone, glass, and mosaics. The earliest surviving medieval collection of artisanal recipes, it occupies most of two parchment quires, fols. 217r–231r, preserved today in Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana, Cod. 490, a massive bound manuscript compendium. Widely believed to have been translated into Latin from a Hellenistic original and copied at Lucca about 800 ce, the Compositiones variae is said to preserve ‘a fairly complete picture of the technical knowledge amassed and still surviving in Tuscany’.1 The recipes are thought to reflect workshop practice and to transmit practical information in a neutral, transparent way.2 Hundreds of collections of craft instructions appeared in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.3 Long neglected, the knowledge possessed by artisans is today a popular area of historical study. Historians and art historians have assumed that the recipes preserved in the Compositiones variae represented actual practice and that medieval artisans used them to execute their projects. Art conservators and artists have mined the recipes for information about the techniques and materials of medieval art and to reconstruct historical craft practices.4 Although it is often claimed that

1  Johnson 1939, 17–18. 2  Burns 2017, 85–86. Historians of science claim that the Compositiones variae is the cornerstone of our knowledge about the growth of the chemical industries in the western Middle Ages. However, to date, this has not proved a convincing line of inquiry. 3  Clarke 2001. 4  Córdoba 2013.

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the pamphlet provided technical assistance to the Lucca scriptorium, its layout and contents indicate that it was not a how-to book.5 For example, although many recipes describe sequential processes directed towards a goal, their instructions are incomplete. The earliest medieval account of parchment manufacture to survive, ‘On parchment. How parchment should be made’, fol. 219v, is a notable example. Though fragmentary, its instructions are not incorrect. But comparison with the extensive process illustrated later in Denis Diderot’s (1713–1784) eighteenth-century Encyclopédie and with the steps followed recently by the conservator and hand-parchmentmaker Leandro Gottscher, who consulted the Compositiones variae, reveals its limitations as a set of practical instructions.6 Our recipe advises, ‘Put [a hide] in lime and let it stay for three days’.7 Omitted are the initial requisite steps of washing, unhairing, and subcutaneous fat removal. Only subsequently does the modern craftsman repeatedly soak and remove the skin from ‘limewater’ for a period of up to thirty days. No finishing steps and no tools unique to the parchment-making process are included in the Compositiones variae’s instructions. To follow this recipe and obtain a satisfactory product, Gottscher had to make many decisions based on his experience. This contradicts the commonly held claim by scholars (most of whom lack practical experience) that these recipes were step-by-step reminders for practitioners (fig. 8.1). Would established medieval craftsmen have followed written guidelines? Skilled artisans did not need aide-mémoires. They were trained by apprenticeship. According to the historian of science Pamela H. Smith, ‘There is no textual shortcut to skill … [it] must be acquired alongside an experienced practitioner, performed methodically by means of observing, attending and repeating through years of experience until the co-ordination and action becomes habit.’8 Why, then, were these fragmentary recipes copied? For whom were they intended or of interest? The current context for these recipes—Cod. 490—may provide an important and hitherto overlooked clue. Interrogating and interpreting the physical structure of the entire codex as it has evolved over time suggests why these recipes were included in the compendium. Writing history from the study of texts is a familiar process, but manuscript culture conveyed meaning through both textual content and material object. Therefore, I am less concerned with what is narrated in the individual texts of 5  Johnson 1939, 17–18, 90; Burns 2017, 86. 6  Gottscher 1993. 7  Caffaro 2003, 84, ‘Mitte illam in calcem et iaceat ibi per dies III’, 85, ‘Mettila in (acqua di) calce e lasciala per tre giorni.’ 8  Smith 2012, 7.

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Figure 8.1 Compositiones variae, fol. 219v (parchment fabrication recipe & others), c. 800, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana, Cod. 490 Reproduced with permission from Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca

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Cod. 490—already much-quarried—and more with what their physical structure and present condition reveals and how this refracted history may best be respected in the care of the codex and communicated to the broader public in exhibitions. Such issues have been largely ignored to date, and, in fact, this codex is rarely examined in the original.9 It is surprising, given that methods of close looking are not purely the domain of the conservator. 2 The Compositiones variae: Questioning its Physical Context Cod. 490 is a manuscript compendium containing over 30 early Christian historical and liturgical texts dating between the fifth and the early ninth centuries ce; they are written in many different scripts and are preserved together today. Until very recently, Cod. 490 was a physically massive volume of 355 parchment folios arranged into 47 quires secured by a binding. At present the text block is unbound, and the loose folios are kept in a custom-made box alongside the leather-covered wood boards and a now separate spine lining (fig. 8.2). To date, researchers—textual scholars, technical art historians, and historians more generally—have studied the individual units of Cod. 490, including the Compositiones variae, divorced from their material context (their physical association with Cod. 490); that is, they have compared textual content synchronically with philological, palaeographical, etc., evidence provided by other versions of the same texts. However, the isolated medieval document on its own reveals little about its function or its encompassing environment. The incomplete survival of any early medieval evidence means that its significance may appear only when it is compared with relevant evidence drawn from other appropriate areas.10 In this study, a meaningful context for the recipes is constructed diachronically using evidence gleaned from the other content units found today in Cod. 490. The other units include: ecclesiastical history (Liber pontificalis, EusebiusRufinus’s Historia ecclesiastica, canon law (Sanblasiana, Collectio Hispana, Decretum Gelasianum, patristic excerpts and biblical commentary (Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory, Alcuin), extracts from the works of Isidore of Seville (Etymologiae and Liber de officiis ecclesiasticis), and a practical treatise on calculating the date of Easter. Most of these texts, today dated between the fifth

9  Pomaro 2014, 139. 10  Burns 2017, 4–6.

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Figure 8.2 Storage box for Cod. 490, 2015, board & bookcloth, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana photo: Thea Burns, 2015

and the late eighth centuries, relate to the Christian church, its early history, and the performance of its liturgy.11 This is a logical selection of texts for the time and place. Later in the eighth century, the Frankish ruler Charlemagne (c. 747–814) reformed the discipline of the clergy and regularized the liturgy in his newly conquered land, the former Lombard kingdom, which included Lucca. In 789, to consolidate his hold on his new territories and strengthen his relationship with the papacy in Rome, Charlemagne issued a cartulary, the Admonitio generalis, or ‘General correction’, meant to initiate extensive liturgical and educational reforms.12 Most of the texts in Cod. 490 served the needs of the Lucca clergy as it adapted itself to new norms. One content unit of the codex does not appear immediately relevant to these goals—the Compositiones variae. Why was it bound into the compendium? To date, this question has remained unanswered.

11  Burns 2017, 121–142, for a detailed overview of the contents of the compendium. 12  Noble 1992, 56.

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A Traditional Approach to Curating, Conserving, and Exhibiting Early Medieval Manuscripts: the Primacy of the Original Text

Using linguistic analyses and rigorous descriptions of hand-scribed medieval codices, classical philologists and palaeographers have traditionally sought to recover the earliest or most probable form of their texts, perceiving recovery of ‘original’ authorial intent as a desirable goal. Scholars of philology, palaeography, history, and religious studies have attended to the many scripts and lexical riches of the content units of Cod. 490. Typically, they constructed a stemma, or ‘family tree’, as a first step to creating a critical edition of a particular text unit (fig. 8.3). That is, as textual critics they surveyed the manuscript witnesses of each content unit and prioritized them diagrammatically, removing accretions considered corrupt, plagiarized, degraded, or forged, to establish their relationships to each other and to arrive, they assumed, at the purest possible form of the archetype or ur-text. This traditional philological approach, broadly applied since the eighteenth century to literary, scientific, technical, and other manuscript and printed texts, was developed initially for the study and analysis of the Bible: because spiritual power was believed to be directly contained in the words of the Bible’s original text, it was important to recover them.13 Readers of the Compositiones variae, especially technical art historians, have embraced this philological model, seeking the recipes’ ur-text in the hope of recovering a continuity of tradition between hypothetical ancient artisanal recipe texts, now presumed lost, and later recipe collections.14 A weakness of the stemmatic approach, which sets out to deliver a text as close as possible to the desired original, in addition to its subjectivity, is its focus on the recovery of the archetype; this has compromised appreciation of a manuscript’s living tradition, material dimension, and social significance.15 This scholarly tradition bestowed primacy on uniquely semantic aspects of manuscripts and conceived of signs as functioning internally, atemporally, and universally at the same time; it has ignored the role of human agency and temporal aspects of materiality. The museum or library manuscript curator,

13  Reeve 1986, 57–58. 14  Clarke 2013, 25. Technical handbooks in antiquity, excluding artisanal examples, were recently the subject of a Neubauer Collegium symposium, titled The form, utility and professional technê of practical handbooks in the ancient world, held at the University of Chicago in November 2016. The program description and schedule are available at http://neubauercollegium.uchicago.edu/events/uc/practical_handbooks. 15  Chastang 2008, 246.

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The Material Forms of the Past Assyrian texts and technology Egyptian technogy Hindu texts and technology

Classical Greek texts Classical Latin texts

1700‒300bc

Hellenistic Alexandrian texts

300bc

Lost ancestors Leyden X and Stockholm

Lost ancestors

Transmission outside Europe Greek Syriac & Arabic

Greek Mappae Clavicula Greek Compositiones Latin Mappae Clavicula Heraclius i, ii

Latin Mappae Clavicula

Theophilus Erfurt Montpellier 540 2090

Latin Compositions (Lucca Ms.)

Codex Matriensis

Sloane 1745

ad300

ad600

Geber al-Razi

ad900

Secretum secretorum

ad1200

Liber Sacerdotum

Lost ancestor

0

Strasburg Tegernsee 1330 Illuminirbuch

ad1500

Figure 8.3 Artisanal manuals, stemma or family tree showing general, not exact, trends and influences in the transmission of ideas and material Reproduced with permission from Mark Clarke, The art of all colours. Medieval recipe books for painters and illuminators, London 2001, 27

often a historian by training, has—traditionally—been a caretaker of collections, ‘a behind-the-scenes organizer’ whose approach to exhibitions reflects rather than directs how art is framed and talked about.16 The curator has thus drawn on the research findings of specialized historians, palaeographers, or other scholars for an understanding of the object’s cultural identity and, in turn, on the expertise of the conservator to formulate the best way to care for, 16  O’Neill 2012, 1.

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exhibit, and mediate it to the public. The conservator, supervised by the custodial curator, is oriented by training, like many manuscript scholars, towards a ‘static, stable object’, the unique embodiment of ‘original’ authorial intention.17 The conservator may, in practice, view change as a corruption of the ideal and authentic ‘original’, something to be avoided and arrested. The assumption of the professional players—historians, curators, and conservators—that an ideal and uncontaminated ‘original’ lies behind the text and is recoverable is problematic, based, it is said, on a metaphysics of origin and presence that post-structuralism has rendered suspect.18 ‘Texts, far from being fixed in their final form once and for all, are variable, unstable and malleable…. Every work exists only in its simultaneous and successive material forms.’19 An openness characterizes the work: on the one hand, an openness to its many manifestations and transitions over time; on the other, to the many perceptions and usages—and perhaps even ‘completions’ by the user—over its lifespan.20 4

An Alternate Approach: Making Space for the Materiality of the Object

A promising method of manuscript investigation takes their physical properties seriously. It insists that a manuscript’s unique material and structural features be scrutinized to enrich and deepen notions of textual integrity and authenticity and to expose the tangled yet meaningful interrelationship of text and context. Although this study will look back to the moments of creation of a specific manuscript, it is particularly concerned with its transmission and reception over time, with how it has come to us today—what it is, what is left of the creative act, and what the object represents in the present. How was a particular artisanal technical recipe manual, the Compositiones variae, and its host volume, the compendium Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana, Cod. 490, created and then recreated in successive contexts through actions that are completed yet that continue in the present, soon to be the past? A statement to this effect was made by Hölling in the context of performance and film installations.21 17  Hölling 2016, 13–14. 18  De Grazia & Stallybrass 1993, 256. 19  Chartier 2007, 33. 20  Hölling, written communication, March 24, 2017. 21  Hölling 2016, 14.

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A historical object acquires ‘layered meanings with the passage of time’.22 Change is respected as a positive value, and the focus becomes that which remains.23 A physical object and the earliest surviving medieval collection of artisanal recipes, the Compositiones variae serves as an entry point into recovering a richer history. The material features of this pamphlet let us advocate for a history that need no longer be extracted only from written documents; they allow the object to compensate for gaps in the historical record.24 This strategy will, in turn, call for novel approaches to exhibiting the manuscript and its expanded layers of meaning. This study begins with a close physical analysis of the Compositiones variae and its host volume, Cod. 490. Next, a broader context for the recipes is constructed diachronically using evidence gleaned from considering the other content units found today in Cod. 490. The trajectories of traditional approaches noted above and the apprehensions they raise are reviewed more comprehensively before discussing the Compositiones variae recipes and deducing their function. The present physical structure of Cod. 490 is carefully considered as is its influence on interpretation and on curatorial and conservation decisions that impinge directly on the exhibition of the manuscript. 5

Careful Looking: the Present Physical Structure of Cod. 490 and Its Contribution to Recovering the Volume’s ‘Afterlives’

Until recently manuscript specialists have assumed that the content units of Cod. 490 were brought together straight away (subito) in codex form, perhaps in the ninth century.25 For many centuries the codex was protected in situ by its obscurity and, from the sixteenth century, by an anathema contained in a breve, or papal letter, sent to the Lucca canons by Pope Pius II (1439–1503), the executor of the will of the founder of the Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana, which forbade the removal of books from the library on pain of excommunication.26 Beginning in the late seventeenth century the unique early medieval contents of Cod. 490—particularly, but not only, its scripts—captured the interest of textual scholars. The requirement for Cod. 490 to be used by them meant that it has since been cared for by its curatorial custodians with that desideratum 22  Martin & Bleichmar 2015, 608. 23  Hölling 2016, 21. 24  Ulrich et al. 2015, ix; Martin & Bleichmar 2015, 608. 25  McKitterick 2004, 20; Petrucci 1973, 160–161. 26  Andreini 2013, 10–11.

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in mind. The anathema was dropped by the pope in 1896 to allow the codex to travel to Rome for consultation.27 In 1922 Cod. 490 was disbound at the Vatican Library restoration studio to repair, strengthen, and rebind the by then damaged structure.28 Sadly, this undertaking obscured features of the original binding, and most of the earlier sewing was lost. Further restoration was undertaken c. 2007, after which the quires of the codex were not resewn. No documentation of either campaign has been found. Nevertheless, the present structure preserves valuable clues to the volume’s conceptual and physical history since earliest times. The most recent disbinding gave the Italian manuscript expert Gabriella Pomaro the access required to publish a thorough codicological description of the codex in 2014.29 The unbound format of the codex has made possible close looking at the physical structure accompanied by careful, informed interpretation of the visual findings. This exercise has allowed the outlining of a hypothetical process and chronology by which the individual content units came together and has shed new light on their early history, the broader context of their association, and their subsequent history and preservation. 5.1 The Binding It is clear that, prior to the 1922 intervention, the quires were sewn onto four single cords that laced the text block into the surviving wood boards. In that structure, the sewing thread passed through the spine fold of each quire and looped securely around each of the four cords.30 The old cords are still laced into the boards, but their attachment to the text block has been severed and the sewing thread has disappeared from its spine. Double, not single, cords or thongs were always used in early medieval European bindings, but their use diminished, and by the mid-sixteenth century, sewing on single cords, found today on Cod. 490, was typical.31 It is very possible that the discrete pamphlets were not bound together until this early modern intervention. In its present unbound state it is clear that the text block was resewn onto three cloth tapes; that is, the sewing thread passed through the spine fold of each quire and across each tape but did not loop around them. This probably occurred during the 1922 intervention; it produced a weaker, less secure 27  Burns 2017, 27–28. 28  Burns 2017, 27–29. 29  Pomaro 2014. 30  Roberts & Etherington 1982, fig. on 29, 230. 31  Roberts & Etherington 1982, 104; Szirmai 1999, 183; Burns 2017, 20–21, for a fuller discussion.

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structure than the earlier one.32 The sewn text block was cased into the original boards; that is, the text block and cover, including the tapes, were glued rather than securely laced together.33 The unsympathetic and inappropriate case binding was physically unable to support the massive volume and led to the early twenty-first-century disbinding. Scholars date the binding onto cords and covering of Codex 490 to the ninth century and also to the fifteenth. Close examination today of the now visible structure finds in support of the later date its honest workmanlike quality and the sewing onto four single cords; the historical context—a period of concern for and care bestowed on church library collections in Italy following the Councils of Basel and Constance—also argues for the later date.34 In addition, a fifteenth-century inventory of Lucca cathedral’s books lists volumes as then apparently newly bound in leather and goatskin.35 The pamphlets that today make up Cod. 490 were bound probably for safekeeping rather than to facilitate their use. In the 1680s their palaeographic and philological antiquity generated the attention of the French Benedictine congregation of St. Maur, who espoused a critical method that sought out original early documents, conceived as historical artefacts, and aimed to remove traces of their later uses.36 5.2 The Content Units The worn, discoloured parchment of the outer folios of the individual text units indicates that the major text units of Cod. 490 started life as pamphlets. Text units, bound together from the beginning or early on, would not individually exhibit such signs of exposure and direct handling. Close looking provides further information about changes to the content units. An eight-folio quire is the basic unit of this text block. The current unbound state of Cod. 490 reveals that each major unit begins on the first folio of a new quire, suggesting that the compendium was 32  Roberts & Etherington 1982, fig. on 230. 33  A multilayer spine lining, adhered to the spine of the old cover as part of the 1922 case binding, was detached in about 2007 in one piece from the text block; it is now stored in the book box with the covers and text. One surface of this lining bears residues of a modern pink paper indicating that it was formerly adhered to the pink lining paper still present on the spine of the cover; the interior surface of the spine shows distortions caused by the four cords that remain in place underneath. The other surface of the now-separate spine lining once abutted the text block; it bears the impression of the three tapes onto which the text block was sewn as part of the early 20th-twentieth-century case binding. 34  Szirmai 1999, 277 n. 7; Gumbert 2004, 26; Burns 2017, 30. 35  Guidi & Pellegrinetti 1921; Lucca, Archiv. Capit., Ms. RR. 43, c. 1. 36  Mabillon & Germain 1687, 188–189; Chastang 2008, 1.

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assembled from a number of independent pamphlets, or libelli.37 Sometimes one content unit fills several quires—the recipes of the Compositiones variae, for example, occupy most, but not all, of two quires, Q30 and Q31. Fol. 217 is the first folio of Q30, and fol. 217r is the first page of the Compositiones variae text. Fol. 231r is the last page of the recipe text—but it is not the last folio of Q31. It is followed by fol. 232. Throughout Cod. 490, where a primary text did not fill a quire, blank pages might follow texts. Occasionally, other texts or text excerpts were added later to pages left blank.38 Two originally blank pages at the end of Q31, fols. 231v and 232r, follow the end of the recipes. The title of an important liturgical text, Gregorius presul, was written and crossed out at the top of fol. 232r; the rest of the page is blank.39 This title was repeated on fol. 232v and was immediately followed by an excerpt of the Gregorius presul text, which is therefore a later addition to the unit. Similar textual additions were inserted following other major content units of the codex where the primary text did not fill the quire.40 The addition of texts to the final blank page of the quire of a libellum was a good use of scarce material resources, and their placement in this position meant that, before being bound into the massive compendium, they were more available for consultation and circulation by the clergy than if they had been placed within the quire, for instance, immediately following the primary text. Sometimes folios left blank were cut from the quires, probably for reuse in another context, leaving behind narrow stubs. For example, in Q28 three stubs remain where apparently blank folios following the content unit, Liber pontificalis, were cut off. However, the final folio of this quire, fol. 211, was not removed; it was likely left behind to consolidate the quire at some time before the compendium was assembled and bound. A short textual excerpt, De fabrica in acqua, was added (later?) to fol. 211v (fig. 8.4). As Charlemagne’s reforms progressed, the diversity of scripts, defective orthography, defective parchment, and varying degrees of legibility became increasingly difficult to read, and the historical and liturgical content must have been replaced by up-to-date texts. Standardized writing practices were a priority of Charlemagne’s reforms and increasingly more-structured schools improved all aspects of learning.

37  Burns 2017, 143–146, lists texts that begin on the first folio of a quire. 38  Burns 2017, 146, lists texts that do not begin on the first folio of a quire. 39  Burns 2017, 136. 40  Burns 2017, 146.

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Figure 8.4 Diagram of structure of quire 28 of Cod. 490, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana diagram: Thea Burns, 2017

Common early medieval practice was to scrape or wash away the writing from obsolete texts so that the parchment folios could be reused for new texts. This was done in the interests of economy as parchment was expensive and the demand for new texts might outstrip its availability, even in a wealthy centre. Yet the early texts that today make up the Lucca compendium were not erased nor was the parchment recycled and reused; thus the pamphlets with their obsolete contents, no longer useful to the chapter clergy, must have been set aside and largely forgotten.41 A wealth of physical evidence suggests that the quires were left unbound, perhaps shoved to the back of a cupboard. The pamphlets remained at Lucca, and there are signs that between the ninth and the seventeenth centuries they were not totally forgotten. For example, quire signatures, that is, sequential Roman numerals, were added at the bottom of the last folio of each of the first 24 of the 47 quires of Cod. 490 in a 41  Castellano 2009. A Greek synodal decree of the year 691, the Quinisext Council (never fully accepted by the Latin Church), forbade the destruction of manuscripts of the scriptures or the church fathers except for imperfect or injured volumes. Texts most susceptible to being overwritten included obsolete legal and liturgical texts, texts written in unfamiliar scripts that had become illegible over time, or texts that were damaged or incomplete.

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late eleventh-century script.42 Such quire numbering was typically undertaken in the early Middle Ages prior to sewing quires together to ensure the correct order when collating a text.43 The late eleventh century was a time of religious renewal when the texts in Cod. 490 were again of interest.44 The addition of quire signatures is not evidence that the 24 quires were actually sewn together then, although they may have been; the common reuse of sewing holes already present in relatively tough parchment makes the number of campaigns impossible to determine. The quires may have been tacked together or wrapped. 5.3 The Compositiones variae Shifting from the physical structure of Cod. 490 to attend to the layout of the Compositiones variae unit reveals that there is no table of contents that would allow readers to skip directly to a specific recipe. Nor is the unit laid out with larger and smaller font levels (a format familiar from modern cookbooks). Titles are often written in red ink but are almost never isolated on their own lines, nor are there explanatory diagrams or illustrations. In addition, the whole unit is aggravated by errors, inconsistencies of punctuation, spelling, and syntax, incomplete recipes, lack of apparent order, use of obsolete or untranslatable terms, incorrect Latin, and transliteration of Greek words. This state of affairs speaks against the use of this recipe pamphlet as a practical guide to craft practice. The recipes themselves must be transcriptions of now lost texts; their form echoes a tradition of sixth-century Roman lay book production—the same red and black inks, distinctive scripts for random titles and texts, boundaries marked by blank spaces, and some new texts postponed to the following page. They may represent an intermediate stage in their transmission from the Hellenistic world—‘organic collections of technical texts, in places only partially transcribed. It is the residue … of an ancient science now become the object of the cult of the antique’.45 6

The Lombard Context

I contend that the presence at Lucca of these artisanal recipes and their inclusion in Cod. 490 relates to artistic concerns prevailing there about 800 ce and 42  Pomaro 2014: 141, 153; Ewald 1878, 342; Burns 2017, 24, fig. 11. 43  Vezin 1978, 35. 44  Burns 2017, 58. 45  Petrucci 1995, 11–14.

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that they were copied for local churchmen. Luigi Schiaparelli, comparing the scripts with those found in extant Lucchese notarial documents, concluded that the units of the compendium originated there at that time; his findings have been widely accepted.46 Insight into the Lombard clerical cultural context that collected together the Compositiones variae recipes is provided by their sequence. Recipes for glass and mosaics, their colouring and preparation, are placed at the beginning of the unit, and the impetus for the priority they are given undoubtedly reflected interests of the Lucca elite in local Roman-era remains, particularly late antique mosaics.47 The clergy of late eighth-century Lucca, who adjusted to Charlemagne’s cultural directives—directives coloured by his philo-Roman political and religious orientation—were well aware that glass and mosaics were of current interest in papal Rome and decorated buildings there. Documents record that the early Carolingian bishops renovated Lucca’s cathedral of San Martino after Roman models and enriched it with relics, which it lacked. This ensured for San Martino a focal role on the Via Francigena, the main pilgrimage route from northern Europe through Lucca to Rome. Lucca’s bishops founded other churches too and provided them with relics, books, and a renewed liturgy.48 These activities strengthened the inclusion of Lucca in the networks that diffused knowledge of texts, illustrations, objects, and practices throughout Charlemagne’s realm. Such historical considerations suggest that the content of the Compositiones variae, which has been summarily dismissed as disordered is, in fact, relevant to the interests of its Lucca home.49 Anchoring of the broader compendium to the artistic context of Lucca is provided by the Good shepherd, the sole scenic miniature in Cod. 490. It too speaks to Lucca’s inclusion in the Rome-oriented cultural network promoted by Charlemagne in his conquered territories (fig. 8.5). The Good shepherd miniature is the only extant early medieval example of this early Christian motif. Its striking iconography and stylistic features situate the pamphlet that it introduces—a Donatist version of the Genealogiae totius bibliothecae (fols. 348r–354v), a collection of scriptural genealogies—in the context of clerical concerns in late eighth-century Lucca. The theologian St Augustine of Hippo (354–430) had condemned Donatist sectarianism, arguing that Christ and all who gave their lives for Him were good shepherds and acted on behalf of the flock. This association of text and image speaks to the 46  Schiaparelli 1924. 47  Burns 2017, 109–110; Ciampoltrini 2014, 38–39, figs. 2–4. 48  Silva 1989, 1. 49  Caffaro 2003, 5.

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Figure 8.5 ‘Good Shepherd’ miniature, Cod. 490, fol. 348r, c. 800, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana Reproduced with permission from Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca

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importance for Charlemagne and Lucca’s clerics of striving for church unity in place of the former local autonomy of Lombard churches. The frame around the Good shepherd is remarkably similar to that of a miniature of St Augustine found in the late eighth-century Egino Codex.50 Both the framing and the form of the incipit script immediately beneath the Good shepherd are paralleled in Carolingian court art; this artistic language likely reached Lucca by trade and pilgrimage routes.51 7

Fostering Collaborative Exhibition Frameworks that Move beyond Traditional Boundaries

The preceding analysis challenges the traditional scholarly view of the Compositiones variae and its host compendium, Cod. 490, as entities fixed in the elusive period of their creation, a view that ascribes primacy to the text, ignores the partial, damaged, mobile nature of the physical components and organizing structure, and is oblivious to the potential of temporal materiality to enrich historical interpretation. Typically displays of manuscripts have reflected the position of traditional scholarship, favouring the object’s origin rather than its biography, its roots rather than its routes (nicely put by Martin and Bleichmar), ignoring the decades or centuries that have passed and the layered meanings it has acquired over time.52 Hölling has reviewed implicit and explicit concepts in art and conservation theories that isolate works of artistic and historical significance conceptually from the consequences of their materiality and temporal duration and contribute to the notion of the primacy of the unique, static object and the idealization of the permanence of things.53 How might a curator and conservator in dialogue today negotiate the changes over time to Cod. 490 and the Compositiones variae in their care, conservation, and presentation to the public? One would expect institutions (whether museums, libraries, or archives) and private collectors to deal with medieval manuscripts on a case-by-case basis, without rigidly set protocols. Points to be considered are the need for access, the presence of evidence (of original materials and structures, of 50  St Augustine. Egino Codex, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Ms. Phillips 1676, fol. 18v. 51  Dedication page. Egino Codex, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Ms. Phillips 1676, fol. 23v, illustrated Burns 2017, 115, fig. 43. 52  Martin & Bleichmar 2015, 608. 53  Hölling 2016, 13–14, 17.

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historical interventions, and use over time), and physical stabilization for handling and for the future.54 Ideally, a working group of specialists—curators, manuscript scholars, conservators, and others with relevant specialities, as well as exhibition designers, where appropriate—will be assembled to advise; different weights may be given to each of these factors depending on the group’s philosophical approach.55 The conservator must be prepared to draw on an in-depth working knowledge of history as well as of manuscript structures and materials and must be a key and equal player in interpreting surviving evidence to ensure no information preserved in the object is lost; small details may provide important insight into its life. This is the ideal. With manuscripts, however, we are not yet in that ideal world where conservators have freed themselves from a subordinate role in relation to humanities disciplines so all players operate from a level playing field, professional hierarchies have been set aside, and mutual trust and respect reign. A dialogue between manuscript scholar, curator, conservator, and other members of the working group should integrate aesthetic and historical awareness with conservation and craft concerns to achieve a balanced approach to the care and display of the manuscript. Rebinding damaged codices, as occurred with Cod. 490 in 1922, is still undertaken, but this is not routine.56 The important 1978 paper by the late Christopher Clarkson, a rare-book conservator, detailed his concern with the ongoing loss of early book bindings.57 It raised awareness of books as physical objects, once understood and valued by medieval binders for their functionality and material integrity. Beginning in the nineteenth century, books were valued increasingly for the information carried in their text blocks and for their bindings only if these were of aesthetic or historic importance. Respect for the uniqueness of material, technical, and codicological characteristics and for the goals of exhibitions should—and sometimes does— guide the approach to damaged medieval codices today. The Swiss conservator Andrea Giovannini has described how an eleventh-century Byzantine tetraevangeliary in Geneva (Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire, Ms. Gr. 19) needed major treatment—that is, return of the parchment folios to plane and stabilization of the sewing—to permit full access to the volume and allow its 54  It is even better when a larger working group composed of relevant specialists is assembled to assess the situation. 55  Debora Mayer, Helen H. Glaser Conservator, Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard University Library, written communication, 6 December 2016. 56  Giovannini 2011. But see Cheese 2016. 57  Clarkson 1978; Szirmai 1992, 35–37.

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exhibition.58 Yet such a comprehensive intervention would have destroyed the unique and now extremely fragile sewing structure and the traces of two, possibly three, different bindings concealed in the structure.59 Recognition of their importance by a working group of specialized advisors led the manuscript conservator instead to perform a minimal intervention. A thread, coloured red to ensure that the intervention would be instantly recognizable, was used to stabilize the damaged sewing of the binding (fig. 8.6).60 The codex remains sensitive and must be handled carefully, but by electing for the minimal intervention, important codicological evidence was preserved and remains accessible for future scholars. Any thought of rebinding Cod. 490 today to provide it with an adequately sturdy structure would run into a major

Figure 8.6 Detail of spine sewing after treatment, Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms Gr 19 photo: Andrea Giovannini

58  Giovannini 2005, 163–165. 59  The quires forming each half of the thickness of the text block were linked together in Byzantine fashion using an unsupported link or chain stitch. The cover boards were prepared separately with a zigzag sewing structure to which the linking chains were attached at each sewing station. The two halves of the sewn text block were brought together and joined at the midpoint by knotting the sewing threads. Illustrated in Giovannini 2005, 161, figs. 80–82. For a fuller description of this type of sewing, see Houlis 1993, 241–247, 244, fig. 1. The exact sequence of the steps remains uncertain, 252. 60  Giovannini 2005, 165.

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hurdle: restoring the codex to its strictly hypothetical ‘original’ format is an illusion because of the lack of clarity about that ‘original’ format, the heft of the historical text block, and the physical, functional, and conceptual transformations the object has undergone over the centuries. Going back to the Geneva tetraevangeliary, the treatment, albeit minor, represents a change to the volume over the course of its existence. Documentation of conservators’ examinations and treatments of medieval manuscripts, now required by professional ethical codes, introduces invaluable new layers of information that will assist future scholars in their quest to disentangle an object’s changing form and meaning. The documentation of the Geneva tetra­ evangeliary is exemplary in its fullness and is available to all on the internet.61 No documentation was made of the late nineteenth-, twentieth- and twentyfirst-century interventions into Cod. 490; this essay is an attempt to help fill that gap.62 Minimal or non-interventive conservation approaches to medieval manuscripts retain evidence of changes to codices through time more effectively. Some collecting institutions use storage boxes or enclosures to avoid or minimize conservation treatment and safeguard the remaining physical structure; the unsewn text block, leather-covered boards, and spine lining of Cod. 490 are boxed today (fig. 8.2). Others reattach loose quires or folios to an intact text block to secure them from loss and misplacement. This occurred with the Geneva tetraevangeliary and appears to have been one goal of the 1922 treatment of Cod. 490 at the Vatican. High-quality digital images of folios of a manuscript, such as the reproductions made of the individual rectos and versos of the Cod. 490 folios, can allow more people easier access to content while reducing handling of the original physical object. But digitizing is not a panacea.63 Not all such images are equally informative. For instance, those made of Sélestat, Bibliothèque humaniste, Ms 10, a tenth-century compendium containing excerpts of a vast but fragmentary, ancient Hellenistic-Roman artisanal recipe collection and fifth-century alchemical recipe, unfortunately failed to include the gutter edges of the folios, which may have revealed clues to the manuscript’s binding history.64 A collaborative effort on the part of the advisory team in advance of digitization should help guide that process to ensure that as many potentially informative physical 61  Giovannini 2011. 62  Ibid. In addition to this essay, see also Burns 2017. 63  Dooley 2016, 133–134. 64  Gutter: the adjoining inner margins of two facing pages, the margins at the sewn edge of a section. Roberts & Etherington 1982, 126.

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features of these works are documented in the captured images. Consultation of the original might then be reserved for those researchers who have convincing reasons to handle it, reasons based in optical, tactile, and other qualitative characteristics that could not be reproduced in the digitized form. The conservation and preservation literature documents how pressure on curators and conservators may come from uninformed (or themselves pressured) administrators, who may insist on repair and consolidation to facilitate scholarly access and public presentation. On the flip side, alas, such directives can be insensitive to the changes that such treatment would incur on unique historical details and lack awareness of the recommendations of the conservation profession’s ethical codes that no treatment be undertaken unless it best serves the preservation of the object. The ideal type of display for Cod. 490 would consider temporal and spatial movement and transformation as constitutive of the object itself.65 This focus demands research methods that are inherently collective rather than isolated: ‘scholars from various disciplines and fields … must talk to one another in order to explore these kinds of connections and do this kind of work’.66 I believe that teamwork based on mutual trust and respect is the basis on which this approach will flourish. Those who research the ‘changeable artworks’—film, media installations, performance, and events—introduced since the 1950s seem to be more open to embracing methods that recognize alternate, more flexible conceptions of what artworks are and what different experts have to contribute. But we have a ways to go yet in the traditionally structured world of manuscript studies, which has been dominated by professional and conceptual hierarchies set for centuries. Collaboration was, admittedly, a big aspect of Colour. The art and science of illuminated manuscripts, a University of Cambridge research project, subsequent catalogue, and exhibition mounted in 2016 at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.67 Its organization featured three groups of experts—manuscript scholars, curators, and art historians, scientists, and conservators—who were ‘receptive to each others’ interests and methodologies’.68 As presented in the exhibition and catalogue, the project traced developments in the use of colour in European manuscript illumination from the sixth to the sixteenth century through a selection of manuscripts with the aim of contributing to a greater 65  Martin & Bleichmar 2015, 609. 66  Ibid., 613. 67   M INIARE. Manuscript Illumination: Non-Invasive Analysis, Research and Expertise. Panayotova 2016. 68  Ibid., 16.

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knowledge about medieval colour. However, materiality was segmented into pigments, supports, bindings, etc., and the results of the project as presented in the exhibition and published in the catalogue fall far short of revealing the embodied meanings that these objects hold. The approach, while collaborative, was also traditional in its reporting on findings rather than positing true interdisciplinary interpretations. The conservator’s role was to conserve the manuscripts and capture physical evidence, to discuss this evidence with the curator, and to assist with display.69 Catalogue entry no. 1 for Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 251, fol. 15r offers a good illustration of how the conversation of the professionals engaged in this research project might be expanded and enhanced along the lines of the bridging that is modelled in this paper. An image of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden introduces Jean Corbechon’s 1372 version of the Latin encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum. The entry simply identifies this manuscript bibliographically and enumerates the colours present.70 That this manuscript was rebound in 2015 prior to its exhibition is not mentioned in the catalogue; the fascinating essay describing this undertaking was put online—in other words, physically and conceptually outside of the catalogue and exhibition—echoing the traditional relegating of technical information in appendices near the end of exhibition catalogues.71 And ultimately, in both the catalogue and the online essay, sadly little is made of the history embedded in the eighteenth-century binding of MS 251 or other physical aspects related to the earlier lives of this manuscript—its luxurious origin and initial binding in the fifteenth century and the possible reason for its rebinding in the eighteenth, which points to a more dismissive approach to the earlier binding and manuscripts’ other material aspects. Failure to raise and investigate these topics and publish them in a more central way in the unique context of museum scholarship, I fear, continues to limit our understanding of this and other manuscripts’ reception and the culturally construed meanings that change over time. The Cambridge project addressed material culture from one perspective, imposing a selective context rather than exposing the intricacies of objects and the entangled relationships in which they exist. The reviews in the popular press completely missed the significance or potential of the basic information produced by this ambitious research project, and of the information distilled and made available in the exhibition, and concentrated instead on

69  Panayotova 2016, 10. Cheese 2016. 70  Panayotova 2016, 25. 71  Cheese 2016.

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the spectacular visual display—‘the delicate yet psychedelic colours [that] still seduce the eye’.72 A display privileging movement and transformation, as proposed by the scholar of Islamic art Avinoam Shalem, would abandon a focus on artefacts’ sites of departure and arrival and consider specific lifespans during which objects actually travel or are in transfer physically or metaphorically.73 In this scenario, objects of the past are made meaningful and significant for the present moment by mapping the dynamic spaces through which they move synchronically and diachronically, thereby permitting recovery of the panoply of histories embedded in them.74 This scenario would satisfactorily present the meanings embodied in the physical manuscript Cod. 490. How might this dynamic be made manifest? What might be the role of the working group in this alternate scenario? Approaches of interest are found outside the realm of manuscript curation and conservation in other disciplinary areas. In museums of ethnography it is the trajectory of the object itself which legitimizes its presence in the collections and not its aesthetic value or its singular interest. This is not necessarily made explicit to the public but, for example, at the Museon Arlaten in Arles, patinas of time and traces of wear and tear are preciously preserved and will be evoked in dioramas and elsewhere when the museum, now under renovation, reopens in the near future.75 The handling of archaeological bronzes also provides guidance for the exhibition of manuscripts. There the burial accretions and patina may contain valuable information about the burial context—for example, about the objects or materials that were in contact with the bronzes; such accretions were often removed in the past for aesthetic reasons without a second thought.76 With the greater awareness today of their evidentiary value, a ‘second thought’ should prevail in the decision-making process regarding manuscript conservation, and this would be explained to the public in the exhibition. Archaeological and ethnographic conservation and exhibition practices thus offer important avenues for exhibiting medieval manuscripts in their fullness—for what they can tell us about the evolving contexts in which they have been received. The relevance to early binding studies of archaeological practices was noted by the palaeographer Gerald Lieftinck in the 1950s; he wrote, 72  Jones 2016. 73  Shalem 2011, 1. 74  Ibid., 11. 75  Dominique Séréna-Allier, former curator, Arles, Museon Arlaten, written communication, 18 May 2017. 76  Francesca Bewer, written communication, April 30, 2017; Gilberg 1988.

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[Codicologists or archaeologists of the book] see manuscripts not as little boxes for transmitting texts, nor simply as sources for preserving our knowledge of early scripts, but as objects for study for the cultural history of the Middle Ages, and thus comparable to archaeological ‘finds’, which have to be subjected to different types of interpretation: material, historical, ethnological and artistic.77 Contemporary approaches in the archaeological field involve the simple use of wall panels, videos, dioramas, and photographs—traditional, relatively lowcost ways to reach the public that could be adapted to the display of medieval codices. Archaeological curators and conservators have worked with computer specialists to develop interactive installations involving the tangible and the virtual to engage the public actively, not just passively, with historical information and objects of a complex multi-faceted nature. A Mixed Reality (MR) environment is one in which ‘real world—basic textual information, relevant photographs—and virtual world objects—three-dimensional models, animation, video, and sound—are presented together, seamlessly, within a single display’.78 The pros and cons of such technologies are numerous and are explored in the literature. For instance, evaluation in 2012 of the Tangible pasts exhibition revealed that some users liked the combination of physical and virtual content, while others, especially younger participants and men, focused more on their interaction with the 3-D models and ignored the textual and visual information.79 No doubt new digital tools that can serve for scholarly research and pedagogical interpretation will continue to be developed, though the wrestling match between analogue and digital for the audience’s attention in museum contexts promises to continue. Attention to physical elements overlooked by textual critics and ignored by art historians or conservators clearly suggests that the Compositiones variae was produced for Lucca’s clerics, for whom it would have held great interest at a time of political, ecclesiastical, and artistic renewal. It is for such an elite audience, rather than for artisans, that a record of artistic instructions evoking a lost antiquity and connected to an increasingly important papal Rome makes the most sense. Yet its survival over many centuries has left material traces that enrich our understanding of its long history—its afterlives—and the social and cultural changes it has survived and can speak to. Today, new ideas of duration and temporality challenge us in approaching, understanding, caring for, 77  Clarkson 1978, 34, citing Lieftinck 1958/59, 10. Full reference in Clarkson 1978, 46, n. 6. 78  Chrysanthi & Papadopoulos 2012, 32. 79  Ibid., 31–41.

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and exhibiting a highly complex manuscript like the anomalous Compositiones variae, Cod. 490, so as to capture and convey to the broader public an enriched historical understanding of the material artefact, its textual contents, and its wider historical context. Bibliography Andreini, Gregorio, I Manoscritti medievali della Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana di Lucca (XIII–XIV ), Pisa 2013 (Master’s thesis, Università de Pisa). Burns, Thea, Compositiones variae. A late eighth-century craftman’s technical treatise reconsidered, London 2017. Caffaro, Adriano, Scrivere in oro. Ricettari medievali d’arte e artigiano (secoli IX–XI), codici di Lucca e Ivrea, Naples 2003. Castellano, Daniel J., ‘The council in Trullo, or Quinisext Council’, www.arcane­ knowledge.org/catholic/councils/comment06q.htm [accessed 1 October 2018]. Chartier, Roger, Inscription and erasure: literature and written culture from the eleventh to the eighteenth century (Arthur Goldhammer, trans.), Philadelphia 2007. Chastang, Pierre, ‘L’archéologie du texte médiéval. Autour de travaux récents sur l’écrit au Moyen Âge’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 63 (2008), 245–269. Cheese, Edward, ‘Under the Covers: The Conservation and Rebinding of Fitzwilliam MS 251’, www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/utc/introduction [accessed 18 October 2017]. Ciampoltrini, Giulio, ‘Il contributo dell’archaeologia all definizione del contesto urbano medievale lucchese’, in: Chiara Bozzoli and Maria Teresa Filieri, Scoperta armonia. Arte medievale a Lucca, Lucca 2014, 35–59. Clarke, Mark, The art of all colours. Mediaeval recipe books for painters and illuminators, London 2001. Clarke, Mark, ‘The earliest technical recipes: Assyrian recipes, Greek chemical treatises and the Mappae clavicula text family’, in: Córdoba 2013, 9–31. Clarkson, Christopher, ‘The conservation of early books in codex form, a personal approach. Part 1’, The paper conservator 3 (1978), 33–50. Córdoba, Ricardo (ed.), Craft treatises and handbooks. The dissemination of technical knowledge in the Middle Ages, Turnhout 2103. Chrysanthi, Angeliki and Constantinos Papdopoulos, ‘“Tangible Pasts”: User-Centred Design of a Mixed Reality Application for Cultural Heritage’ (conference paper for CAA2012—40th conference in computer applications and quantitative methods in archaeology, March 2012), 31–41. Available online at https://www.researchgate .net/publication/287999820_%27Tangible_Pasts%27_User-Centred_Design_of_a_ Mixed_Reality_Application_for_Cultural_Heritage [accessed 18 October 2017].

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De Grazia, Margreta and Peter Stallybrass, ‘The materiality of the Shakespearean text’, Shakespeare Quarterly 44 (1993), 255–283. Dooley, Brendan, Angelica’s book and the world of reading in late Renaissance Italy, London 2016. Ewald, Paul, ‘Reise nach Italien im Winter von 1876 auf 1877’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für Ältere Deutsche Geschichtskunde 3 (1878), 319–381. Gilberg, Mark, ‘History of bronze disease and its treatment’, in: Vincent Daniels (ed.), Early Advances in Conservation, British Museum occasional paper no. 65, London 1988, 59–70. Giovannini, Andrea, ‘Kodikologie und Restaurierung—der kodex BPU Genève Ms Gr 19’, Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 8 (2005), 160–165. Giovannini, Andrea, Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms Gr 44 Homère: Iliade—XIIIe s.: Rapport de Restauration 2011, online publication: http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/pdf/other/ restauration-reports/bge-gr0044_Andrea-Giovannini-2011.pdf [accessed 18 October 2017]. Giovannini, Andrea, ‘“Rem tene, verba sequentur,” Ethique de la conservation et de la restauration, codicologie et restauration’, Actualités de la Conservation 34 (2016), 1–3. Gottscher, Leandro, ‘Ancient methods of parchment-making: discussion on recipes and experimental essays’, in: Maniaci and Munafò 1993, vol. 1, 41–56. Guidi, Pietro and Ermenegildo Pellegrinetti, Inventari del vescovato della cattedrale e di altre chiese di Lucca, Rome 1921. Gumbert, Johann Peter, ‘Codicological units. Towards a terminology for the stratigraphy of the nonhomogenous codex’, Sesto e testi 2 (2004), 17–42. Hölling, Hanna B., ‘The aesthetics of change. On the relative durations of the impermanent and critical thinking in conservation’, in: Erma Hermens and Frances Robertson, Authenticity in transition, London 2016, 13–24. Houlis, Konstantinos, ‘A research on structural elements of Byzantine bookbindings’, in: Maniaci and Munafò 1993, vol. 2, 239–268. Johnson, Rozelle P., Compositiones variae. From Codex 490, Biblioteca Capitolare, Lucca, Italy. An introductory study 1938–39, Champaign, IL 1939. Jones, Jonathan, ‘Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts review—a rainbow of agony and ecstasy’, The Guardian, 28 July 2016, www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2016/jul/28/colour-the-art-and-science-of-illuminated-manuscripts -review-a-rainbow-of-agony-and-ecstasy [accessed 18 October 2017]. Kwakkel, Erik, ‘Decoding the material book. Cultural residue in medieval manuscripts’, in: Michael Johnston and Michael Van Dussen, The medieval manuscript book. Cultural approaches, New York 2015, 60–76. Mabillon, Jean and Michel Germain, Iter italicum litterarium, Paris 1687. Maniaci, Marilena and Paola Munafò, Ancient and medieval book materials and techniques, Vatican City 1993, 2 vols.

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Martin, Meredith and Daniela Bleichmar, ‘Objects in motion in the early modern world’, Art History 38 (2012), no. 4, 604–619. McKitterick, Rosalind, ‘The scripts of the Bobbio Missal’, in: Yitzhak Hen and Rob Meens (eds.), The Bobbio Missal. Liturgy and religious culture in Merovingian Gaul, Cambridge 2004, 19–52. Noble, Thomas, ‘From brigandage to justice, Charlemagne 785–794’, in: Celia Chazelle (ed.), Literacy, politics, and artistic innovation in the early medieval west, Lanham, MD 1992, 49–75. O’Neill, Paul, The culture of curating and the curating of culture(s), Cambridge, MA 2012. Panayotova, Stella (ed.), Colour. The art and science of illuminated manuscripts, London and Turnhout 2016. Petrucci, Armando, ‘Il Codice n. 490 della Biblioteca Capitolare di Lucca: una problema di storia della cultura medievale ancora da risolvere’, Actum Luce 2 (1973), 159–175. Petrucci, Armando, ‘From the unitary book to the miscellany’, in: Armando Petrucci, Writers and readers in medieval Italy (Charles M. Radding, ed. and trans.), New Haven and London 1995, 1–18. Pomaro, Gabriella, ‘Materiali per il manoscritto Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana 490’, in: Gabriella Pomaro (ed.), In margine al Progetto Codex. Aspetti di produzione e conservazione del patrimonio manoscritto in Toscana, Ospedaletto-Pisa 2014, 139–199. Reeve, Michael D., ‘Stemmatic method. “Qualcosa che non funziona?”’, in: Peter Ganz (ed.), The role of the book in medieval culture. Proceedings of the Oxford international symposium, 26 September–1 October 1982, Turnhout 1986, 57–69. Roberts, Matt and Don Etherington, Bookbinding and the conservation of books. A dictionary of descriptive terminology, Washington, DC 1982. Schiaparelli, Luigi, Il codice 490 della biblioteca di Lucca e la scuola scrittoria lucchese (sec. VIII–IX), Vatican City 1924. Shalem, Avinoam, ‘Histories of belonging and George Kubler’s prime object’, Getty Research Journal 3 (2011), 1–14. Silva, Romano, ‘L’imitazione di Roma e l’attività artistica à Lucca in età Carolingia, il significato di una scelto’, Arte medievale, ser. 2, 3 (1989), no. 1, 1–6. Smith, Pamela, ‘In the workshop of history. Making, writing, and meaning’, West 86th. A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 19 (2012), 4–31. Szirmai, János, ‘Einbandforschung und Einbandrestaurierung’, in: Hartmut Weber (ed.), Bestandserhaltung in Archiven und Bibliotheken, Stuttgart 1992, 25–41. Szirmai, János, The archaeology of medieval bindings, Aldershot 1999. Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, Ivan Gaskell, Sara Schechner, Sarah Anne Carter and Samantha S. B. van Gerbig, Tangible things. Making history through objects, New York 2015. Vezin, Jean, ‘La réalisation matérielle des manuscrits latins pendant le haut Moyen Âge’, Codicologica 2 (1978), 15–51.

Chapter 9

Would You Like That With or Without Mayo? How Interdisciplinary Collaboration Slows the Spread of Popular Misconceptions in Modern Art Scholarship Dawn V. Rogala 1 Introduction Conspicuous materiality is characteristic of artwork produced in the midtwentieth century, a key moment in the evolution of modern art when engagement with materials took precedence in art making. A prominent role in this development is assigned to the Abstract Expressionists, who ‘disregarded the idea of traditional categories and focused on the matter itself’.1 This new engagement with the painting process was heralded as ‘address[ing] the picture surface as a responsive rather than inert object’2 as artist and material became collaborators in a creative act wherein ‘content and means are … completely subsumed in each other’.3 Personal exploration quickly transcended traditional categories of practice. ‘My opinion is that new needs need new techniques,’ proclaimed Jackson Pollock, ‘and the modern artists have found new ways of making their statements.’4 Unconventional methods and materials became associated with the Abstract Expressionists’ exploration of their craft, described by ARTnews editor Thomas Hess as ‘making a painting with almost nothing [to] making a painting with almost everything’.5 This direct communication between artist and material heralded a paradigm shift from product to process that influenced generations of artists. ‘[They] seemed to me to have solved the problem,’ Frank Stella recounted in 1972. ‘I didn’t have to go all the way back and worry again about where I stood in relation to [Henri] Matisse and [Pablo] Picasso.’6 The Abstract Expressionist ‘experience of paint and canvas, directly, without interference’7 became an 1  Auping 1987, 152. 2  Greenberg 1961, 24. 3  Gossen 1959, 10. 4  O’Connor 1967, 79. 5  Hess 1965, 54. 6  De Antonio & Tuchman 1984, 84. (This book is based on transcript of De Antonio’s 1972 film Painters painting: A candid history of the modern art scene.) 7  Goodnough 1951, 60.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004396852_011

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act of proto-performance art, a rejection of preconceived action in favour of immediate experience as the artist approached his work ‘with material in his hand to do something to that other piece of material in front of him’.8 It was during this shift in process that ‘[the artist] becomes so adept in materializing his hypotheses, and in manipulating his materials as if they were meanings,’ critic Harold Rosenberg suggested, ‘that the problem itself is transformed’.9 Robert Motherwell alluded to this when he suggested that for Pollock, ‘painting is his thought’s medium’.10 Control was sometimes even ascribed to the object, for example, as when Rosenberg described Helen Frankenthaler as ‘the medium of her medium’.11 Discussions of materiality later shifted from act to idea with rising interest in conceptual and experiential art, wherein ‘the medium within which artists understand themselves to be working becomes a phenomenological dimension’.12 The fulcrum on which the future of modernism came to rest was prophesied by critic and curator Lawrence Alloway in 1955. ‘[The] materials of the artist,’ he proclaimed, ‘[have] seldom carried so much of the burden of meaning.’13 The literal aspects of an object’s materiality play a central role in understanding the shift that took place in modern art during the twentieth century. ‘The medium in its specificity is not simply a matter of physical constituents,’ according to historian Thierry de Duve. ‘It comprises technical know-how, cultural habits, working procedures and disciplines—all the conventions of a given art whose definition is throughout historical.’14 The ‘insistent material literalness’ observed in the work of the Abstract Expressionists and their colleagues15 sites the movement historically, geographically, and within the modernist doctrine. The importance of materiality to modernism simultaneously helps and hinders modern-day efforts to study and preserve the relationship between these artists and their studio practices. ‘The era of Abstract Expressionist painting is now somewhat distanced, part of that recent past which is so full of documents, evidence, and memories,’ noted curator and critic Richard Shiff. ‘Indeed, to study Abstract Expressionism is to encounter a surplus of evidence; and when facts are so abundant, possession of them can 8  Rosenberg 1952, 23. 9  Rosenberg 1966, 22. 10  Motherwell 1944, 97. 11  Rosenberg 1969, 121. 12  Krauss 1999, 175. 13  Alloway 1955, 2. 14  De Duve 1996, 210 (adapted from materials originally written in 1986 and published in Guilbaut 1990, 244–310). 15  Kurczynski 2007, n. 254.

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leave interpretation as free as when there are no facts at all.’16 Assessing the extant documentation regarding artists’ methods and materials poses a complex problem for researchers, who must learn to recognize and interpret incomplete or confusing information (both unintentional and purposeful) found in personal and third-party recollection, period vocabulary, and the generic terminology found within existing accounts of mid-twentieth-century studio practice. 1.1 Misdirection in Scholarship For modern-art scholars addressing both specific and abstract lines of inquiry, materials are a direct line to the creative act. ‘We call the artist’s technical procedure a self-fashioning, a making of self,’ posited Shiff, ‘since it produces or defines that artist as artist as much as it produces the artwork.’17 Accurate accounts of studio practice are limited even in period art journals that sought to provide glimpses into the artistic process through numerous interviews with artists and assistants and photographic features of artists ‘at work’ in their studios. One such series, published by ARTnews and colloquially referred to as ‘X paints a painting’, ran more than 80 articles from 1949 to 1966 and featured Abstract Expressionist artists including Hans Hofmann (February 1950), Pollock (May 1951), Franz Kline (December 1952), Willem de Kooning (March 1953), Adolph Gottlieb (March 1955), Elaine de Kooning (December 1960), and Ad Reinhardt (March 1965). Much of the studio practice descriptions appearing in the popular press are too vague or theatrical to provide tangible documentation of an artist’s methods and materials. Articles were generally crafted for lay readership, providing incomplete or exaggerated accounts of the artists’ working methods. Films of artists at work—Pollock (by Namuth in 1950) and Hofmann (by Feinstein in 1950), for example—are typically performances acted out for the viewer, with little connection to actual studio methods, and with lighting and camera angles that prioritize drama over visual evidence. Accounts published late or after the artist’s career mix student recollection, conflicting reports from associates, and the observations of scholars viewing the work years after the artist’s passing. Such accounts rarely differentiate between empirical and anecdotal information. Where detailed accounts of studio practices were created, the information was often considered secondary and edited from the final manuscript or archive. This can be seen, for instance, in an interview with Sam Feinstein, who studied with Hofmann and filmed the artist at work. Hofmann kept few 16  Shiff 1987, 94. 17  Ibid., 95.

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technical records and was notoriously evasive when talking about his materials. ‘Only the result counts,’ he stated, ‘not how it is done. The means in themselves mean nothing.’18 Although Feinstein discussed Hofmann’s preparatory methods and materials when interviewed late in life, the published interview focused on Hofmann’s legacy as a teacher and did not include detailed information about his process.19 Technical information is, indeed, often overlooked entirely in the archiving of historical documentation. Many Abstract Expressionist painters were employed through New Deal programs at the Works Progress Administration, for example—including William Baziotes, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Kline, Lee Krasner, Pollock, Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, and Mark Tobey—and were exposed to new and experimental art materials and application techniques while working on those projects.20 Interviews conducted by the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art with more than 400 project participants focus on the logistical underpinnings and art historical significance of the program, providing little information on actual practices and materials.21 The historical records of the WPA’s Federal Art Project likewise prioritize arts administration policies; no archived copies have been found of the technical bulletins on materials and techniques written by Federal Art Project staff and reviewed by the Technical Services Laboratory in Washington, DC.22 And accounts that appeared in the popular press regarding mid-twentieth-century artists at work were rarely accompanied by scientific analyses, a touchstone of museum practice and preservation efforts. The artists mentioned above benefited from advancing paint technology and the proximity of small-run paint manufacturers who designed (and sometimes customized) materials in response to input from those who utilized tools and materials previously considered inappropriate for fine arts practice. De Kooning’s painting technique, for example, incorporated sign-painting tools he mastered during his early years as a commercial artist, and the experimental paints incorporated into workshops held by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros played a formative role in Pollock’s embrace of industrial paint media. Commercial house paints have been found on works by Abstract Expressionist

18  Dated note among personal papers in Hofmann 1955. 19  Feinstein 1989; Rogala 2016, 50–51. 20  Lodge 1988; Marontate 1996. 21  Marontate 1996, 74–75. 22  Ibid., 92.

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painters such as Pollock, Kline, and Barnett Newman,23 with Pollock ‘taking full advantage of the relatively new alkyd-resin paints by 1949’.24 The complex aging characteristics and formulations of these mid-twentiethcentury paints jeopardize the preservation of these important artworks. They underscore the importance of scholarly collaboration in compiling and clarifying existing accounts of the artists’ studio methods. And scientific analysis of the paintings plays a crucial role in this re-evaluation too. Valuable information about modern artists and their materials is lost when misinformation becomes entrenched in the academic canon. In art history and technical art history such distortion of facts can arise in various ways: from inconsistencies in transcription or misinterpretation of period terminology, from ambiguous language found in artist’s interviews and contemporaneous accounts of studio practices, and from the unsubstantiated accounts of students or studio assistants years (and in some cases, decades) after their time with the artist. ‘Despite the extent to which the general character of [Willem] de Kooning’s methods and materials have been broadly described,’ conservator Susan Lake has noted, ‘writers confuse de Kooning’s actual practices and tend to repeat Hess’s observations without confirming them through technical examination’.25 Popular misconceptions become normalized as they are repeatedly cited and referenced, until the original mistake becomes difficult to dislodge from the mythology of the artist or period. An apt descriptive term for this phenomenon is the standardization of error. This concept is similar to standard error, scientific terminology broadly understood to refer to inherent vice in experimental data—the limits of an analytical technique or equipment failure, for example, that skews all data in a consistent manner. Standardization of error in humanities scholarship refers to published or broadcast misinformation that is repeated until it becomes widely accepted while remaining inaccurate. Standardization of error skews scholarly results, drawing discourse away from deeper examination of individual artworks and interpretation of an artist’s oeuvre. When misleading information makes its way into credible scholarship, it is more likely to be repeated and perpetuated, and the resulting misdirection of time and effort delays original research and effective conservation treatment. Collaboration between art historians and conservation professionals is key to redressing misconceptions and offering new avenues for research. Curators and conservators have overlapping—but not identical—spheres of knowledge 23  Rogala et al. 2010; Wijnberg et al. 2011. 24  Lake et al. 2004, 140. 25  Lake 1999, 11–12.

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that can inform and enlighten each other’s work. Each scholar, an expert in their own right, taps into networks (of conservation scientists or period/region specialists, for example) that may not be accessible to their colleagues. Interdisciplinary collaboration limits the chance of error by expanding the available resources. No research protocol is infallible, but in the realm of technical studies, the combined expertise of multiple disciplines is the most effective way to place the physical and documentary evidence in historical context. 2

Case Studies

The following case studies highlight how the united resources of curatorial and conservation scholars were used to debunk some commonly held beliefs about two artists associated with the new materials and techniques at the heart of Abstract Expressionism. There was no purposeful transmission of misinformation in either of the examples presented below. In both cases, the original error arose from unclear documentation, abetted by the convenience of a plausible but inaccurate explanation—seemingly small irregularities in interpretation or transcription, cited and referenced again and again, with far-reaching consequences. A re-examination of existing documentation related to the manufacture, use, and behaviour of mid-twentieth-century art materials helped place the physical evidence in historical context and uncover the overlooked—and far more interesting—practices underlying the myths about these artists. 2.1 Jackson Pollock (1912–1936) One instance of reasonable but misleading information appears in connection with the materials used in the famous ‘drip’ paintings by Jackson Pollock. The artist’s signature painting style (figs. 9.1 and 9.2) highlights the unconventional practices and ‘unapologetic materialism’ at the foundation of modern art making.26 His physical technique located the transformation of modernist painting into what historian T. J. Clark described as ‘the intersection of body … and medium’27 and encouraged the experimental work of other artists. Helen Frankenthaler, for example, credited Pollock with prompting her own shift in technique. ‘Influenced by his painting and taking hints from his methods and

26  Hunter 1956–1957, 12. 27  Clark 1999, 331. ‘Freud’s Cézanne’, 139–167, was originally published in Representations 52 (1995). ‘The Unhappy Unconscious’, 299–369, was adapted from materials originally published as ‘Jackson Pollock’s Abstraction’, in: Guilbaut 1990, 172–243.

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Figures 9.1 and 9.2 Jackson Pollock in his studio, 1950 (left); Jackson Pollock at work, 1950 (right). Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, c. 1905–1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution photos: Rudy Burckhardt

materials,’ she recalled, ‘I experimented and proceeded to try other ideas.’28 Commercial materials were familiar to the Abstract Expressionists, many of whom worked as tradesmen or were introduced to some of these materials and their application methods during their early years in New York. Pollock’s affinity for industrial paints is central to ongoing debate over the modernists’ acceptance or rejection of cultural norms.29 Although he continued to incorporate traditional oil paints in his work throughout his career, Pollock is best known for his use of industrial paints with material characteristics suited to his dripping and pouring of paint onto canvas. Pollock was introduced to industrial and synthetic paint binders in 1936, at Siquerios’s Laboratory for Experimental Techniques in Art,30 where artists worked with innovators such as the German paint maker Adolph Keim and tried newly developed synthetic paints, named Duco, from Delaware-based coatings manufacturer E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. (Originally an explosives manufacturer, the post-war E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company transitioned to coatings production, later focusing on paint manufacture and shortening their name to DuPont.) The prominent role this new binder played 28  Glueck 1977, 85. 29  This was started by Greenberg in 1939 and thereafter followed by Wolfe 1975, Clark 1994, Krauss 1994, and Bois & Krauss 2000, among others. 30  Marontate 1996, 60.

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in his work and teaching earned Siqueiros the nickname ‘Il Duco’. Pollock’s use of industrial materials appears throughout the art historical literature, including an oft-cited interview with Pollock’s wife, the artist Lee Krasner, for the arts and politics journal Partisan Review. Krasner’s conversation with art historian Barbara Rose underscores the close relationships between mid-twentieth-century artists and paint makers: Barbara Rose: You didn’t have plastic [synthetic] paints yet. No matter how you thinned oil down you could never get the liquidity of enamel or house paint. Lee Krasner: Exactly. I think that had more to do with his decision in getting commercial paint. He could do what he wanted to do with it. He also at one point got Du Pont to make up very special paints for him, and special thinners that were not turpentine. I don’t know what it was. Barbara Rose: Do you remember how he got in touch with the paint chemist? Lee Krasner: I don’t remember, but at the time the painting Rockefeller owned was burned, the restorer got in touch with me, and I had to go to the studio and write it out so they could contact the Du Pont people and find out precisely how to deal with it. Barbara Rose: What were these special paints that Du Pont developed for Pollock? Lee Krasner: I don’t know. I simply gave them the name of the paints and asked them to be in touch with Du Pont’s chemists to find out.31 It was not unusual for modern artists to work directly with paint manufacturers during this period, especially when the artist or manufacturer was using experimental techniques or materials. Samuel Golden and Leonard Bocour of New York’s Bocour Artist Colors, for example, regularly modified formulations for their Magna paint (the first acrylic paint on the commercial market) to address requests for different handling characteristics or custom formulations from such artists as Morris Louis.32 Pollock is commonly associated with the paint he encountered through ‘Il Duco’, but E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, it turns out, was not the supplier of the artist’s custom paint formulations. The original transcript from the Krasner interview, covered with editor’s marks and corrections (fig. 9.3), shows that it was the Chicago- and New York-based commercial paint maker Devoe & Raynolds Co. that supplied 31  Rose 1980, 87. 32  Gates et al. 2005, 330.

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Pollock with these materials (fig. 9.4). Below is the same section of the Partisan Review interview, lifted directly from the transcript, with the corrections in place and italicized for emphasis: Barbara Rose: You didn’t have plastic paints yet. No matter how you thinned oil down you could never get the liquidity of enamel or house paint. Lee Krasner: Exactly. I think that had more to do with his decision in getting commercial paint. He could do what he wanted to do with it. He also at one point got Devoe to make up very special paints for him, and special thinners that were not turpentine. I don’t know what it was. Barbara Rose: Do you remember how he got in touch with the paint chemist? Lee Krasner: I don’t remember, but at the time the painting Rockefeller owned was burned, the restorer got in touch with me, and I had to go to the studio and check the paints he used so they could contact the Devoe people and find out precisely how to deal with it. Barbara Rose: What were these special paints? Do you know? Lee Krasner: I don’t know. I simply gave them the name of the paints and asked them to be in touch with Devoe’s chemists to find out. Barbara Rose: These paints were especially developed for Pollock and they were from Devoe?33 The position of Devoe paints in Pollock’s studio practice is substantiated by physical evidence preserved from the artist’s studio. Technical analysis of paint drips on the floor and the examination of the labels on the surviving paint cans in the artist’s studio—a project performed by conservators and scientists in association with Pollock scholars and the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center—revealed only limited use of DuPont materials, with wider employment of house paint, floor paint, and radiator paint manufactured by Devoe & Raynolds Co. and Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. (now Pittsburgh Paints).34 It is not clear how the original error entered the 1978 transcription, or how that error, corrected in editing, re-appeared in the 1980 publication of the interview in Partisan Review. An unfamiliar brand name, heard via audio tape, may sound at first to be similar to a name readily associated with Pollock. The 33  Rose 1978, 5. 34  Coddington 1999, Lake et al. 2004, and author’s personal communication with Helen A. Harrison, Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw, Director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, NY, 30 September 2014.

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Figures 9.3 and 9.4 Barbara Rose interview, 1978. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, c. 1914–1984, bulk 1942–1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Pages 1 (left) and 5 (right, detail) are from the edited transcript of an interview with Lee Krasner.

recent collaborative studies performed by curators and conservators should help to offset the error entrenched in the ‘official’ publication and further our understanding of the relationships between artists and manufacturers during the rise of mid-twentieth-century modernism. New discoveries about Pollock’s materials may also impact the technical research and preservation of his paintings. This case underscores the importance of reviewing primary source material and serves as a reminder against retrofitting information to preconceived notions of history. We miss an opportunity to follow what might be a fruitful line of inquiry if we are primed to hear ‘Duco’ in our heads whenever anyone talks about Pollock. 2.2 Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Another example wherein new avenues of scholarship have been obscured by popular myth occurs in relation to the work of Willem de Kooning (fig. 9.5). Like Pollock, De Kooning’s work is utilized as a standard of mid-twentieth-century physicality in technique, when ‘what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event’.35 De Kooning was known to prepare his own paints, and the 35  Rosenberg 1952, 23.

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Figure 9.5 Willem de Kooning, c. 1960. Photographs of artists by Fred McDarrah, 1963–1976. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution photo: Fred W. McDarrah

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Figure 9.6 Willem de Kooning’s studio, c. 1960s. Thomas Hess papers, 1937–1978. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution photo: W. [Walter] Silver

belief that the artist added mayonnaise to his paint mixtures is firmly lodged in the historical legend. Accounts of De Kooning’s studio practice include claims that he used paints ‘thinned with water and add[ed] kerosene, safflower oil or mayonnaise’, for example, ‘as a binding agent’.36 Reports listing mayonnaise among De Kooning’s studio materials appear in newspapers and journals alike but are nowhere supported by the artist’s own statements or the accounts of his assistants. ‘Distortions and fallacious stories have passed around since he has become famous’, proclaimed studio assistant Herman Cherry. ‘But I can say, “NO!”, when I read that [De Kooning] used mayonnaise as a medium.’37 The genesis of this misinformation is not definitively known but may arise from oversimplification of the artist’s technique. As part of his studio practice, De Kooning dispersed his oil paints in other liquids to create a thick but lightweight material with handling properties that differed from those of traditional oil paints (fig. 9.6). ‘De Kooning used to add water and salad oil to his paint’, explained conservator John Brealey. ‘He whipped them up together to get a kind of emulsion, like mayonnaise.’38 It is not a great leap to see how the two emulsions could be confused, particularly when they share some of the 36  Waldman 1978, 26. 37  Cherry 1989, 230. 38  Tomkins 1987, 66.

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same ingredients and have similar methods of preparation. The mayonnaise myth also fits the theatrical narrative of Abstract Expressionist experimentation advanced by the popular press. ‘Safflower oil, kerosene and mayonnaise are pressed into service as binding agents’ for the artist, according to an article in the New York Times. ‘His studio tables look like … the kitchen of a very good cook who is big on sauces.’39 This myth was conclusively disproved by a team of conservators and conservation scientists who analysed De Kooning’s paints and found no evidence of egg—a key ingredient of mayonnaise—in any of the artist’s work.40 In refuting this beloved but unsupported tale of De Kooning’s studio practice, technical study of the artist’s work reveals an unexpected and potentially illuminating pattern in his use of materials and an intimate connection between De Kooning’s work and his physical surroundings. ‘[A] painting is both a thing and an event’, declared second-generation Abstract Expressionist Ray Parker. ‘Ontologically, it exists as a part of nature, not only as a “esthetic” [sic] object, but as behavior in the form of a significant record.’41 A comparison of materials from early and late works in De Kooning’s career disclose both a figurative and material shift in the artist’s technique. Paintings produced during De Kooning’s years in New York City contain ‘a range of house paints and sign painters’ enamels along with artists’ paints, often mixed with sand, charcoal, plaster of Paris, calcite, wax, and ground glass’.42 Industrial materials were in keeping with the artist’s commercial work as a sign painter, and the gritty additive materials were in common use among New York artists and their experimental European colleagues.43 De Kooning moved to Long Island late in his career. Art historians acknowledge a shift in the artist’s style with his move from city to seashore, and there is now evidence to suggest that De Kooning’s materials also reflected his changing environs. Technical analysis by conservator Susan Lake revealed that De Kooning discarded his house paint and poppy oil mixtures after relocating to Long Island, where he began to formulate new emulsions made from traditional oil paints and cooking oil, with thinners such as kerosene and water, ‘whipping the ingredients with a brush to fluffy consistency’.44 Years of collaborative technical research among conservators, conservation scientists, 39  Russell 1978, D25. 40  Lake 1999. 41  Parker 1958, 20. 42  Lake et al. 1999, 381. 43  Standeven 2003, 44. 44  Lake 2010, 64–65.

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and art historians have shown ‘the extent to which [De Kooning] consciously employed unconventional materials in his paintings’.45 What more is there to learn from these newly identified materials? Is De Kooning’s shift from house paint to artist’s oils a reflection of increasing monetary stability as an established artist? Is his change in additive oils a simple matter of working with a new paint material, or are we witness to a literal shift from city soot and ash to a new world filled with sky and sea? Critic and art historian Irving Sandler once called Pollock’s work an attempt by the artist to ‘literally be in the painting’.46 Are we witness to an attempt by De Kooning to embed his physical world in his work? 3 Conclusion Familiarity may go some way towards explaining the ease with which we embrace the amusing but simplistic idea of foodstuff in De Kooning’s paints or the ease with which one manufacturer’s name eclipsed that of a lesser-known company in transcriptions of Pollock’s studio practice. The hazards in these cases are similar; by accepting information that fits an existing conception of the facts without confirmation or further research, we miss opportunities for discovery and overlook material data that might directly impact collections care. The innovative use of materials is a recognizable characteristic of modern painting, notably associated with the mid-twentieth-century movement known as Abstract Expressionism. Scholars continue to debate the workings of this relationship, a question faced by the artists themselves. ‘Modernism and materialism go together’, posited Clark. ‘This does not mean … that the fellowship was always recognized  … or that, even when it was, [the] artists agreed on which version of materialism to follow and exactly how.’47 The appearance of new art making materials and procedures in the mid-twentieth century encouraged experimental practices that shaped modern art history. Understanding an artist’s materials helps us uncover and preserve their legacy; the technical study of these materials sites both artist and artwork on a historical trajectory. ‘A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist’, Rosenberg noted. ‘The painting is a “moment” in the adulterated

45  Lake et al. 1999, 381. 46  Sandler 1970, 102. 47  Clark 1999, 139.

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mixture of his life.’48 The technical study of material-heavy works of artists such as De Kooning and Pollock are rich resources for scholarship. How scholars approach the study of these complex works sets the direction for future research, avoiding or ensuring the perpetuations of myths that delay or damage effective scholarship and preservation efforts. Misinformation, repeated and propagated, leads to entrenched myth and, more tragically, to the loss of the scholarship that could have happened without the misdirection. Like the artists we study, curators and conservators ‘derive their chief inspiration from the medium [in which] they work’,49 and it is incumbent upon us to seek out scholars with shared interests but disparate expertise so that we may increase the perspectives from which we approach our inquiry. In each of the cases presented above, misinformation was recognized by one scholar and then investigated by a group of collaborators from multiple disciplines, each of those scholars making a notable contribution to replacing the misinformation and placing new information in context. Interdisciplinary collaboration is a crucial component of technical study in modern art, and a valuable tool in fighting the spread of popular misconception. By working together, art and technical scholars avoid misdirected research and in doing so free up the resources to uncover the hidden truths underlying these myths. Bibliography Alloway, Lawrence, ‘The facts of the matter and the figures involved’, Art News and Review (16 April 1955), 2. Auping, Michael, ‘Beyond the sublime’, in: exhib. cat. Buffalo 1987, 146–166. Bois, Yve-Alain and Rosalind E. Krauss, Formless. A user’s guide, Cambridge, MA 2000. Cat. Buffalo, Albright-Knox Gallery, Abstract Expressionism. The critical developments (Michael Auping, ed.) New York 1987. Cat. New York, Museum of Modern Art, Jackson Pollock. New approaches (Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel, eds.) New York 2000. Cherry, Herman, ‘Willem de Kooning’, Art Journal 48 (1989), 230. Clark, Timothy J., ‘In defense of Abstract Expressionism’, October 69 (Summer 1994), 22–48. Clark, Timothy J., Farewell to an idea. Episodes from a history of modernism, New Haven 1999. Coddington, James, ‘No chaos, damn it’, in: exhib. cat. New York 2000, 101–116. 48  Rosenberg 1952, 22–23. 49  Greenberg 1939, 36.

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De Antonio, Emile and Mitch Tuchman, Painters painting. A history of American modernism in the words of those who created it, New York 1984. De Duve, Thierry, ‘The monochrome and the blank canvas’, in: Kant after Duchamp, Cambridge, MA 1996, 199–279. Feinstein, Samuel, Hans Hofmann. A film by Sam Feinstein, limited edition release accompanying Patricia S. Feinstein, Sam Feinstein, North Truro, MA 2008. Feinstein, Samuel, Interview with Sam Feinstein, conducted by Sascha Feinstein, courtesy of Sascha Feinstein, 1989. Gates, Glenn A., Teri Hensick, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Tatiana Z. Ausema, Thomas J. S. Learner and Will Shank, ‘Reproducing Morris Louis paintings to evaluate conservation strategies’, in: Isabella Sourbes-Verger (ed.), Preprints of the 14th ICOM Committee for Conservation Triennial Meeting in The Hague, 12–16 September 2005, London 2005, 329–334. Glueck, Grace, ‘The 20th-century artists most admired by other artists’, ARTnews 76 (1977), no. 9, 85. Goodnough, Robert, ‘Pollock Paints a Picture’, ARTnews 50 (1951), no. 3, 38–41, 60–61. Goossen, Eugene C., Robert Goldwater and Irving Sandler, Three American sculptors. Ferber, Hare, Lassaw, New York 1959. Greenberg, Clement, ‘Avant garde and kitsch’, Partisan Review 6 (1939), no. 5, 34–49. Greenberg, Clement, Hans Hofmann, Paris 1961. Guilbaut, Serge (ed.), Reconstructing modernism. Art in New York, Paris, and Montreal 1945–1964, Cambridge, MA 1990. Hess, Thomas B., ‘The mystery of Hans Hofmann’, ARTnews 63 (1965), no. 10, 39, 54–55. Hofmann, Hans, Hans Hofmann papers, [Ca. 1904]–78. Bulk 1945–65. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Hunter, Sam, ‘Jackson Pollock’, Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 24 (1956–1957), no. 2, 12. Krauss, Rosalind E., The optical unconscious, Cambridge, MA 1994. Krauss, Rosalind E., ‘The crisis of the easel picture’, in: exhib. cat. New York 2000, 155–179. Kurczynski, Karen, ‘Ironic gestures: Asger Jorn, Informel, and Abstract Expressionism’, in: Joan Marter (ed.), Abstract Expressionism. The international context, New Brunswick, NJ 2007, 108–124. Lake, Susan F. C., The relationship between style and technical procedure. Willem de Kooning’s paintings of the late 1940s and 1960s, Newark, DE 1999 (unpub. diss. Delaware). Lake, Susan F. C., Willem de Kooning. The artist’s materials, Los Angeles 2010. Lake, Susan F. C., Suzanne Q. Lomax and Michael R. Schilling, ‘A technical investigation of Willem de Kooning’s paintings from the 1960s and 1970s’, in: Janet Bridgeland

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(ed.), Preprints of the 12th ICOM Committee for Conservation triennial meeting in Lyon, France, 29 August–3 September 1999, London 1999, 381–385. Lake, Susan F. C., Eugena Ordonez and Michael Schilling, ‘A technical investigation of paints used by Jackson Pollock in his dripped or poured paintings’, in: Ashok Roy and Perry Smith (eds.), Modern art, new museums. Contributions to the 20th International Institute of Conservation Congress in Bilbao, 13–18 September 2004, London 2004, 137–141. Lodge, Robert G., ‘A history of synthetic painting media with special reference to commercial materials’, in: American Institute for Conservation preprints of the 16th annual meeting, held in New Orleans, Louisiana, June 1–5, 1988, Washington, DC 1988, 118–127. Marontate, Janet L. A., Synthetic media and modern painting. A case study in the sociology of innovation, Montreal 1996 (unpub. diss. University of Montreal). Motherwell, Robert, ‘Painters’ objects,’ Partisan Review 11 (1944), no. 1, 93–97. Namuth, Hans, Jackson Pollock 51, New York 1950. Parker, Ray, ‘Direct painting’, It Is 1 (1958), 20. Rogala, Dawn V., Hans Hofmann. The artist’s materials, Los Angeles 2016. Rogala, Dawn V., Susan F. C. Lake, Christopher Maines and Marion F. Mecklenburg, ‘Condition problems related to zinc oxide underlayers. Examination of selected Abstract Expressionist paintings from the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution’, Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 49 (2010), no. 2, 96–113. Rose, Barbara, ‘Pollock’s studio. Interview with Lee Krasner—June 27, 1978’, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, circa 1905–1984, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, box 10, folder 1. Rose, Barbara, ‘Jackson Pollock at work. An interview with Lee Krasner’, Partisan Review 47 (1980), no. 1, 82–92. Rosenberg, Harold, ‘The American action painters’, ARTnews 51 (1952), no. 8, 22–23, 48–50. Rosenberg, Harold, The anxious object: art today and its audience, Chicago 1966. Rosenberg, Harold, ‘Art and words’, New Yorker (March 29, 1969), 110–121. Russell, John, ‘De Kooning. I see the canvas and I begin’, New York Times (25 February 1978) D1, 25. Sandler, Irving, The triumph of American painting. A history of Abstract Expressionism, New York 1970. Shiff, Richard ‘Performing an appearance. On the surface of Abstract Expressionism’, in: exhib. cat. Buffalo 1987, 94–123. Standeven, Harriet A. L., The historical and technical development of gloss house paints, with reference to their use by twentieth-century artists, London 2003 (unpub. diss. Royal College of Art).

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Tomkins, Calvin, ‘Profiles. Colored muds in a sticky substance [a profile of John Brealey]’, New Yorker (16 March 1987), 44–70. Waldman, Diane, Willem de Kooning in East Hampton, New York 1978. Wijnberg, Louise, Elisabeth Bracht, Klaas Jan van den Berg and Matthijs de Keijzer, ‘A Study of the Grounds used by Three Post-War American Artists (1954–1975). Barnett Newman, Ellsworth Kelly and Brice Marden’, in: Janet Bridgland and Catherine Antomarchi (eds.), Preprints of the 16th ICOM-Committee for Conservation triennial meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, 19–23 September 2011, London 2011, cd-rom. Wolfe, Tom, The painted word, New York 1975.

Part 4 Transitions

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Chapter 10

Materials, Objects, Transitions

Jorge Otero-Pailos in Conversation with Hanna B. Hölling The conversation took place between Jorge Otero-Pailos and Hanna Hölling on 23 August 2017 in Los Angeles and New York. It developed in the context of our “explicating the material” for this book, by addressing theoretical aspects from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. It complements the previous contributions authored by conservators, curators and researchers of material culture with the perspectives of another individual who straddles various fields—Jorge OteroPailos, whose artistic practice is intimately connected to his theoretical reflections on material culture and its preservation. Hanna Hölling (HH): Jorge, thank you for agreeing to this conversation. As you know, we are working on the project that situates questions related to the materiality and material transitions in artworks and artefacts on the intersection of curatorial and conservation cultures. Looking across a range of institutions and sites, the essays collected in this anthology aim at creating an interdisciplinary dialogue to explore the relationships between curatorial and conservation philosophies and look at the way in which these relationships shape the materiality of objects. Your research interests and artistic practice seem to perfectly reflect this approach. Firstly, you represent two perspectives: the perspective of a caretaker with your background in architectural preservation, and the perspective of a curator, historian, and theorist. Secondly, by putting the by-products of conservation on display, you seem to challenge the common assumptions about the value assigned to them. Addressing ‘points of confusion’, as you say in your recently published book,1 your intellectual-practical project exists on the verge of art and architecture, somewhere in between the temporal realms of past and future. I hope to draw from these rich perspectives in our conversation. Could you start by telling us something about your view on material transitions and change? I would like to begin with this question because, in my thinking and research, the observation of material transitions in artworks and artefacts is central. These perceptions help us to access the material world as something being in constant flux and never static. This is also where the knowledge and 1  Otero-Pailos 2016.

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attitudes derived from the practices of conservation and curation need to be acknowledged as a point of entry to studying the material world. Jorge Otero-Pailos (JO-P): It’s very interesting the way you framed this in terms of material transitions. This question of transitions for me is really central and something that I’ve focused a lot of my work on. I find it really important to think of the role that objects play in helping us transition from certain stages in life to other stages in life, and if we move that over to a larger group of people, the role that objects play in cultural transitions. What I find fascinating is that we require certain objects in order to successfully transition from one stage into another. And so my work investigates the relationship between people and things and what we want from objects in those transitions. It’s very interesting that you couch it in terms of material transitions because that calls into question where the object begins or ends. The material might not constitute an object. It might extend in space in a disaggregated form, for example. And so I’m curious about the framing of the question in terms of materials rather than objects, even though of course they’re related. But certainly when one puts the emphasis strictly on the materiality rather than on the object, it raises the possibility that the object might not actually be there at all or it might not be recognizable as that object. HH: Thank you for bringing this up. The aspect you raised directs us towards thinking about when an object really ceases to be a material conglomerate of its constituent parts. We have objects that are made of materials (and artworks form just one subcategory of objects). And subsequently these materials transition, due to the process of decay or degradation, thus inevitably change the objects. Objects change because their constitutive material parts change, and nothing in this system inherits a fixed identity. It is an ecology of sorts that is full of intrinsic interdependencies and relations. Perhaps we could think of objects as temporal-material forms. Material transition is inherent to the entire material world as no single object is freed from it. When, in the process of world-forming and creation, a material concretizes into a form, that is, when it takes form, the object becomes what it is. Then it is being accepted into the system of objects, disseminated, manipulated, conserved, and exposed to all sorts of conditions, internal and external, so it changes and disintegrates. And so everything, all form, dissolves, falls into entropy, and something else emerges conditioned by certain practices of materialization of time and space. All objects as we encounter them are temporal. They take the form that we encounter only for a certain time. In my thinking— but I am obviously now more interested in yours—the temporal dimension of

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objects is therefore very important. Objects are time bound (to avoid the problematic notion of ‘time-basedness’), they exist in temporal relations—time is inescapable. Whether an object is formed to exist for a long duration, say a Rembrandt or an Egyptian mummy, or whether it is a short event, an explosion, a performance, or a slightly longer processual artwork, all these concretizations of matter are temporal. JO-P: To start with, let me take this idea and divide it into two general issues. One would be the question of the object in its relationship to its materiality in terms of architecture. And then I will pick up the question of time and the temporal transitions. One of the things that has drawn me to architecture are major cultural buildings—if we want to call them cultural objects—big cultural objects such as, for example, the Parthenon. It is an object that was presumably, as far as we know, on top of the Acropolis for a very long time. When it started to be documented in the nineteenth century, there was an Ottoman village all around it. There was first a Frankish church in it, and then it was a mosque. All of that was removed, carefully dissected so that the pieces that were considered to be of the Parthenon were kept and the pieces that were not considered of the Parthenon were removed. And then, of course, there was Lord Elgin taking pieces of the Parthenon that he thought were most important to London. But other pieces have ended up in Paris, Copenhagen, the Vatican museums, other places. So, in fact, when you go to the place that we assume is where the Parthenon is or was, what we find is that the object is not actually there. The object is distributed—I like to think of it as a distributed monument—it is distributed across space. To me it is fascinating that this building was never really together in one piece, as far as we know for all the documentation we have. It was never really an object, but it has always been in some way sort of apart. We still think of it as an object. We still think of it as something that has integrity. This challenges all of our preconceptions of the relationship between materiality and objecthood because it suggests that we bring a kind of prejudice to our observation of materials. And the prejudice is that we expect them to be objects. We expect materials to be objects that are bound spatially. And when they are not bound spatially, we still imagine them to be bound spatially. And that is a very interesting mental, almost automatic, response that I think needs investigating. Why is it that we think of it as having some sort of spatial continuity? This leads me to the second question that you were talking about, which has to do with temporal transition—time. I think that our obsession with changes in materiality is very natural. It seems to me that we are unable to really— unless you have a phenomenal memory—remember who we are. We don’t

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know who we are for the most part, we don’t remember significant events in our lives. Forget about the minor events, like a breakfast or a lunch in the office three year ago, we don’t remember those things. They were removed from memory. And so we actually are constantly trying to recover ourselves and constantly trying to retell ourselves the story of who we are. And we find that we need certain kinds of things to do that. We use photographs. We use texts. We use all sorts of objects in order to recall who we are. I think that that’s really important at the level of the self. But then when we go to the level of culture, a similar, parallel operation is at play, which has to do with the question of what our culture is. We don’t actually remember what our culture is. We have to reconstitute it; we do that constantly. And objects are fundamental to that. Objects are a way for us to establish a kind of continuity that is artificial—it has necessarily to be artificially constructed because in reality our experience is of radical discontinuity. Our mind is constantly forgetting what happened before and constantly not grasping the experience that we’re moving through. So I think that is why in some way we are obsessed with the decay of objects and their patina—because that provides us with a kind of experiential continuity with the past. In other words, when we return to the object, the object is still the same. And therefore, it can help us in recollecting. It serves the function of monuments to help recall. If the object was completely changed and there was any doubt that the object that we’re coming back to is the same object, then it stands in the way of our ability to do that reconstituting of ourselves, of our culture. There is something really important in that notion of material decay in terms of what it does for our relationship to the object over time. This is the reason why I’m very interested in thinking of cultural objects as transitional objects. And I am interested in your notion of transitional materiality, because it seems to me quite related to the notion of transitional objects. It also helps to nuance the question of the transitional object. The transitional object is one that has to have a materiality that is both slowly changing but staying the same somehow. HH: So the object can only change to the degree at which it is able to maintain its relationship with the past, to be identifiable as the same object. This of course links us directly with the various discussions surrounding the theories of identity, which were influential for my own thinking in relation to changeable multimedia installations—the theory of spatio-temporal continuity of objects and the mereological theory of identity.2 What influenced your thinking about transitional objects? 2  According to the mereological theory, the identity of an object involves the identity of its component parts. This theory assumes that every compound object composed of the same

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JO-P: I’ve been very influenced by Donald Winnicott, the child psychoanalyst, who really was the first to begin to discuss the question of transitional objects. He talked about the role of objects in proper human development. He was the first, by the way, to interview and have discussions with children about their childhood, unlike Freud, who basically spoke to adults about their childhood. Winnicott really gives an enormous insight when he begins to understand the relationship that these objects help to articulate between the child and the world. He points to the fact that when a child is born, the world is essentially a projection of the self. I mean the child experiences the world as omnipotence. So when the child is frustrated and cries, that frustration is satisfied immediately by a caring caregiver. Feed the child or take care of the child and so on. The omnipotence of the child is frustrated by the fact that their desires are not fully satisfied immediately. And so it’s in that world of frustration that the child begins to develop coping mechanisms to deal with that frustration. They’re hungry, they’re crying, and food is not arriving. How do they cope with that? They develop an attachment with an object that satisfies them or gives them the illusion of satisfaction. And that would be a teddy bear or some sort of blanket. They satisfy their frustration at another level. They don’t satisfy the immediate frustration of hunger, but they feel satisfied by transferring their frustration and the satisfaction of that frustration onto that object, which stands between, let’s say, them and the caregiver. The world for a child is the parent. That caregiver is not delivering as they should. And so the child develops this intermediary object. Now, that’s very interesting, because that object, first of all, allows the child—to go back to this question of transitions—to transition between very difficult states of mind. So the child is very afraid, for example, to go to sleep, because when it wakes up, it doesn’t know if it’s going to stay in dreamland or come back, it doesn’t have a real clear sense of what’s real and what’s not. And therefore, this notion that that object provides a type of continuity for the child is important because it offers an experiential continuity. The object is the same when they go to sleep as when they wake up. It has to look the same. It has to feel the same. It has to smell the same for them to recognize it, for it to trigger the entire sensorium. But if, while the child’s asleep, you go and wash that teddy bear, wash the blanket, and it smells like lavender when they wake up instead of dried saliva, they’re not going to recognize that object as the same transitional object.

elements at two different points in time maintains its identity. Spatio-temporal theory is based on intuition and assumes that objects maintain their identity by tracing a continuous path through space-time.

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I think the other really important thing in that is a notion that Winnicott puts forth, which is that, in fact, what the child is trying to do is figure out the difference between illusion and reality. But that there always has to be the illusion that the child is creating everything (the illusion is the illusion of omnipotence), that the child is making the satisfaction to their own desire. They’re trying to discover the limits of that illusion. And they’re trying to discover reality. But it’s not like a child can just ask the question, ‘Oh, Mom, am I living an illusion or is this real?’ A baby doesn’t have that capacity. It doesn’t know how to pose the question. The object allows the child to ask the question to the parents because it allows the child to behave a certain way towards that object. So, if a child loses the object, it will behave towards that object as if it’s vitally important to them. The child will act like it lost an arm, start crying. If as a parent you ignore them and tell them, ‘Grow up, kid’, you’re telling them that object is not real. But if you tell the child, ‘We’re going to look for that object and we will find it for you’, what you’re telling them is that you recognize that object as real. The transitional object is an object that operates at the level of the relationship between people and things. It’s a communal object, in a way. What the child is asking is for that object to be recognized as a real communal object, not only as their object. The insight here is that the reality of objects is socially constructed from the beginning, as children. We only recognize things as real because of their social construction. So we could talk about transitional objects as playing a central role in the social construction of reality. But what happens when we grow up, when we’re adults? HH: Perhaps we then find other transitional objects? I must admit that I read the introduction to your book, Experimental Preservation, rather carefully. Perhaps you can discuss it more in detail. But as a side remark, I wonder whether these communal objects can also be objects that we inherit. Perhaps there is a difference to be made between transitional objects that we created ourselves, that are ours, and those imposed on us—things that we inherit from the past. JO-P: That’s right. And that’s where I think the role of the conservator or the preservationist is really essential, because we are transforming, altering, intervening into the materiality of objects. I think that we could potentially think of that intervention as an asking of a question: ‘Is this object real? Is this object helping us to understand reality? All in all, is it helping us transition?’ There is a real important and creative role and a critical role in the way that we intervene in objects because what we do must necessarily alter the materiality of the

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object in such a way that it poses a question about whether the object serves its purpose, whether the object is real. HH: There is a question about the reality of the object and about the nature of the object. But there is also a social dimension to objects: I am thinking about different groups of people that regard those objects as transitional or do not care about them at all. Because we can only speak from our own cultural perspective. Objects that are transitional for us might become less transitional for someone else. That applies both to the kind of the geography and to the temporality that we exist in and that we share with others. The generations that will follow us might be haunted by a different spectre of inheritance, they might have very different views on things that were preserved from the past and about the selection criteria pertaining to what needs to be preserved for the future. What personally fascinates me in the conservation discourses is the conviction that we cling to objects in the belief that we preserve the past for the future. This has to do with a linear conception of time. And, actually, what we do is acting in the present because the present is the only reality given. Past and future bleed into the now of uncertainties. So perhaps, then, the notion of transitional object could be situated in the present and its only actuality and obligation would be to the present. And perhaps it would be more problematic to think about the future transitional objects. I wonder what you think about that. JO-P: Inescapably, we can only act in the present. And so I agree with you that the claim that we are preserving for the future is actually misleading in terms of what we actually do. Maybe a better way, a more nuanced way to say that would be that we are testing our ability to believe in the reality of a temporality we call the future or to believe in the reality of a temporality we call the past. In other words, when we begin to enter into that question of transitions, we are really trying to test—and this is why I think it’s very experimental what we do—test our ability to conceive or to experience reality as temporal and not simply as instantaneous—you know, a flash of the present. Because what we do when we’re trying to reconstruct ourselves is trying to gain a sense of ourselves as entities that are temporal, that are existent. In other words, that what’s real is our existence in time, not our existence in space only. But that existence in time is one that requires a sort of picking ourselves up all the time. Where I think philosophers who had to grapple with this question didn’t go all the way was that they didn’t consider the fact that we don’t do this picking up in our mind. This picking up is not a mental exercise. What we do is pick up objects, literally. In order to pick up ourselves, we need to pick up objects.

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We cannot reconstitute ourselves, we cannot grasp our own temporality without objects. And it’s not just any object. In other words, if you ask a philosopher to describe an object, they all end up talking about apples and hatchets or something. They have a very difficult time talking about the special category of objects that help us constitute ourselves as temporal beings or temporal cultures—beings that endure and cultures that endure. And those are really separate kinds of objects. We can call them art. We can call them transitional objects. I think to call them art, or to call them architecture, is a little bit misleading. I would maybe call them transitional objects or transitional cultural objects, because it could be a building or it could be a ring. What matters is the fact that the object is chosen and recognized and valued and considered to be real and put to that use. And not every object serves that. Not every object falls into that category. And not only because it’s art does it work. Not only because it’s architecture does it work. HH: What you just said about humans defining themselves through objects is really intriguing. We are constantly trying to make sense of our lives with and through objects. This discussion elevates objects to another level, and with them, the materials they are constituted by. Object-oriented ontologies or perhaps also Agential Realism take this one step further. This philosophy rejects the privileging of human existence over the existence of objects. Objects may actually exist outside of the human; they can have relations with each other. Assigning an object such importance in your thinking is, I think, a step between the anthropocentric, humanistic world, in which everything is put in the context of human and remains his/her creation. In this context, objects are at our disposal, they exist for our pleasure and satisfaction. It is interesting that it took us so long to recognize that humans can define themselves only in relation to objects or even through them—that we remember, and are who we are, because of objects. But let me come back to my question, or even a doubt, whether all objects can be assigned such a role of transitional object. I wonder why certain objects are considered transitional and why others fall out of this framework or even refuse this kind of ontology from the very beginning. For instance, why are objects that are replicated or score-based considered less important or of a different kind than objects that endure in their materiality and enjoy their more durable, physical form? These ‘intermittent’ objects manifest a different sense of continuity and affinity towards disappearance because they are not permanently physically present. The instruction/score-based works allow for a reoccurrence, for multiple physical presences. They can be reiterated time and again, sometimes even simultaneously in different geographic locations—and

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this is where the questions of identity comes in. In my thinking, they react to time differently, faster rather than slow. A ‘slow’ object would be a Rembrandt, for instance, or a statue made of marble. ‘Fast’ objects, because they dematerialize and rematerialize time and again, confuse our presumptions about the material world as something enduring in some more or less constant material form. I ask myself whether architecture could also be a good example of such a score-based object—if we try to conceive of an architectural plan as a score that allows for multiple iterations of a building, and if we assume that cities in which buildings exist succumb to wear and tear and modernizations where new buildings come in place of old buildings. Obviously, I derive these ideas from my engagement with recent art, where a piece of installation art, for instance, can be realized on the basis of instructions, explicit or implicit, formulated or kept in the mind of its maker. Their materiality is not related to a certain material form but something that persists through change. Can such objects be transitional? JO-P: I think that maybe in order to address that we would have to unpack the question of choosing an object. How does that choice actually happen at the level of culture? In your own personal life you might choose a certain object that you will need, and it will feel vitally important to you. How does that happen in culture? Take, for example, a large object like a landscape. I know you’ve worked on questions of land art. Let’s take a big aboriginal landscape, for instance. An aboriginal culture in Australia might make the case that that landscape is vitally important to their culture, that they are unable to live without it. A native Hawaiian might say, ‘I need to go, I need to hunt in that mountain, otherwise my culture dies, otherwise I die.’ We can understand why that claim can be made and we can actually let it be. We cannot interrogate it too closely. But we could, and people have said, ‘Actually, you won’t die if you don’t have that land. You can still have food. And you can still have your drink and shelter. And you will live.’ We as a society recognize the claim that we are dependent on objects is somehow valid in order to survive. But the claim is also somehow crazy, because you can survive. It is almost as if you’re overreacting by saying that you depend on that object. What’s important is that there are areas of our adult life that can’t be interrogated too closely. And that’s very difficult for us, because we want to interrogate things closely. Going back to the example of the parent and the child, and not to infantilize culture in any way, but we’re talking about the role of objects at different stages of our life transitions. When a parent plays into the madness of a child and says, ‘Let’s go find that object!’ (the object that is real for that child), that shows an ability to recognize that in order to figure out what is real and what’s

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not, you actually have to enter that space of doubt with doubt, genuine doubt, about it. If you enter that space with a preconceived idea of what’s real and what’s not, then, in fact, you are not critically examining it. You are projecting a notion of reality onto it. So you have to in a sense play into the madness. Kant would say, ‘Think in the place of others.’ You have to have gentleness towards the question and towards the experience—a kind of acceptance of that otherness into your own thinking. I think that’s a really important role that cultural objects play and why they help advance the common good: because they sustain a kind of doubt about our own prejudices and preconceptions about what is real. They help us to come back to a fundamental question, to sort it out at every turn, and not to take it for granted. And so, when we take the claim of an aboriginal tribe to heart and say, ‘I recognize that this is vitally important to you and it is actually vitally important, perhaps, to me, too!’, then you’re opening up a completely different understanding of reality for yourself and of the transitional object. That’s why we can talk about the choice as actually not being your choice. You’re never really choosing an object. You’re recognizing the fact that a choice has been made. Because who is your culture? Are you your culture? Can you speak for your culture? In a way, to even say that you belong to a culture is to acknowledge the fact that the choices of objects that you think are vitally important to you were not made by you but by others. And so you are actually recognizing that objects that are vitally important to you are not your own creations. They’re yours but not yours. That’s where we get to fundamental questions about the public, about the commons. The role of transitional objects in culture is to really belong to everyone and no one. And we’ve been trying, in different ways, in various cultures, to create structures that will sustain the existence of those objects as such. The museum is one of them. We think of museums as belonging to everyone, but actually some museums don’t belong to you. They belong to a private collector or they belong to the state. We sustain the relationship of ourselves to these objects. We have to create mechanisms for them to continue to operate as both yours and not yours. And that’s where I think conservation and preservation are very interesting because they are fundamentally about sustaining that relationship through physical interventions on objects. It is about the constant testing of whether the object it’s still current and relevant, or not. HH: I wonder how the notions of conservation and preservation are sometimes challenged by the nature of objects themselves. It is often difficult to recognize objects as worthy of preservation. And here I am coming back to my previous question about score- or instruction-based works that are less

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persistently present. Could you share your thoughts on these ‘objects’? Perhaps the other way to formulate this question would be to ask whether the object that you are addressing can also be less physical and less permanently present or, let’s say, of shorter duration. In other words, can our transitional object be what in common parlance is called ‘ephemeral’? I don’t like this word, ephemeral, because it fails to tell us anything specific. JO-P: Yes, I know. I would say the short answer is that every object is ephemeral. And that, in fact, when you think of transitional objects, what it suggests is that what really constitutes a transitional object is our relationship to it. In other words, the space between—if we want to call it a space, or the interaction between—people and things. Now I think that anything that we call intangible heritage is in that same relationship because it always is dependent on objects and it always is dependent on people. Let’s take the whistling language of La Gomera in Spain that has a long history. In order to be the kind of object that we can recognize as an intangible object, intangible heritage, it has to be whistled onto the mountainsides of La Gomera and bounce off of those mountains and project over a kilometre or so, so that the other whistler can hear it and whistle back. In other words, it’s not the object and it’s not intangible heritage if you are sitting in a classroom whistling back and forth from one corner to the other. It requires a particular landscape to be constituted and recognizable as such. The same goes for certain oral traditions and folklore, dance. You can think, for example, of modern dance as a kind of intangible heritage. The performances of Merce Cunningham were staged in a practice room of a certain theatre in New York City. When they were restaged, these performances had to be adjusted—done on a different stage. Somebody who has understood the intention of that piece is able to communicate it to new dancers in different places. That person helps the repetition and has in his or her mind the space where that happened. As the space changes, the choreography needs to be adjusted to maintain the original meaning or intention. So, even performance-based works, even time-based works, require space in the same way that we’re talking about works that are conceived as primarily spatial works in extension, right? An object, a painting, sits in a room. What we’re talking about is not that the object has a temporality but that it allows us to test our ability to think of the reality of that temporality. That it really allows us to constitute our relationship to that object as a temporal relationship and ourselves as a temporal relationship. In the same way an object that purports to be exclusively temporal has a spatial quality to it that needs to be taken into account—a spatial extension that it moves with. When you remove it from that extension, the object loses something. If we could talk, for example, about

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the patina of a spatial object as providing the kind of experiential continuity that allows us to relate to it in spatial terms, then we need an equivalent term for temporal objects that would allow us to relate to them in spatial terms. HH: What would be that term? JO-P: I don’t know what that term would be. But I think that’s a really important term to draw out. And we should think about that because it would perhaps suggest a notion of space that is not necessarily bound in the way that we traditionally think about it. Just to draw the distinction to, let’s say, the notion of patina, it has made us think of time as layers, as chapters. That is a very linear way of thinking about time. A very limiting way of thinking about it. It is, in a way, questionable as a grasp of the reality of our temporal existence. So, the word is limiting. There is no word. I think there would have to be an exploration of it. In temporal works, what is it? What is that spatiality? Could it be the ‘iterativeness’ of the work? HH: Perhaps we could think of a conglomeration of spaces that the archive of this work (the conceptual and physical archival realm) accumulates when the piece moves through different series of iterations? JO-P: If we go back to a Merce Cunningham performance, the distance that the dancers move away from each other is limited by the room where they practice. So that performance only moves so far, only inhabits a certain kind of space. And it has within it that iterativeness. If you try to dance it in a stadium, in order for it to be captured you would have to decide whether the dancers would move all the way to the edges of the football field. And then you would maybe need a lot more dancers. You’d have to make some major changes. Or you would say, ‘This cannot be performed in a football field, because it doesn’t work in a football field.’ I think that iterativeness also has limits. In other words, there are some impossible iterations of this work. It is not possible to iterate this work, to repeat this work, in certain spatial contexts—so it has an objectness to it. HH: So is it this objectness that renders the work, the object, a transitional one? JO-P: It would be recognizable as the same object. And I think that that’s the difficulty and also the amazing thing about iterative works—that in order to recognize them, you really have to come to the object with a previous knowledge

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of it. You have to come with the culture to the object. If you haven’t seen the performance before, if you don’t know what it looked like in a previous iteration, then you don’t recognize it as a transitional object. So I think that what’s really interesting too in this conversation is the way in which we’ve come to this point where we recognize that the degree to which we weave through our encounter with objects, recognize our culture as being something that we are thrown into, that we are already carrying with us. Obviously, it takes time to become accultured in something. But we bring it into our experience with objects. In other words, culture is not a given, culture is something that requires acculturation over time. And it requires these objects. HH: Yes, that’s so interesting, Jorge. May I ask you a question related to the notion of a transitional object but which addresses one of your curatorial-conservation projects, The Ethics of Dust (2008–2015)?3 In this project which has had multiple iterations—at the Venice Biennale (2009), the Victoria and Albert Museum (2015), and Westminster Hall (2016), among others—you removed pollution, dust, essentially a by-product of culture, from various surfaces and relocated it into a gallery or exhibition space. You reintroduced dust to culture. I was wondering whether you could talk a little bit about this particular project, how it conjoins the questions of curation, conservation, and artistic creation. JO-P: I could maybe say in closing that The Ethics of Dust has been a way for me to test my own understanding of objects because it goes back to the question that we started with, having to do with the material—at what point a material is simply a material and at what point it is an object. Dust is typically discussed as formless, as the opposite of being an object. The Ethics of Dust has really helped me explore this question of at what point can dust actually constitute an object? And if we were to take it seriously, what kind of object would it be, what kind of new object could it be? How could we enter into the question without presupposing that the dust would simply just assemble into what we would recognize as an object like a painting or a sculpture (figs. 10.1 and 10.2)? The tension between the dust itself and its ability to become an object has always been important to me. Does this dust belong to this architecture or not? Why are we taking it off? Why do we clean monuments? The cultural presupposition is this stuff doesn’t belong to the monument. So then the question for me is, ‘Well, where does it belong?’ Does it belong in the bottom of a river? 3  The Ethics of Dust, 2008–2015, multiple locations. Learn more at http://www.oteropailos .com/artworks/ [accessed 25 September 2017].

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Figure 10.1

Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust: Alumix, Bolzano, 2008, collection of the Museion: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bolzano, Italy photo: Patrick Ciccone

Figure 10.2

Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust: Alumix, Bolzano, 2008, detail of pollution, collection of the Museion: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bolzano, Italy Courtesy the artist. photo: Jorge Otero-Pailos

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Over time I started thinking that the question is maybe not ‘Where does it belong?’ but ‘Where did it come from?’. I started to think of this dust. It’s airborne. It comes from the atmosphere. And I started to think of the atmosphere as something man-made rather than as a natural thing. And so now I think of these pieces as distributed monuments in a way—the monument being the atmosphere and the atmosphere being the cultural object. And so for me, it’s a way of testing whether we as a culture recognize the atmosphere as a cultural object. And if not, what is it? Is the atmosphere nature? I think we basically need to find the objects of transition in our culture. And we are moving into a moment in history where we are beginning to come to grips with our new cultural reality, which is that we have completely transformed the notion of nature such that it is no longer something outside of culture. The Ethics of Dust has become a way to begin to test our capacity to think of the atmosphere as a cultural object by showing the materiality of the atmosphere. The atmosphere is full of dust. And it’s going to be up there for millions of years. And it’s going to last a lot longer than the buildings we’re building or the monuments we’re making. It is, in a way for me, the greatest monument of our civilization. But we can’t see it! We can’t visualize it. We can’t recognize it. So, this is a way to begin to test, to frustrate our notion of the atmosphere as something natural. I think that in the end, our sense of nature—our Western sense of nature, if I may qualify that—is one that carries with it a sense of omnipotence. In other words, nature is really only nature insofar as we can dominate it. And that’s what makes something nature: that we can actually examine it, observe it, analyse it, and ultimately dominate it. We’ve moved very quickly. Think about the fact that in the nineteenth century we didn’t know how to predict the weather. 150 years ago, we had no idea if it was going to rain tomorrow. But at this point, how do we begin to gently frustrate the illusion of nature, and the illusion that the atmosphere is natural (figs. 10.3 and 10.4). The Ethics of Dust is a way to begin to intervene as a conservator and artist on the atmosphere and to begin to gently try and alter that object such that we can begin to test our capacity to recognize it. Do we recognize it as real? The difficulty there is that you’re actually starting with the material and trying to get back to the object rather than saying, well, there is an object and then it falls into its material and it decomposes and goes back to entropy. This work, in a way, starts from the material and says, ‘Ok, here’s this material, how do we work ourselves back to the object?’ Obviously, aesthetics is a part of it. And the relationship between these objects—their distribution—is really important. How we engage with these pieces, their relationship to things that we consider to be cultural, because culture typically has a range of objects that constitute it. It is not all one object. Does it enter into that field of objects that we call

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Figure 10.3

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Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust: Trajan’s Column, 2015. The installation is made of conservation latex that has been used to clean the hollow inside of the cast of Trajan’s Column, the largest object in the V&A Museum. It shows the dust and dirt accumulated over decades in the usually unseen interior of the column, hanging in the space next to the cast. Commissioned by the V&A Museum Courtesy the V&A Museum. photo: Peter Kelleher

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Figure 10.4

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Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust: Maison de Famille Louis Vuitton, 2015, Panel #7 of the heptaptych. Louis Vuitton Collection Courtesy the artist. photo: Louis Vuitton / Grégoire Vieille

cultural objects? It’s been a process of trying to get to that—to try to introduce dust, atmospheric dust, into culture. HH: It might be that this project, The Ethics of Dust, with all its hugely fascinating philosophical implications, not only allows us to better understand the relationships between the material, the object, and the human, and define them in a larger cultural context, but also, at the end of the day, generates physical objects, heritage objects, that enter the same system of circulation to become collected objects, objects of conservation, requiring our attention and care. Jorge, thank you so much for this fascinating conversation. Bibliography Otero-Pailos, Jorge, ‘Experimental Preservation: The Potential of Not-Me-Creations’, in: Jorge Otero-Pailos, Erik Langdalen and Thordis Arrhenius (eds.), Experimental Preservation, Zürich 2016, 11–39.

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Figure 10.5

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Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust: Old US Mint, San Francisco, 2016 The installation is made of conservation latex that has been used to clean the chimneys of the Old US Mint, where the gold from the California gold rush was turned into coins. As one of the only buildings surviving the 1906 earthquake, the pollution from the US Mint is some of the oldest pollution in San Francisco. Collection of SFMoMA Courtesy the artist. photo: Charlie Villyard. Courtesy Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Index Abstract Expressionism 236–38, 248–49; artists employed in New Deal programs 239; case studies in misdirected scholarship about 241–48; materials used in paintings 239–40, 242 Abu Simbel temples 41 Acconci, Vito 122 Adam on St Agnes’ Eve (Davies 1968) 117–19, 133; absence from public collections  135–36; Adam on St Agnes’ Eve 1968/2015 119, 132, 133, 135; cue-sheets for 123, 124, 128–29, 138; exhibited at National Museum Wales, Cardiff 119–27, 120; as ‘experimental theatre’ event 123; film of 124–25, 126; remediation on 1:25 scale 11, 119, 127–31, 130; spectator participation 132, 133; synchronised sound/visual/light elements 132 adhesives 96, 99, 100, 104 Adler, Amy 35, 39, 40 Admonitio generalis [‘General correction’] (Charlemagne) 213 Adorno, Theodor 73 Aesculapius of Hippolytus 27 aesthetics 5, 269; Asian 49; of change 117, 118, 126; destruction as aesthetic strategy 118, 120–21, 130; of disappearance 117, 118, 121; in dynastic China 26–27; Japanese 25, 27; of rupture 26 agency 2, 7, 11, 68 Alexeïef, Alexandre 197 Alhäuser, Sonja 37 Alloway, Lawrence 237 American Federation of Arts 198 Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales, Cardiff 117 Ammann, Katharina 11 Anatomy lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, The (Rembrandt, 1632) 96 anthropocentrism 7, 262

anthropology 6, 18, 23, 82; material culture studies and 162; materiality and 82; observation of social practice 81 antiquities 24, 42; deliberate destruction of 45; fragmented 25, 41; national and tribal claims on 44; removal and repatriation of 43 archaeology 3, 43, 44, 70; exhibition practices and 231–32; experimental 88; hypotheses derived from artefacts alone 81; material culture studies and 162; of materials 103; material studies of Egyptian mummy cases 105; media archaeology 160; theatre/ archaeology 131 archetype (ur-text) 214 architecture 17, 18–19, 27, 255; appeal of antiquity in 24; buildings as works unfolding over time 71; dust as 267, 270; Hardy as architect  64, 66; museum architecture in art documentaries 200, 201; in Nazi Germany 48; picturesque taste for ruins 22, 25; ruined and demolished 38; traditional building techniques 37; transience of 54; transitional objects and 262; Victorian 66 archive/archiving 8, 131; Davies (Ivor) archive 121–22, 123, 125, 127, 131, 135, 136; iterations and 266; material archive 120, 127; responsibility of institutions and 163 Archives of American Art (Smithsonian Institution) 239 Arendt, Hannah 20 Arnheim, Rudolph 198 Arrowhead from the Battlefield of Ch’ang-p’ing, An (Li Ho) 26–27 Art bin (London, 2010), 38 art documentaries 186, 196–203

274 artefacts 2, 3, 37; archaeological 3; conflicting values embodied by 100; cultural aspects of 79; death of 23; evanescence of 17; fragmented 99; housing and display of 41; as iconic creations 49; material transitions in 255; provenance of 44; relocation of 41–44; scientific investigation of 104; signification power of 8; surface and internal characteristics of 86–87. See also objects art history 6, 7, 48, 117, 159, 192; art documentaries and 200; conservation and 13; documentary evidence and 81; integrated with material studies  104–7, 106; of materials 103; materials and methods of individual artists 89; misdirection in scholarship about modern art 239–41; video art and 162 Artistotle 7 artists’ intentions 11, 34, 162, 163, 203. See also authorial intent Art museum from Boullée to Bilbao, The (McClellan, 2008) 189 ARTnews 236, 238 Art retrouvé, L’ (film, dir. Este, 1946) 199 artworks 5, 13, 74, 76, 117; authorship and 128, 136; changing identities of 50; collective attribution of 35; conceived as static objects 2, 68; conservators’ reshaping of 53; conspicuous materiality of 236; death of artist and 52, 168; documentation of 121; expanded ontological notion of 174; instruction/score-based 262, 263, 264–65; material transitions in 10, 255; ontology of preserved ensembles 172, 174; originals and reproductions 190–91; patina of antiquity on 31; as portable objects 118; preservation through reinterpretation 128, 137; processbased 11; signification power of 8; as time-batteries 1, 3; Variable Media

Index Approach and 126–27; ‘work itself’ 75. See also media art; performance Ashford, Will 38 Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, UK) 102 assemblages, fast-decomposing materials in 28, 37 atmosphere, materiality of 269 attribution 102. See also authorship audiences 3, 80; active role in meaningmaking 10; curatorial dilemmas and 33; new audiences and materials 84–86 Augustine of Hippo, St 223, 225 Auslander, Philip 122 authenticity 1, 2, 37, 69; authorship and 11, 136; expressive versus nominal 136; loss of 47; material surrogates in place of 45; nationalistic subversion of 47; original material and 9, 50; of performance works 129, 135; of the replica 33; shift in source of 70; transmission of 136. See also original Authenticity in transition. Changing practices in art making and conservation (Hermens and Robertson, 2016) 143n3, 161 authorial intent 34–35, 49, 52, 214, 216. See also artists’ intentions authorship 1, 2, 11, 135, 169; changing 128; co-authorship 161; multiple 35, 155; transmission of 136 auto-destructive art 39, 49, 51. See also destruction, as aesthetic strategy auto-ethnography 177 avant-garde 118 Azguime, Miguel 52 Baldwin, Alexandra 102 Bandinelli, Baccio 32 Barkan, Leonard 49 Barnes, Julian 33 Barnes, Sam 134 Barnes Collection 41 Basquiat, Jean-Michel 35 Baxandall, Michael 19, 53 Bazin, André 198 Bazin, Germain 194

Index Baziotes, William 239 Beck, James 74 Bedford, Christopher 125, 126 ¿Being Home? (Matthies, 2009) 22 Bern University of the Arts (HKB) 147 Beuys, Joseph 123 biography, of objects/artefacts 79, 81 black boxes, as projection set-up 145, 147, 153 Bocour, Leonard 243 Bodor, Judit 11 Bolter, Jay David 127 Book from the Sky, A (Xu Bing, 1987–1991)  36 Boston, Lucy 41–42 Bourdieu, Pierre 144 Brancusi, Constantin 40 Brand, Stewart 68 Breakwell, Ian 130–31 Brealey, John 246 Brewer, Jan 41 bricolage 26 BrightSign player 150 British Museum 26, 27, 91, 193; Conservation in focus display (2008), 101; dinos (wine bowl) attributed to Sophilos 100–101; Piranesi vase 100; Portland Vase 99; Rosetta Stone 98 Brodie, Neil 42 Bronze (Royal Academy, London, 2012) 103 Brooks, Alan 124 Bulletin du laboratoire du musée du Louvre  195 Buren, Daniel 118 Burns, Thea 8, 12 Butterfield, William 66 Byron, Lord 26 calligraphy, Chinese 45, 46, 52 Canada, repatriation of potlatch creations in 29 Canaletto 50 Canova, Antonio 26 Casals, Pablo 52 cassette players 144 catalogues 74, 158, 196, 229–30; of art documentaries 198; catalogue raisonné 175, catalogue texts 174; online 107

275 cathedrals 35, 42, 219, 223 cave paintings, prehistoric 35 Ceci n’est pas une pipe (Magritte, 1929) 35 Center for Art and Media [ZKM] (Karlsruhe, Germany) 147, 160 change 1, 2, 9, 29, 136, 161, 172; acceptance of 31, 34; aesthetics of 117, 118, 126; ambivalent reactions to 17–25; architectural forms and 68; complexities of material change  91–94; conservation and challenge of 94–101, 95, 97–98; curatorial choices and 35, 51; essential to survival of artworks 49; in Japanese aesthetics 27; metamorphic 54; processual 30; rapid 21; referents of 4; technological upgrade and 127 changeability 34, 118, 136, 137, 162; defined 126; material identity of artworks and 128, 144; video presentation and 145, 164 Charging bull (Di Modica, 1989) 42 Charlemagne 213, 220, 223, 225 Charny, Daniel 84 Cherry, Herman 246 China, dynastic 26–27, 45–46 Chiseldon (UK) Iron Age cauldrons 101–2 Civilizing rituals. Insiade public art museums (Duncan) 194 Claerbout, David 11, 142, 158; framing of intention and 162–64; technical instructions for video 146–51, 161. See also Olympia; Sections of a happy moment; Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho Clark, T. J. 241, 248 Clarkson, Christopher 226 cleaning 73, 96, 97, 98–99, 130, 187, 202 Cleppe, Birgit 12 Cloche, Maurice 186, 199 Close examination: fakes, mistakes, and discoveries (National Gallery, 2010)  102 Clouzot, Henri-Georges 198 Cod. 490 (Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana, Lucca) 209, 212–13, 216; binding and disbinding of 218–19, 226; conservation treatments of 225–28; content units 219–22; exhibition

276 Cod. 490 (cont.) display of 229; meanings embodied in physical manuscript 231; ‘original’ format as illusion 228; present physical structure and ‘afterlives’ of 217–18; storage box for 213. See also Compositiones variae (c. 800) Cold dark matter: An exploded view (Parker, 1991) 38 Cole, Thomas 47 collaboration 11, 53, 94, 104, 143n3, 158, 229; art-historical misconceptions challenged by 12–13, 240, 241, 249; art-history documentaries of the Louvre and 200; of curators and conservators 101; ensemble method and 175; installation and 155; interactive 30; remediation and 119, 127, 136; in study of artists’ studio methods 240. See also curation–conservation relation Collaboration Paintings (Basquiat and Warhol 1984–1986), 35 Collectio Hispana, in Cod. 490 (Lucca) 212 collectors 29, 33, 34, 43, 225; material curatorship and 46; mutilated remnants of antiquities and 41; public heritage and 44 Colonial Williamsburg 18 Colour. The art and science of illuminated manuscripts (Fitzwilliam Museum, 2016) 229–30 Compositiones variae (c. 800) 209–10, 211, 212, 220, 233; elite audience of Lucca clerics 232; layout of 222; Lombard context of 222–23, 224, 225; materiality of the object and 216–17; philological model of ur-text and 214; traditional scholarly view of 225. See also Cod. 490 (Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana, Lucca) conceptual art 3, 38, 125 Conceptual transformation of art. From dematerialisation of the object to immateriality in networks (Lillemosse, 2006) 125 connoisseurship 4, 6, 26

Index Connorton, Paul 23 conservation 1, 3, 9, 70, 73; artistic intentions and 163–64; of auto-destructive and performance art 51–52; conservation as argument 76; curatorial tasks as part of 168; evolution from art to science 10; of historic buildings 74; material change as challenge for 94–101, 95, 97–98; of new and old media 117; as science 80; technical studies in 101–3. See also curation– conservation relation; decisionmaking, conservators’ and editors’; preservation Conservation in focus (British Museum, 2008)  101 consolidants 96 Constable, John 50 contexts 2, 3, 203, 271; art freed from 43; of Compositiones variae 212–13, 222–23, 224, 225; contextual information about events 121; contextual materiality 118; displacement of icons and 42; environmental 19; life story of objects and 9 continuity 19, 52, 214, 262, 266; artificial 258; of change 172; embrace of 9; experiential 258, 259; familiarity and 20; spatiotemporal 257, 258 Convention for Promoting Universally Reproduction of Works of Art for the Benefit of Museums of All Countries (1867) 32 copy/copies 31, 39, 239; artist’s ‘authorized’ copies 124; in Davies’s archive  121–22; fakes versus legitimate copies 102; historical change in meaning of 32; material difference from originals 50; of possibly nonexistent original 45–46; Renaissance paintings and sculptures 33; of Shakespeare early editions 68, 69, 70 Corbechon, Jean 230

Index Cornford, Francis 19 corrosion 17, 30, 92, 94; curatorial permanence and 21; pseudomorphs 92, 94, 95; X-radiography and 92, 93, 107 Cost of Living (Aleyda) (Kline, 2014) 37 Course of empire series (Cole, 1833–1836) 47 craftsmanship 7, 23, 85 creation 10, 29, 49, 52, 90, 216, 267; anthropocentrism and 262; authorial intent and 34; boundary with curation 11; demolition as creative process 39; destructive 39, 40; immortalized 54; knowledge networks and 155; materials and process in 12; materials of 7; material transformation as form of 122; museums’ role in 192; preservation and 169; process of 175, 176–77; re-creation 8; restoration as 41; temporal immediacy and 19; temporalmaterial forms and 225 Critique of Judgement (Kant, 1790) 152 CT (computerized tomography) scanning 87, 106 Cultural reconstruction (Foundoukidis, 1945)  191 culture–nature relation 7, 30, 269 Cunningham, Merce 265, 266 curation 1, 8, 9; artist in curator role 159; authorial intent and 34–35; boundary with creation 11; changing identities of artworks and 50; curatorial dilemmas 33–48; of early medieval manuscripts 214–16, 225–28, 227; location/locale and  41–44; longevity and 35–37; material surrogates and 44–48; object’s meanings drawn out by 73–74; presentation as curator’s job 149; transience and 37–41; video installation and 155. See also presentation curation–conservation relation 4–13, 21, 68, 73, 74, 143, 149, 163, 168, 199, 240–41, 267–269

277 Dagues, Claude 186, 201 Dahlem Workshop on ‘Durability and Change’ (Berlin, 1992) 48, 53 dance, modern 265 Dancing satyr (attrib. Praxiteles) 103 Darwin, Charles 18 dating, of artefacts 87, 102 Davies, Ivor 11, 34, 117–18; 128-129, 130; archive of 121–22, 123, 125, 131, 135, 136, 138; performers’ cue-sheets prepared by 121, 123, 124, 128–29, 138; remediation and 128–29; self-historicization of 122. See also Adam on St Agnes’ Eve Davis, Stephen 147 Dawson, Julie 105 Death on the Nile: Uncovering the afterlife of ancient Egypt (Fitzwilliam Museum, 2016)  104–7, 106 Decasia: The state of decay (Morrison, 2001)  38–39 decay and decomposition 9, 18, 31, 37, 41, 258; curation against 21; fastdecomposing materials and 37; industrial 30; of new and old media 48–49; proscription of 22–23; of video technology 149 decision-making, conservators’ and editors’, 72–73, 169, 170, 179, 180, 182, 231 Decretum Gelasianum, in Cod. 490 (Lucca)  212 De fabrica in acqua, in Cod. 40 (Lucca), 220 Dekeukeleire, Charles 197 de Kooning, Elaine 238 de Kooning, Willem 13, 238, 239, 240, 249; misleading documentation about 245–48; in studio 246 Deleuze, Gilles 145 dematerialization 125, 163, 186, 263 demolition, as creative process 39 de Montebello, Philippe 29 dendrochronological dating 87 Denver Art Museum 22 De proprietatibus rerum (Corbechon, 1372)  230 derivatives 50 Derrida, Jacques 152, 153

278 DeSilvey, Caitlin 28, 29, 30 destruction, as aesthetic strategy 39, 118, 120–21, 130. See also auto-destructive art Destruction Art 119 Destruction in art archive (Davies) 131 Devoe & Raynolds Co. 243–44 DIAS [Destruction in Art Symposium] (London, 1966) 120, 121 Diderot, Denis 210 Dietz, Steve 143n3 digital art 155, 162. See also media art Digital art (Paul, 2003) 155 digitization 124, 228–29 Di Modica, Arturo 42 dioramas 231, 232 Disneyland 32 distributed monuments 257, 269 distribution 8, 187, 269 Doctrine of Ideas, Platonic 7 document, as material 73, 76 documenta (Kassel, 1970, 1977, 1987)  159n46, 172 documentary films 3, 12, 186, 197–200, 202 documentation 12, 91, 126, 174, 179, 228; absence of 91, 161; as act 118, 122; incomplete and confusing information 238; misleading 241; photographic 119, 121; recursive 181, 182; self-documentation 182; works altered by 121 Double vie des chefs d’ouevre, La (film, dir. Dagues and Hours, 1959) 186, 195, 201 Douglas, Mary 18 Dowris bucket, Bronze Age 91 Dracula (Stoker, 1897) 23 Dresden Madonna, of Raphael 21 Dreyer, Carl Theodor 198 Duchamp, Marcel 35, 40, 41 Dudley, Sandra 81 Duncan, Carol 189, 194 durability 9, 19–21, 35, 37, 88; Dahlem Workshop on ‘Durability and Change’ (Berlin, 1992) 48, 53; longevity as curatorial dilemma 35–37. See also permanence Dutton, Denis 136 Duve, Thierry de 237

Index DVD players/recordings 124, 144, 146, 150 Dykstra, Steven W. 163 Earth art 38 Eco, Umberto 33 Edison, Thomas 42 edition 4, 69, 75, 187, 196; as argument 74, 76; edition-as-work 73; Shakespeare early editions 68, 70; stemma (‘family tree’) and 214, 215 editors 64, 70, 72–73, 74, 75 Eggert, Paul 2, 9, 10 Egino Codex 225 Egyptian hieroglyphics 98 Egyptian mummy cases 87, 104–7, 106 E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company 242, 243 Electronic Art Intermix 146 electronic technology 8; electronic devices 144; electronic art 147, 155, 160 Elgin, Lord 26, 54, 257 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 32 Emin, Tracey 38 empiricism, Anglo-American 6 Encyclopédie (Diderot and d’Alembert, eds.)  210 Ensemble with decoration (Modes of behavior towards people when affection plays a part), decoration with birches, pears, and frames, since 1980 ( filiation) (Oppermann) 167; artist’s installation intentions 178; at documenta (1977) 173; early working state in different media 171; at Serpentine Gallery (1983) 173 entropy 17, 18, 256, 269 ephemerality/ephemeral materials 18, 25, 37, 162; auto-destructive art and 39; decline of craftsmanship and 23; in Oppermann’s ensembles 172; performance and 120, 121; transitional objects and 265. See also evanescence Erased de Kooning (de Kooning/ Rauschenberg, 1953) 39 Ernst, Wolfgang 160 Este, Philippe 199

279

Index Ethics of Dust, The (Otero-Pailos, 2008–2015)  13, 267, 269, 271; Alumix, Bolzano (2008) 268; Maison de Famille Louis Vuitton (2015) 271; Old US Mint, San Francisco (2016) 272; Trajan’s Column (2015) 270 ethnography museums 231 Etymologiae (Isidore of Seville) 212 Eusebius-Rufinus 212 evanescence 9, 17, 23, 25; of Earth art 38; obsolescence and 23–25. See also ephemerality/ephemeral materials Expanded expansion (Hesse, 1969) 48 Experimental Preservation (Otero-Pailos, Langdalen, and Arrhenius, eds., 2016)  260 explication 2, 5; of materials 6–9, 255; of table des matières 9–13 Fabri, Alexandre 197 facsimiles 33 fakes 50, 87, 102. See also copies Fast forward. Media art Sammlung Goetz, (Goetz and Urbaschek, 2003) 161 Faust (Goethe) 26 Fearless girl (Visbal, 2017) 42 Fédération Internationale du Film d’Art (FIFA) 187 Feinstein, Sam 238–39 Femmes du Louvre, Les (film, dir. Kast and Van Moppes, 1951) 186, 200, 202 Festival of Stuff 86 Fierens, Paul 190 Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge, UK): Colour. The art and science of illuminated manuscripts (2016) 229–30; Death on the Nile exhibition (2016) 104–7, 106 Flaherty, Robert 198 Flavin, Dan 51 Flaxman, John 26 Fluxus 118, 126, 128 Ford, Henry 42 forgers and forgeries 50. See also authenticity; fakes Foundoukidis, Euripide 191 Fountain (Duchamp, 1917) 40 fragmentation 25–28, 38, 96, 99, 172 Francis I of France 32

Frankenthaler, Helen 237, 241–42 Freud, Sigmund 18, 44, 259 Frin, Raymond 187, 199 Futurists 118 Gardega, Alex 42 Garnett, Edward 72 Gasparcolor technique 197 Gehry, Frank 18 Genealogiae totius bibliothecae 223 Geneva, Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire (Ms. Gr. 19) 226–27, 227, 228 Getty Museum 87 Giannachi, Gabriela 126 Gibbon, Edward 47 Giotto 21 Giovanni, Andrea 226 Gismo (Tinguely, 1960) 36, 52 Glass (one and three) (Kosuth, 1965) 35 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 26, 31 Golden, Samuel 243 Gonzalez-Torres, Felix 51 Good shepherd miniature, in Cod. 490 (Lucca) 223, 224, 225 Gorky, Arshile 239 Gormley, Anthony 108 Gottlieb, Adolph 239 Gottscher, Leandro 210 Green Knowe novels (Boston) 41–42 Gregorius presul, in Cod. 490 (Lucca) 220 Grémillon, Jean 198 Groys, Boris 11, 117, 137; on distinction between exhibition and installation 155; on ‘non-identity’ 145 Grusin, Richard 127 Guernica (Picasso, 1937) 40–41 Guggenheim Museum (New York) 48, 154, 160n49 Guston, Philip 239 H2OMBRE (Maler, 1982) 39 Haacke, Hans 41 habit 20, 21 Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum (Malta) 36 happenings 36, 129 Hardy, Thomas 20, 23, 50, 54, 64, 72, 76

280 Harvard Art Museums 154 Harvard murals (Rothko, 1961–1962) 154 Heart of darkness (Parker, 2004) 38 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 144 heritage, cultural 3, 9, 21, 80; environmental conservation and 13; of indigenous tribes 33, 43–44; ‘intangible heritage’, 128; materiality of 192; photographic reproduction of works and 190–91; repatriation and 29; transmission of 1; UNESCO program to preserve 186, 189 Heritage, The (Lenz) 46–47 Hermens, Erma 161 Hess, Thomas 236, 240 Hesse, Eva 48 Hirst, Damien 31, 38, 40 Histoire de l’art par les chefs-d’œuvre du musée du Louvre, L’ 200 Historia ecclesiastica (Euseubius-Rufinus)  212 History and antiquities of the county of Dorset (Hutchins) 66 Hitler, Adolf 48 Hoffman, E.T.A. 22 Hofmann, Hans 238–39 Holbein the Younger, Hans 101 Hölling, Hanna 3, 13, 118, 216; on changeability of artworks 126, 162; conversation with Otero-Pailos  255–71; on differentiated types of authenticity 136; on idealization of permanence 225 Hours, Madeleine 186, 195, 201 humanism 9, 41, 48; copying of classical sculptures 32; fragmented antiquities and 25, 27 humanities disciplines 6, 7, 84, 226 humidity 94 Huxley, Julian 189 Huyghe, René 25, 195–96, 197, 199, 202, 203 Huysmans, Joris-Karl 38 Ice bag—Scale C (Oldenburg, 1971) 51–52 iconography 7, 162; iconographic characteristics 84; iconic turn 145, 223 ideal objects 69, 70, 71, 73, 76

Index identities 9, 50, 69; in borderlands 46–47; cultural identity of object 215; essentialist conception of 144; interpretation and 169; material identity of performance works 126, 128, 131, 134; memory and reconstitution of the self 257–58; professional 3; transitional objects and 263; unstable 68 Illustration, L’ (periodical) 196, 197 Images de l’ancienne Egypte (film, dir. Cloche, 1951) 186, 199–200, 202 Im Auge des Zyklons (Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2007) 156 immateriality 125, 145, 155, 163 immortality 26, 45; illusion of 22, 31; permanence as semblance of 21 Information action (Beuys, 1972) 123 Ingold, Tim 6, 7, 83 In Obhut. Anhand von Anna Oppermann (Galerie Hollenstein Lustenau, Austria, 2017) 180–82, 181 Inspire. Highlights of UCL’s collections 108 installation art 5, 8, 11; curation of 11–12; ensemble method as conscious awareness practice 175–77, 176; exhibition and preservation of  167–69; multimedia 147; ontology of preserved ensembles 172, 174–75; video presentation and 142, 146–47 instantiation 175, 182 Institute of Making at University College London 85–86 intention. See artists’ intentions; authorial intent interdisciplinarity 1–4, 12, 143, 154, 230, 255; art-historical myths and misconceptions checked by 12–13, 249; artist’s collaboration with conservator/curator teams 11; dualism broken down by 162; errors limited by 241; interpretation of artistic intention and 163. See also curation–conservation relation interest groups 94; teams 154, 156, 228, 229, 247; interdisciplinary teams 11 International Association of Art Critics (AICA) 190

281

Index International Conference on Art Films 187, 198 International Council of Museums (ICOM)  186, 187, 190, 195, 198 International Institute for Conservation 22 International Museums Office (IMO) 187, 191, 193 interpretation 1, 9, 12, 150; boundaries with creation and preservation 11; changes in 2; identity of artworks and 169; institutional decisionmaking and 180; visibility of 170, 179. See also meaning Ippolito, Jon 48, 127, 149 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 41 Isidore of Seville 212 iterant media 5, 8 James, Henry 21–22, 23 Japan, impermanence treasured in 25; kintsugi aesthetic 27; wabi-sabi aesthetic 25, 27 Jaujard, Jacques 187, 192, 199 Johns, Jasper 38 Johnson, Samuel 69 Jones, Amelia 122 Joselit, David 1, 4 Joy, Jody 102 Judd, Donald 50 Jude the Obscure (Hardy, 1895) 23 Kamehameha I, metamorphoses in statue of 29–30 Kant, Immanuel 76, 152, 153, 264 Kast, Pierre 186, 200 Keats, Jonathon 50 Keim, Adolph 242 Kemp, Martin 34 Kemp, Wolfgang 152 Kennall Vale (Cornwall) 31 Kerr, Robert 40 Kidd, John 74 kinetic art 36, 51–52, 129 Kingery, David 89–90 kintsugi aesthetic 27 Kline, Franz 238, 239, 240 Kline, Josh 37

knowledge 5, 169, 255–56; limits of conservation specialists’ knowledge 160; of materials and methods 90; media archaeology and 160; medieval technical knowledge 209; museum as a principle medium of 188, 189–92; of neighboring academic disciplines 6; networks of 155; tacit 4, 91; transmission of 136 Kostelanetz, Richard 129 Kosuth, Joseph 35 Kracauer, Siegfried 198 Krasner, Lee 239, 243 Laboratory for Experimental Techniques in Art 242 Lake, Susan 240, 247 Landowska, Wanda 52 landscapes 21, 31, 38, 263; emulation of nature in landscape design 25; temporal survival of works in 42 Landy, Michael 38 Lange-Berndt, Petra 6 Laocöon (c. 40 to 30 BC) 32 LaserDisc 144 Last Judgement (Michelangelo, 1536–1541)  34 Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci), copies of  33 Laurenson, Pip 143n3, 147, 158–59 Lawrence, D. H. 72 Layard, A. H. 42 Le Corbusier 24 Lenin, Vladimir 39 Lenz, Siegfried 46, 47n107 Leonard, Zoe 22 Leonardo da Vinci 33 Levy, Leon 28–29 L.H.O.O.Q. (Duchamp, 1919) 50 Liber de officiis ecclesiasticis (Isidore of Seville) 212 Liber pontificalis, in Cod. 490 (Lucca)  212, 220 Lichfield Angel (c. 800 AD) 88 Lieftinck, Gerald 231–32 Li Ho 26–27

282 Lillemosse, Jacob 125 literary works 10, 64, 74, 75 Llangorse (Wales) medieval textile 96, 97–98 location/locale, as curatorial dilemma  41–44 Lombard kingdom 213, 223 London bridge (Rennie, 1831), relocation of  41 London Craft Week 85 longevity, as curatorial dilemma 35–37 loss 18, 21, 46, 99, 172; acceptance and celebration of 34; ambivalent reactions to 9, 17; complicity in 22; of dysfunctional original parts 52; of early medieval manuscripts 226, 228; fame magnified by 39; followed by recovery 29; of information 94, 96, 149, 161; misdirected scholarship and 249; obsolescence and 24; of original materiality 136; without death 28 Louis, Morris 243 Louvre 12, 25, 202–3; collection curated on film 199–202; conflicting ambitions of 195–96; filmic reproduction of art in 186; International Conference on Art Films and 198; Mona Lisa stolen from (1911), 39; museological transformation of 187–88, 188; museum of medium of knowledge and 189–92; rearranged painting collection 193; Salle des septmètres 192; Salle Jean Goujon 194 Lowe, Adam 33 Lowenthal, David 2, 9 machines: curatorial replacement of worn-out machinery 52; fragility of machine kinetic art 36; as museum pieces 23. See also technology Magna paint 243 Magritte, René 35 maintenance 4, 8, 137, 149 Maler, Leopoldo 39 Malraux, André 26, 190–91, 200 Man at the crossroads (Rivera, 1933) 39–40 Mangrum, Joe 38

Index Manzoni, Piero 50 Maori sacred displays 33 Mao Zedong 45 Maple Bridge (Suzhou, China) 45 Marçal, Hélia Pereira 53 Marx, Karl 19 Marzelle, Fernand 186, 200, 201 Masuria 46–47 material culture 82, 85, 137, 187, 230, 255 material culture studies 1, 3, 81, 159, 162 materiality 1, 2, 7, 46, 169, 225; ambivalent meaning of 82; conservation and 4; contextual 118, 125; curatorial–conservation relationship and 255; historians of science and 6; intangible characteristics of objects 81; layered meanings through time and 216–17; as lifeline of the past 67–68, 76; in modern art 236–37; preservation of media art and 163; relational 4, 5; separated from physical object 125; temporal 4 materialization 129, 135, 144 ‘material multiplicity’ 118, 125 materials 1, 7, 79–80; attitudes to materials and processes 81–84; complexities of material change 91–94, 93; deterioration of 99; different species of wood 82; dynamic view of 8; exhibitions focused on 103–4; information conveyed by 80–81; as intermediaries 7; manual work associated with 83; material surrogates 44–48; mutation of 8; process and 12; ‘raw materials,’ 83; scientific investigation of 86–91 material studies 85, 102; art history integrated with 104–7, 106; tensions with visual studies 142 material turn 1, 162 Matisse, Henri 236 matter 1, 29, 257; assumptions about artworks as 2; form privileged over 7; impurities as matter out of place 18; materiality in relation to 4; protection of 127; subject to change over time 91 Matthies, Rupprecht 22

Index McCann Morley, Grace L. 191, 192 McClellan, Andrew 189 McLuhan, Marshall 147 meaning 1, 2, 71–72; change over time 230; curation and 73–74; curatorial choices and change in 35; immutable precedents and 20; materiality of finished form and 8; multiple layers of 12, 217; politics of preservation and 170; reader/ audience role in making of 10; spectators’ production of 168. See also interpretation media art 128, 143, 160, 163; artist’s installation instructions and 161; changeability of 126; knowledge networks and 155; preservation of 147, 163; time-based 117; Variable Media Approach and 126–27. See also electronic art media migration 49, 53, 142 Meegeren, Jan van 50 memory 4, 44, 65, 190; difficulty of remembering culture and life events 257–58; durability and 20, 21; in dynastic China 45; formation of cultural memory 182; performance and 126 Merde d’artiste (Manzoni, 1961) 50 Mèredieu, Florence de 8 metamorphosis 9, 17, 28–31, 49 Metropolitan Museum of Art 28–29, 31 Metzger, Gustav 39 Michelangelo 34–35 Michelangelo. Das Leben eines Titanen (film, dir. Oertel) 197 microscopes 87, 90, 96, 107 Mi Fu 45 Mignot, Dorine 154–55 Miller, Daniel 85 mind-body dualism, Cartesian 7 Mine, Hiromichi 151 mise en abyme patterns 174 mixed-media ensembles 3. See also installation art; multimedia events/ environments Mixed Reality (MR) environments 232 modernism 145, 245; importance of materiality to 237; materialism

283 and 248; misdirection in scholarship about 238–41 Molotch, Harvey 36, 53 Mona Lisa (Ashford, 1979) 38 Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci) 33, 35; moustache in L.H.O.O.Q. 50; theft from the Louvre (1911) 39 Monet, Claude 50 Moon over the river on a spring night, The (Wang, 2013) 52, 53 Moore, Brian 47–48 Morgan, Richard Huw 134 Mornauer, Alexander, portrait of (National Gallery, London) 101, 102 Morphy, Howard 81 Morris, William 21 Morrison, Bill 38–39 Motherwell, Robert 237 Mouseion (IMO journal) 187, 191, 192 MPEG-4 files 144 Mullion Cove (Cornwall) 30–31 multimedia events/environments 11, 119, 123, 126; technoid aesthetic of 147; theatrical aspect of 131; video installations 155 Muñoz Viñas, Salvador 143n3 musealisation 8 Musée de l’Orangerie 196, 197 Musée Guimet 199 Musée imaginaire (Malraux) 190, 200 museification 126 Museon Arlaten (Arles) 231 Museum (ICOM journal) 187–88, 189, 198; on cleaning of paintings 202; on status of museums after World War II 199 Museum materialities (Dudley, ed.) 81 Museum of Failure (Helsingborg, Sweden)  24 museums 1, 8, 17, 79; authorial intent and  34; avant-garde versus 118; changing practices of preservation 9; collections management 174; conservation practices explained for visitors 99; costs of ongoing remediation 52; curtailed notion of longevity and 28; delegated performance and 136–37; dim lighting in 94; display politics

284 museums (cont.) of 180; documentation as surrogate of event 122–23; illusion of art’s immortality and 22; information on exhibition labels 105, 107; lighting in 193; material identity of performance works and 128; provenance of artefacts and 44; traveling exhibitions 195–96; Victorian 33 musicology 70 myths, art-historical 12–13, 241, 249 NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) 43 Nagy, Eleanora 52 Napoleon I 33 National Gallery (London): Close examination (2010) 102; ‘Mornauer portrait’ 101, 102 nationalism 46 National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, Aberystwyth 125 National Trust (England) 17, 30–31 nature: culture and 7, 30, 269; decay of statues and 28; emulation of 25 negative dialectic 73, 74 Nespawershefyt, coffin of 105, 106 Newman, Barnett 240 New Orleans, Vieux Carré of 1850s 32 Nicolson, Harold 21 Nimrod, Assyrian palace of 42 Noel, Sebastian 134 Noël de Tilly, Ariane 163 Nossa Senhora do Carmo altarpiece (Carmo Church, Faro, Portugal) 89, 90 nostalgia 64, 66, 84 Nozze di Cana (Veronese, 1490–1527) 33 objectivity 10, 67, 72 objects 8, 50, 64; biography of 79, 81; birth and death of 23; collection and display of 5; complexity increasing over time 94; conservators’ interventions on 13, 74; continual alteration of 17; cultural biography of 126; cultural identity of 215; cultural transitions and 256; decay of 258; different academic

Index disciplines’ knowledge of 6; durability of 20; events alongside 117; life story of 9, 100; materiality of 216–17, 260; object-aswork 10; perceived as static 9, 225; physicality of objects in humanistic studies 6; portable 118; ‘postobject’ practices 125; production methods and materials 82; prolonged material life of 4; spatio-temporal continuity of 258; temporal dimension of  256–57; transitional 3, 13, 258–62, 264, 265, 267; work-model and 74. See also artefacts Object to be destroyed (Ray, 1923) 37–38 observer effect 13 obsolescence 22–24, 49, 142 Oertel, Curt 197 Œuvre d’art et les méthodes scientifiques, L’ (Louvre, 1949) 195 Oldenburg, Claes 51–52 Old Masters 24 Olympia (Claerbout, 2016) 150 Ono, Yoko 37 open-reel playback technology 144 Oppermann, Anna 11, 170, 172, 182; ensemble defined by 175–76; ensemble method as conscious awareness practice 175–77, 176; installation intentions intrinsic in works of 177–82, 178, 181 optical disc storage formats 144 oral history 121 oral literature 68 O’Reilly, Emily 130 Orford Ness 30 originalism, legal doctrine of 20 originality 31, 147, 174, 180 original/originals 91, 169, 192, 225; of ancient and medieval architecture 44, 70, 88; archival documentation and 124–25; authenticity associated with 2, 9, 10, 22, 26, 37, 216; conservation ethics and 96, 100, 101; curatorial decisions and 49, 51, 52; dematerialization of collections as cinematic

Index reproductions 186, 187, 189–91, 201, 202; deterioration of 33, 36, 47; distorted version in museum display 92; edition-as-argument and 74; fear inspired by 33; fragments of 30; historical change in value of 32; iconicity of 49; intentional ephemerality and 39; lost 40, 69; material differences from copies 50; material transformation and 122; of medieval manuscripts 209, 212, 214, 218, 219, 228–29; ontological notion of artwork and 174; performance and 131, 133, 136, 265; possibly fictional 45–46; ‘restoration’ and 99; staging and 180; of technological apparatus/ format 150, 154; unrecognizable through chemical changes 92, 93, 94, 107 Otero-Pailos, Jorge 3, 13; Hölling in conversation with 255–71. See also Ethics of Dust Owen, Stephen 26 ownership 9, 138 Ozouf, Mona 53 ‘Ozymandias’ (Shelley, 1818) 17 Paik, Nam June 147, 152 Painting for the wind (Ono, 1961) 37 paintings 25, 54, 76, 175; anachronistic materials in painting-over 101; in art documentaries 196–97, 201; changing identity of paintings 68; chemical changes in paint over time 92; cleaning of 99; materials used by de Kooning 245–48; medieval materials and practices 12; modernist 3; presentation and perception of 144; presentation in the Louvre 192, 192; stratigraphy of superimposed materials in 87; synthetic paints from DuPont 242–43 Painting to be stepped on (Ono, 1960) 37 Palais d’Orsay (Paris, 1810) 38 Palladio, Andrea 33 Panthéon (Paris) 53

285 Parker, Claire 197 Parker, Cornelia 38 Parker, Ray 247 parodies 50 Parthenon, in Athens 44, 70; blame for ruination of 47; ideological visions imposed on 53–54; material transitions of 257; replicas of 32, 50 Parthenon frieze (Elgin Marbles) 26, 27, 54, 257 Partisan Review 243, 244 Paul, Christiane 155, 163 Pearson, Mike 119, 131, 135 Peeters, Henk 50 Peirce, C. S. 75 Pentecost Island, Vanuatu 37 performance 3, 9, 11, 142, 216; Abstract Expressionism as proto-performance art 236–37; aesthetic of disappearance and 121; anti-materialism of 49; curatorial dilemmas and 51; delegated 136–37; different approaches to preservation of 117; documentation and 122–23, 126; in films of Abstract Expressionist artists at work 238; fluid identities of works 68; longevity of 36; ‘material multiplicity’ and 118; modern dance 265; multimedia 11; ontology of preserved ensembles 175; remediation and 127; as viral ontology 125, 137 performance studies 117, 136 permanence 1, 2, 9; curatorial 21–22; idealization of 225; permanent collections 117; as semblance of immortality 21. See also durability; ephemerality Phelan, Peggy 120–21 Phidias 26 Philadelphia Museum of Art 22 Phillips, Joanna 147 philology 214 Picasso, Pablo 38, 39, 40, 236 Piero della Francesca 19 Pierres vives, Les (film, dir. Marzelle, 1952)  186, 194, 200–201, 202

286 Pinoncelli, Pierre 40 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista 38, 44, 50, 100–101 Pissing pug (Gardega, 2017) 42 Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. (now Pittsburgh Paints) 244 Pius II, Pope 217 Plant, John 123, 128 Plato 7 Plywood: material of the modern world (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2017)  103–4 Podany, Jerry 22 poetry 25, 28, 45, 50, 54 Pollock, Jackson 13, 36, 240, 242, 248, 249; employed by Works Progress Administration 239; film of artist at work 238; misleading documentation about 241–45, 245 Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center 244 Pomaro, Gabriella 218 Portland Vase (Roman cameo glass) 99 Portuguese churches, eighteenth-century  88–89, 89 post-structuralism 216 post-studio practices 168 potlatch creations, Amerindian 29 Power of making, The (Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition, 2012) 84–85 Praxiteles 103 “Preface to the poems composed at the Orchid Pavilion” (Wang Xizhi, AD 363)  45 preservation 8, 48, 149; architectural 255; ensembles as processual artworks and 179; of installation art 167–69; media migration and 49; objects worthy of 264; of performance art 136; reinterpretation and 128; as self-conserving enterprise 21; variability and 127; visibility of 169–70, 182 process 3, 29, 71, 73, 75, 210, 271; anti-establishment artists and 118; change of architectural forms 68; conservation as 100; correlation of material and process 12;

Index curatorial 119; of decay 256; decision-making 169, 170, 179, 180, 182, 231; demolition as creative process 39; of digitization 228; disclosure of selection process 179; evanescence and 34; of installation 161; knowledge building 177; of material degradation 168; material object and 175, 256; of meaningmaking 10, 75, 169; paradigm shift from product to 236, 237; of performative documentation 125; preserved physical traces of 8; process-based art 11, 170, 176–77; remediation 127–30, 135; removed and concealed traces of 7; of sculpture casting 7, 103; studio practice and 238; work-in-process adaptations 72, 172 processual works 2, 51, 169, 180, 257; culture–nature transitions 30; installation art and 170; performance and 118; preservation issues and 179 property rights, in artworks 34. See also authorship Proust, Marcel 43, 44 pseudomorphs 92, 94 Pugin, Augustus W. N. 66 Pye, Elisabeth 10, 12 Pyrography (Peeters, 2005), remake of 50 Radcliffe, Ann 22 Ragaglia, Letizia 40 Ragghianti, Carlo 198 Rancière, Jacques 182n30 Rape of Europa (Titian, 1562) 32 Raphael 21 Rauschenberg, Robert 39 Ray, Man 37–38 Real, William 122 Rebentisch, Juliane 155n36 reception history 71 reconstruction 70, 95, 99 recursion, structural principle of 174 recycling 31 Reinhardt, Ad 238, 239

287

Index reinterpretation 125, 129, 135; material culture approach to 137; material genealogies of works and 127–28; preservation through 128, 137 relics 18, 24; in borderlands 46–47; desecration of 47; fragmented 26; in kinetic environment 131; Native American 43; removal of 41 rematerialization 129, 263 Rembrandt van Rijn 70, 96, 201, 263 remediation 11, 52, 119, 127, 129. See also Adam on St Agnes’ Eve Renaissance 19, 25, 41; materials used in paintings 92; radical transformation in poetry of 28 Rennie, John 41 repatriation 29, 43 repetition 32, 128, 136, 182; as embodied form of archiving 131; as form of documentation 125; recursion principle 174 replication 31–33, 50 representation 7, 121, 129 reproduction 190–91, 200 repurposing 127 Resnais, Alain 198 restoration 5n5, 10, 11, 99; of medieval churches in England 64, 66, 71–72; proscription of decay and 24 Rethinking curating. Art after new media (Graham and Cook, 2010) 143n3 reverse engineering 88 Riegl, Alois 24 Rilke, Rainer Maria 18 Rinehart, Richard 48, 127 Rivera, Diego 39 Robertson, Frances 161 Rockefeller, Nelson 39 Rogala, Dawn 12–13 Rogers, Samuel 32 Roman dagger sheath (Chester, UK) 92, 93, 94, 95 Rome, city of 44, 45, 47, 50 Roms, Heike 126 Røros (Norway), World Heritage site in 31 Rose, Barbara 243, 244 Rosenberg, Harold 237, 248 Rosetta Stone 98

Roth, Dieter 37, 172n12 Rothko, Mark 154, 239 Rowley, John 134 Royal Academy (London) 103 Rubens, Peter Paul 32 Rubens et son temps (film, dir. Huyghe, 1937) 196–97, 202, 203 Ruskin, John 21, 23, 71, 72, 74, 75 Ryckmans, Pierre 46 Saaze, Vivian van 163 St Clair, William 53 Salles, Georges 187, 188, 195, 200 Salter, Guy 85 Salt itinerary (Azguime, 1999–2006) 52 Sanblasiana, in Cod. 490 (Lucca) 212 Sandler, Irving 248 sand paintings: Navajo 36; Swept away (Mangrum, 2012) 38 sand sculptures, Japanese 25, 37 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) 39, 154 Schäffler, Anna 11–12 Schenk, Stephan 158 Schiaparelli, Luigi 223 Schlegel, Friedrich von 26 Schneider, Rebecca 125 Schrödinger’s cat, in relation to art 50 Schum, Gerry 159n46 science 10, 79, 86; historians of science 6, 210; investigation of materials and making 86–91; as separate culture from humanities 84 Scott, George Gilbert 66 screenings 117, 145 sculpture 25, 54, 87–88, 175; bronze in lost-wax casting 103; casting process of 7; cleaning of 99; fragmented remnants and 26, 27; video sculptures 147, 153 Secrets des chefs-d’œuvre, Les (RTF television series, 1959) 195 Sections of a happy moment (Claerbout, 2007)  156, 158, 159, 160, 161 Seeing double (Guggenheim Museum, 2004)  154 Sélestat, Bibliothèque humaniste (Ms. 10)  228

288 ‘Self Unseeing, The’ (Hardy) 64–68 semiotics 75 senses, decay of 18 Serra, Richard 40 Shafrazi, Tony 40–41 Shakespeare, William 28, 68–70, 86 Shalem, Avinoam 231 Shanks, Michael 131 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 26 Shiff, Richard 237, 238 Shōsō-in opening (Nara, Japan) 36 signification, cultural 8, 10 Silent Explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art [Cardiff, 1915–1916] (Davies)  34, 118–19, 123, 126 Siqueiros, David Alfaro 239, 242–43 Sistine Chapel, renovation of (1990s) 34 site-specificity 27, 42 smart phones 107 Smith, Pamela H. 210 Snow, C. P. 84 software, future development of 150 Sons and lovers (Lawrence) 72 Sophilos 100 Sort of a commercial for an ice bag (Oldenburg, 1970) 52 soul/spirit versus body 7 sound 18, 52, 129, 199; black-box projection setups and 145; missing sound in video 151; in Mixed Reality (MR) environments 232; prerecorded 123, 129; sound effects 119; synchronised sound and light environments 129–30, 131, 132; in temporal montage 135 specialists 2, 89, 94; knowledge of 6; scientific investigation of materials and 86, 88 spectatorship 128. See also audiences Speer, Albert 48 Sphinx 24–25 Staffordshire hoard 88 staging 1, 146, 158, 180 standardization of error, in scholarship 240. See also myth, art-historical Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 36, 154 Steinbeck, John 21

Index Stella, Frank 236 stemma (‘family tree’), of artisanal manuals  214, 215 Sterrett, Jill 154–55 stewardship 5, 21, 33. See also curation Stieglitz, Alfred 40 Stoker, Bram 23 storage 127, 168, 228 studio practices 237, 238, 240; of de Kooning 246–47, 248; of Pollock 244, 248 Sutton Hoo burial assemblage 91, 96 Swept away (Mangrum, 2012) 38 Szeemann, Harald 159n46 Tang Taizong, Emperor 45 Tate Britain 123 Tate Modern 50 technicians 11, 135; Claerbout’s work and 142, 149, 150, 156, 161; remediated environments and 119, 127; restorers as 48 technology 89, 90, 103, 160; obsolescence and 23–24, 142; video display and playback 142, 149, 151, 152, 162 television 147, 195, 198 Tempest, The (Shakespeare) 17 Terry, Quinlan 20 Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Hardy) 64, 66 Theater of Disappearance (Villar Rojas, 2017)  31 Thek, Paul 172n12 Thèmes d’inspiration (film, dir. Dekeukeleire)  197 Thevenot, Jean 201 Thirty pieces of silver (Parker, 1988–1989) 38 Thoreau, Henry David 50 Thornton, Nicholas 120 3-D printers 37 Tilted arc (Serra, 1981) 40 time/temporality 1, 11, 170, 175; authorial intent and 34–35; changing meanings and 230; decay of senses and objects 18; emotion and threat of the past 65; fragments as evidence of struggle with 26; geological and cosmic 13; knowledge of the past 19; location/locale and 42, 43;

289

Index materiality and 4, 216–17; materialization of 256; objects’ temporal dimension 256–57; reality of temporal existence 266; recovery of the past 10, 67; spatial quality of 265–66; temporal duration 225; trajectory of performance work over time 126; transitional objects and 261–62. See also media art; memory; performance; transience Tinguely, Jean 36, 52 Titian 32 Tobey, Mark 239 Tobin, Steve 42 Total art matchbox (Vautier, 1968) 118 Tottori Sand Museum (Japan) 25, 36–37 Townshend, Pete 39 Trademarks (Acconci, 1970) 122 Traherne, Thomas 25–26 transience 2, 10, 49; ambivalent reactions to 18; as curatorial dilemma 37–41; embrace of 25; future preparation and 37; inevitability of 18–19 transitions/transformations 2, 255–56; anchored through time 9; between culture and nature 30; musealisation and 8; temporal 257–58; transitional objects 3, 13, 258–62, 264, 265, 267 Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable (Hirst, 2017) 31 Trinity Root (Tobin, 2005) 42 Troemel, Brad 37 Tubb, Kathryn 43–44 Turn of the Screw (James, 1898) 23 TV Garden (Paik, 1974) 152 ‘Two cultures’ lecture (Snow, 1959) 84 Twombly, Cy 38 ultraviolet radiation 94 U-matic format 150 U’mista Cultural Centre (Canada) 29 under-drawings 102 UNESCO 43, 186, 189; art documentaries and 198; museums program 191; traveling exhibitions promoted by 195

Unmarked. The politics of performance (Phelan, 1993) 121 Untitled (Judd, 1967) 50 Userhet, coffin of 104–5 Vandeveire, Bram 158 Van Moppes, Maurice 186, 200 variability 118, 137, 162; preservation of artworks and 127; of video medium 155, 162, 163. See also reconstruction; reinterpretation Variable Media Approach/Questionnaire  126–27, 149, 160n49 Vasulka, Steina and Woody 147 Vautier, Ben 118 Venice Biennale 31, 172, 267 Venus de Milo sculpture 192 Vermeer, Jan 50 Verne, Henri 187, 191, 192–94, 201 Veronese, Paolo 33 VHS cassettes/recorders 124, 144, 150 Victoria and Albert Museum (London) 84, 103, 267, 270 video art, presentation of 3, 10, 11, 142–43; changeability of the medium and 145, 164; framing of intention and 162–64; as installation 154–56; roles of artist, curator, and conservator 145–51; situation and performance 143–45; video as immaterial medium 144; video image and frame 152–54. See also Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho Videocompany 160 Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine) (Claerbout, 2001) 143, 151, 161; Claerbout’s technical instructions for presentation of 146–51; in Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2007), 156, 157; picture frame (parergon) and 152–53; at Wiels, Belgium (2007), 157 Villar Rojas, Adrián 31 Visbal, Kristen 42 visual art 7, 174 Visual Artists Rights Act [VARA] (United States, 1990) 34

290 visual culture 137, 162 Vostell, Wolf 147 wabi-sabi aesthetic 25, 27 Walker, Susan 102 Wallach, Alan 189 Wang Dong Ling 52, 53 Wang Xizhi 45–46 Warhol, Andy 35 Wedgwood, Josiah 32 Westminster Hall 267 Wharton, Glenn 30, 36, 53, 163 Where shall we go dancing tonight? (2015)  40 white cube, as customary gallery setting 43, 145 Whitney Museum of American Art 51

Index The Who (rock band) 39 Winged Victory of Samothrace 192 Winnicott, Donald 259, 260 Woman with child on the seashore (Picasso, 1921) 38 Works Progress Administration (WPA) 239 World Heritage sites 31 Wuyou Garden (Ming dynasty China) 46 X-radiography 68, 87, 92, 93 X-ray fluorescence spectrometry 92 Xu Bing 36, 53 Yourcenar, Marguerite 27, 31 Zalasiewicz, Jan 28 Zooniverse 86