Help? I am in a research bind

[mousme]

Does anyone know of good books and/or resources that would explain the technical aspects of the preservation and, more importantly, the restoration of art works? More specifically paintings, but I am not especially picky about the medium if it comes down to it.

I am trying to write a story and realized that my plot kind of hinges on my understanding the ins and outs of how to restore paintings, which I emphatically do not. In fact, this is so far out of my league I don't even know where to start. /o\

Halp? Anyone? Bueller?

Comments

[elanya.livejournal.com]

Oh man, you picked a hard one @_@ Art, and particularly painting, conservation is all kinds of tricksy and complex. It's also really really slow. I now only the very minimal basics of how to even to the most barest minimal of stuff. There are books, but I don't have any particular recommendations because I have no actual experience with it. The extent, in fact, of my experience is "I have worked in a lab where a friend of mine got assigned a painting to conserve." I know what she did to that one painting.... basically she removed the top layer of varnish to clean it and replaced it with another organic sealant (PVA in Toluene, I believe :V) and re-stretched the canvas on a new frame. It took her the better part of a year @_@

I'm now working at an art gallery/museum, and while we can identify basic problems, our general reaction is to flail and send stuff to a professional.

So the question is - how technical do you need to get? Do you need to know specific processes? Or do you just need to know what is possible to do in terms of conserving or restoring (not the same thing, I will note) an artwork?

[elanya.livejournal.com]

I hope that was not too negative of an answer, in retrospect. I know just enough about it to know its terrifyingly complicated and also really painstaking. I am confident you have the ability to get into it enough to get your story out though! Looking for basic texts on art conservation is probably a good place to start.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

That's essentially what I'm looking for. I just don't know what I'm looking at, so I can't tell if one book is written by a hack whereas another is written by an expert, if you follow. I am uneducated enough on the topic that I truly cannot distinguish my ass from my elbow. ;)

[mousme.livejournal.com]

I don't need to get TOO technical. Basically I have a murder victim who is a professionnal restorer. So I'd need to know what is possible to do in terms of restoring (definitely restoring and not conserving in this case). Either the motive for the murder is directly related to the piece he's working on, or that's the red herring part of the plot (I haven't quite figured that part out yet), but I still need to understand what I'm talking about so the story is at least moderately plausible. I mean, obviously the more specifics I know the better, but I don't have to become a complete expert overnight, either.

[elanya.livejournal.com]

Two advices then!

a: look around for art conservation/restoration programs online, and look and see what they're using for texts in their syllabi.

b: do a little general reading on conservation/restoration to figure out what if it about your artwork that your restorer is fixing, and focus your research accordingly.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

I've already started with b), but hadn't thought of a) at all, which is a really good idea. Thanks!

[swestrup]

Historically, it wasn't unusual for a painting to have been modified over time. Sometimes is was a previous 'restorer' who just painted into faded areas with what they imagined should have been there. Sometimes a painting was deliberately altered to change some features that had a particular religious or political connotation to them. Sometimes an artist couldn't afford new canvas and would just paint right over an existing work.

Nowadays there are a number of multispectral techniques that one can use to reveal these older works, using special cameras that operate in the infrared or the ultraviolet. Its not too far a stretch to imagine that some such technique showed up an underlying picture that someone is willing to kill to keep hidden.

You're Writing!

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

Kill, kill, kill!

Very proud of you and hopeful about the results.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

I am indeed writing! I've been writing for a while, but it's been mostly fan fiction lately. I love it, but I'm excited to be writing original stuff again too...

[ladyiolanthe.livejournal.com]

I know that professional conservators (for museums) will purposefully not match the original *completely* so that future generations of researchers can easily tell what it not original. It's an ethics thing.

I will ask my Museum Environment professor from last term (who is a professional art conservator) if she can suggest any good texts, but she is a busy lady, so no promises!

[ladyiolanthe.livejournal.com]

My prof is willing to talk to you (she has actually provided commentary to another writer on just such a topic before. So, if you would like that, then I can send an email to you both to put you in touch with one another. Just let me know, and I'll need an email address for you if you want to do it.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, that is AWESOME! Your prof rocks!

She can reach me at mousme at gmail dot com.

\o/

Thank you!

[ladyiolanthe.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome, and she's already replied to the email I CCed you on. ;D They'll both be from utoronto dot ca addresses.

Art Restoration

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

I'm not ignoring you.

I'm just clueless. :(