Conservator Jeff Maish restores the painted decoration on a fragmentary mixing vessel. (See below for photo copyright information.)
I visited three exhibitions at the Villa: Reconstructing Identity: A Statue of a God from Dresden, The Getty Commodus: Roman Portraits and Modern Copies, Fragment to Vase: Approaches to Ceramic Restoration. One of my interests in art and archaeology is conservation and preservation. Over the centuries the term "conservation" has had various interpretations. In earlier times, statues that had lost arms or legs, or even heads, were given body parts from unrelated statues in order to make them whole. Today, museums are more likely to display statues with the missing parts, or at least indicate where the original statue leaves off and the restoration begins. Personally, if there is a drawing or photograph of how a statue looked in its original state, I don't mind seeing it restored as it was originally intended to be seen, as long as the restoration parts are clearly identified in documentation displayed nearby.
A Statue of a God from Dresden is a wonderful lesson in conservation history all by itself. You could say it has survived the restoration wars! Everything imaginable happened to the statue since its discovery in the 1600s, and the Getty has done a splendid job in telling its story.
The Getty Commodus is another story, literally. The exhibition explains the difficulties in determining the date of origin of a sculpture. This piece was at first thought to be the work of an Italian sculptor from the late 16th century as it was fashionable at that time (and through the next few centuries) to make copies of ancient works of art. However, after weighing all the clues, it is now thought to be an original ancient sculpture from an archaeological dig.
As interesting as the first two exhibits are, my favorite is Fragment to Vase. In the past, the approach to restoring a fragmented vase was to do everything possible to make it look like an unbroken piece by gluing, painting, cementing... some of this was for purely practical purposes, but it was also done to make it saleable to unsuspecting collectors. In the 20th century it was usually the policy to show plainly the difference between the restored part and the original, sometimes resulting in a not very intelligible piece. The Getty's approach today is to balance aesthetics with preservation, making the patching less obtrusive but distinguishable. I like that idea.
My policy, if possible, is to time my visit to an exhibit so I can go through at my own pace, then if there is a guided tour to participate in that either before or after (after is my preference as then I am already familiar with the subject) which is what I did on Friday.
The drive home along Pacific Coast Highway in the late afternoon was splendid. Usually I am enamored of the sun sparkling on the calm blue of the Pacific. But this drive was in a storm and the ocean was heaving up murky, dangerous-looking waves as my windshield wipers were having a hard time keeping up with the deluge of wet stuff falling from the sky. Fortunately, the traffic was relatively light for that time of day on a Friday, maybe because everybody left work early for the safety of their homes.
As usual, I am glad I made the effort to see the exhibit. I have wasted countless hours of my life watching detective shows on TV and putting together jigsaw puzzles... which is perhaps why the art of conservation and preservation is so fascinating to me!
(Photo copyright The J. Paul Getty Trust
© J. Paul Getty Trust
For useage information see http://www.getty.edu/legal/copyright.html)
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