{"id":8365,"date":"2023-05-17T15:52:23","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T13:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kingkong-mag.com\/?p=8365"},"modified":"2023-06-07T10:05:58","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T08:05:58","slug":"art-conservation-restoration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kingkong-mag.com\/en\/art-conservation-restoration\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing art conservation-restoration out of the shadows"},"content":{"rendered":"
\r\nUnknown to the wider public, operating where the sciences and the history of art intersect, always at the vanguard of the museum sector calendar, the discipline leans on a wide palette of technologies, far removed from the idealised image of restoration by means of a fine paintbrush. And, as is true for numerous professions, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is both troubling and fascinating.\r\n<\/p>\n\n\n
Tucked away within the very heart of Ixelles is a shared art conservation-restoration workshop. At the present time, two of the three individual workshops are occupied by two restorers. One specialised in ethnographic art and archaeology, the other in painting. More specifically, in modern and contemporary art, although Marine Dandoy also restores old paintings. \u2018Restorers working collectively is quite commonplace. I know very few colleagues who work on their own; it\u2019s a solitary profession to start with. Plus, when you work with several people, you can pool your expertise, ask other people for their opinion on an ongoing restoration, have someone else give a different perspective on your work.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My first client was Beaubourg.<\/p>Marine dandoy<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
A graduate of La Cambre in Brussels, one of three art schools in Belgium to offer training in the ins-and-outs of the profession, along with the Antwerp Acad\u00e9mie des Beaux-Arts and Saint-Luc in Li\u00e8ge, Marine Dandoy left for Paris in 2020, at the end of the first lock-down. She had landed a three-month training programme there at one of most prestigious cultural institutions the City of Light has to offer. \u2018When this programme finished, I was able to continue my collaboration as a conservator-restorer at the Pompidou Centre. It\u2019s a bit mad, really, but my first client was Beaubourg.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u00a9Marie-Flore Pirmez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Several times a year, Marine makes the return journey between her Ixelles workshop and Paris, often when this pillar of modern art needs to bring in reinforcements to its regular team of conservators-restorers, as larger exhibitions are being prepared. \u2018The profession can thus also get you to travel about a bit,\u2019 she adds. Hidden aspects, but also simplistic leaps of assumption: the profession contains and has to face large numbers of both. Over the course of our conversation, the Brussels restorer endeavours to deconstruct them: \u2018You have to bear in mind that there are actually other specialisations than just painting in restoration: ceramics, photography, textiles, etc. It is wrongly thought that every restorer is de facto a good drawer. I am very often asked if I can paint, but never if I am good at chemistry or at physics. However, in this profession, you have to know how each material which features in the design of a work will react to the conservation and restoration processes we intend to use. The frames may be manufactured from wood, canvas, metal, paper. Each type of paint, oil, watercolour, gouache, or even a mixture of these techniques, has its own specific chemical properties. For the competitive entrance examination for La Cambre, I remember the number of questions on this subject. Somewhat naively, I thought I would emerge from it with a more than sound knowledge of the history of art and pictorial techniques.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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