6th International Meeting on Retouching of Cultural Heritage, RECH6

RECH Biennial Meeting is one of the largest educational and scientific events in Retouching field, an ideal venue for conservators and scientists to present their research results about retouching. The main focus will be to promote the exchange of ideas, concepts, terminology, methods, techniques and materials applied during the retouching process in different areas of conservation: mural painting, easel painting, sculpture, graphic documentation, architecture, plasterwork, photography, contemporary art, among others. This Meeting aims to address retouching by encouraging papers that contribute to a deeper understanding of this final task of the conservation and restoration intervention. The main theme embraces the concepts of retouching, the criteria and limits in the retouching process, the bad retouching impact on heritage and their technical and scientific developments.This Meeting will discuss real-life approaches on retouching, focusing on practical solutions and on sharing experiencesColomina Subiela, A.; Doménech García, B.; Bailão, A. (2023). 6th International Meeting on Retouching of Cultural Heritage, RECH6. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/RECH6.2021.1601

“From Dreams and Visions and Things Not Known”: Technique and Process in David Smith’s Drawings.

For the American sculptor, David Smith (1906–1965), drawing was a language to replace words. It was the subconscious immediacy of drawing that allowed formal concepts to take shape during the laborious process of welding steel. In the 1950s, Smith’s sculptural output increased dramatically in both scale and quantity. At the same time, his drawings acquired a separate identity, largely independent of his sculpture, yet these drawings, and indeed much of Smith graphic process, have to date not been studied in depth from a technical perspective. Utilising the technical study as its mode of inquiry, this thesis investigates the complex tacit knowledge present in Smith’s work, particularly as it exists in the relationship between the practice of drawing and the practice of sculpture, and applies it to the understanding of his oeuvre. Unravelling this tacit or hidden knowledge reveals that Smith attached much significance to materials. More pertinently perhaps, this approach prompts a hypothesis that argues for a simultaneous and synergistic material relationship between sculptural and drawing in Smith’s practice. The elucidation of the tacit within Smith’s work when framed within recent understanding of the importance of tactile perception in experiencing works of art reveals that Smith may have used materials that both perceptually and physically extended drawing into three dimensions and further, that these materials often had resonance with materials used in his sculpture. Studying the technical aspects of Smith’s process inevitably provides a framework for discussion on durability, damage and authenticity in his work. Smith’s extensive investigation into materials - both industrial and artistic – is discussed as a function of his self-identity not as artist, but rather as industrial worker, with a pragmatic interest in the use of durable materials in his work, both graphic and sculptural. The fact that a significant number of Smith’s painted sculptures and drawings have aged poorly is therefore difficult to reconcile. It raises questions about the true durability of his media, why they have deteriorated and, more importantly, how an understanding of the tacit, and of technique and process might be crucial for decisions made for their conservation. In this context the deterioration of a substantial number of Smith’s iconic drawings from the 1950s is discussed in juxtaposition with the now notorious decision in the early 1970s to completely remove badly deteriorated paint from a number of his unfinished sculptures by the then Executors of Smith’s estate, ostensibly to preserve the integrity of his work. That alteration has occurred in both drawing and sculpture in Smith’s work is highly significant, given Smith’s lack of demarcation between the disciplines. It provides a base for discussion on the meaning of intent, damage and restoration in Smith’s work and suggests that even small changes in surface texture, gloss or colour might irrevocably alter our perception of it. The results of the investigation provide several important observations: Firstly, that there is a considerable tacit dimension to Smith’s graphic work not previously considered in studies of his practice and that in understanding this it becomes clear that Smith used drawing in a more complex and vital manner than previously considered. Secondly, that Smith’s drawings were informed to a great extent by both three-dimensionality and by the materials he chose, that tactility and notions concerning the haptic perception of objects might provide insight into Smith’s work, and that this can be applied equally to drawing as much as sculpture. Thirdly, that Smith’s ideological stance as an industrial worker profoundly affected his process and the materials choices he made, and finally, that change in Smith’s works whether the result of deterioration or deliberate intervention might profoundly alter perception and understanding of such nuanced work

Wang Yuanqi and the Orthodoxy of Self-Reflection in Early Qing Landscape Painting

This dissertation explores the life and art of Wang Yuanqi (1642-1715), one of the most influential literati artists of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). As a representative of the so-called “Orthodox Painting School,” Wang considered himself the heir to the genuine thousand-year-old tradition of Chinese painting. Throughout his lifetime, he made every effort to establish and consolidate the authority of his school of painting. Since his early years, he had been trained as a traditional Chinese literatus. Under the direct supervision of his grandfather, he practiced landscape paintings in the style of ancient masters, especially that of the Yuan literati painter, Huang Gongwang (1269-1354). However, he was never satisfied with the facsimiles of the old masterpieces. Beyond his models, he created new theories of composition and brushwork; he introduced a new style of light color landscape with unique techniques. Moreover, benefiting from the lenient cultural policies of the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722), he successfully led a movement of canon-formation in artistic circles. The research of this thesis is based on three types of sources: 1) Wang Yuanqi’s published writings, 2) his paintings, and 3) publications and manuscripts by Wang’s contemporaries. Different from previous scholarship which mainly focuses on the classicism of Wang Yuanqi’s work, this dissertation provides a comprehensive study of Wang’s life and his circle and investigates the reason and procedure of the rise of the Orthodox Painting School in the early eighteenth century

Wallflowers: Tapestry, Painting, and the Nabis in fin-de-siècle France

This dissertation examines the dialogue between painting and tapestry that developed in late nineteenth-century France, specifically at the Manufacture nationale des Gobelins, and in the work of the avant-garde artists known as the Nabis. Nineteenth-century tapestry remains an obscure subject in scholarship and its influence on painting is thus not well-known or understood. This study aims to recover the symbiotic relationship that existed between tapestry and painting, and demonstrate the importance of studying the fine and decorative arts in tandem. It furthermore presents an evaluation of tapestry’s place in the history of modern art, as well as a study of the socio-cultural anxieties that accompanied rapid industrialization and technological progress in the late nineteenth century, examined through the luxury craft of tapestry. Part I outlines a history of the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins, the state tapestry manufactory, from the birth of the Third Republic in 1871, to the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris. It is divided into three chapters following the tenure of three directors: Alfred Darcel, Édouard Gerspach, and Jules Guiffrey. Part II examines the needlepoint hangings of the Nabi circle in the 1890s. With a chapter each on Aristide Maillol, Paul Ranson, and József Rippl-Rónai, this section compares and contrasts the approaches of these three artists to needlepoint “tapestry,” in order to elucidate the issues of art’s relationship to industry, nationalism, ideals of patronage, and gendered labor. With regard to the last issue, it was the artists’ wives/ companions—Clotilde Narcisse, France Ranson, and Lazarine Boudrion— who executed the majority of their designs. Part III analyzes how Édouard Vuillard drew from tapestry to re-conceptualize modern painting through two monumental decorative commissions: The Album (1895), and the Vaquez panels (1896). These are exemplary of his so-called “tapestry aesthetic.” I go beyond the general scholarly assessment that his paintings resemble tapestry to argue that tapestry provided him a haptic model for painting, and explore how his painting engaged with tapestry in the wider circulation of material culture of the fin-de-siècle. An epilogue follows Vuillard’s tapestry aesthetic into the twentieth century and examines how it was buried and replaced by Henri Matisse’s re-definition of the decorative in modernist painting.Nochlin, Linda, dissertation adviso