Interpretation and conservation of contemporary art : Anthony Bond

FRAGILITY AND IMPERMANENT MATERIALS
Innovation in art has always provided conservators with problems sometimes-insoluble ones. Leonardo da Vinci experimented with media in his last supper with serious results for its survival. Traditional fresco involves soaking pigment into wet plaster where it bonds and is literally embedded in the wall.

Leonardo da Vinci The Last Supper 1495-97
Leonardo da Vinci The Last Supper 1495-97 detail

Fresco is a very permanent and resilient method but a very laborious one. Plaster was put on in small areas over an original loose drawing on a layer of browning, a rough undercoat to take and bind the fine plaster finish. The work had to be done fast before the plaster dried and could not be returned to for touching up afterwards. This meant that the composition progressed piecemeal and had to follow a strict preconceived plan working with a team of assistants. Leonardo enjoyed the spontaneity of oil painting and the possibility it gave of working the entire surface simultaneously to evolve an organic and unified composition.

Here he employed a mix of varnish and oil that is a very unstable medium but allows fast working and Over painting. This is not real oil painting because this had not really evolved yet. Proper oil paint is made by grinding pigment into the linseed oil that is a drying oil unlike olive oil that never sets. It is amazing how much pigment a drop of oil will take when you grind it between ground glass and a special ground glass mortar a tablespoon of pigment can be absorbed or wetted by a single drop of oil. Oil browns as it dries so the more oil you have the worse the paint�s colour retention.

Leonardo was just mixing pigment into oil and varnish as if it were tempera rather than grinding it in. The varnish reduced the browning effect of the oil and made it easier to manipulate but because the wall was damp the varnish began to deteriorate almost immediately. Successive restorations have changed the work considerably and the expressions on the faces bear little resemblance to the subtlety of Leonardo�s drawings that give us a glimpse of what the work originally looked like.

Gustave Courbet La Source
Gustave Courbet Source of the Loue

This search for spontaneity and creativity in the actual process of realising the work came to dominate practice in late 19th century painting and in many forms of contemporary practice. Gustave Courbet liked to create a degree of equivalence between the quality of the painted surface and the subject he was portraying. He would use a palette knife to lay in slabs of rock when painting cliffs and boulders. For water he liked to use varnish mixed into the oil paint itself to make it fluid and slippery. This makes cleaning the surface layers of varnish extremely sensitive if not impossible. A microscopic cross section of the paint film will show particles of pigment dispersed through the under painting into the varnish layer it is impossible to tell where the pigmented layer ends and the superficial varnish starts. Solvents that will clean off brown finish varnish will also start to dissolve the paint itself.

Yves Klein Monochrome 1960
Yves Klein Portrait relief 1961

Along with the Greenbergian injunction about the flatness of surface and autonomy of the painting as an object came the use of acrylics. In the late fifties acrylics began to be available commercially. Yves Klein made use of them from 1955 in his patented YKB blue monochromes. Klein noticed that when you added a binding medium it killed the brilliance of pure pigment and sought out a technique to minimise this effect. The resulting surface is very matt and friable but very intense. Klein used a roller to apply the colour because this also reduced the flattening effect a brush would have had on the brilliance of the colour. The roller pulls up peaks of paint and tends to leave the pigment on the surface. The resulting surface is a marvellous dust trap. In some cases Klein added sponges to the surface making them even more vulnerable to wear and tear.

Many museums therefore put Klein's monochromes behind glass thereby making the paintings intensity invisible and destroying the point of the work. On the other hand if they are exposed there is no safe way to clean them beyond a gentle vacuum that may also remove some pigment. We have a jar of International YKB with which to touch up our work in the collection. His widow completed this work after his death. Rotraud was a collaborator in his work anyway and therefore there is no issue of authenticity in the question of the hand of the artist. Even the widow disputes this today in the case of the monochromes since the surface is seen as an auratic trace of the artist himself. I doubt in fact if this would stand argument given the context of the works production or that Yves would have defended that position himself. He actually signed a document giving his close friends in the Nouveau Realiste group permission to make his monochromes. Robert Rauschenberg in 1951 made his achromes (white paintings) and left instructions for them to be repainted if they ever got grubby or dull. It was the blue intensity and the brilliant white that interested these artists even if history and the market sentimentally transform them into relics over time.

Michael Johnson Night 1968
Sid Ball Canto 21 1967
In the sixties the hard edge abstract movement associated with The Field in Australia sought a quality of objectness where the canvas and the paint seem to be one and the same. There was also a desire to achieve saturated colour if you were going to use blue go for it as Gauguin advised his followers at Pont Aven. To get maximum effect pigment was forced into the medium to the limit of its capacity to bind it and diluted sufficiently so that it soaked right into the canvas leaving no sense of a surface layer just a unified colour/object.

This was very successful aesthetically the viewer sees the weave of the canvas saturated in colour with no surface texture to refract or reflect light therefore achieving maximum optical effect. The problem is that this surface can very easily be bruised, pressure on the surface and any lateral movement polishes the matt surface and distorts the fibres crisped by the acrylic. The effect of this on a very severe abstract composition can be devastating.

Bob Law Blue Black Indigo Black
Anish Kapoor Void field
Bob Law�s painting Blue Black Indigo Black is intended as a transcendent work like the famous Malevich black square. It can be used as a Zen space for meditation - it contrives to create the experience of an infinite space or a void through its subtle layering of the colours blue indigo and black. The viewer who spends a few moments in front of it will begin to see into the black as if through veils of dark light. The surface is a highly fragile one however and has been bruised in the way I described with the unfortunate effect of creating an index of the surface that destroys or inhibits the optical possibility of spatial absorption on the part of the viewer.

A similar effect can occur in the case of Anish Kapoor�s Void Field. In 1989 Kapoor discovered a new way to imagine the infinity of the void. He created a portal onto the void within blocks of incredibly dense and ancient Cambrian sandstone, possibly the oldest sedimentary rock on earth. At first glance the spots on top of these great stones seem like applied black velvet but on closer inspection they are revealed as holes in the rock. There are no apparent sides to the holes and there is no visible end to the space. He has created the experience of a black hole within matter by hollowing out the stone leaving only a thin shell at the top at the brink of the void. The hollow has been lined with a dark blue pigment to give spatial depth to the blackness but the blue is not visible to the eye. Sweet wrappers that are sometimes thrown into the hole by school children however shine remarkably brightly in this darkness completely destroying the experience of void.

Anish Kapoor Pigment works early 1980s
Wolfgang Laib Pollen 1986
This pigmented work of Kapoor from the early 80s has a halo of pigment scattered over the forms as if in an anointment or libation. The halo must seem to have accumulated as if in a local shower and not be overly shaped, the edge fades out gently. If there is some disturbance a footmark or finger mark the whole thing must be remade since it is impossible to recreate the random scattering in a repair job. This is done by vacuuming it up, sieving out any dust or rubbish and reapplying.

The same applies to Wolfgang Laib�s pollen pieces. It is a lot easier when he decides to show it in its jars on a shelf! Laib has collected the pollen in pine forests in Germany and assures me pollen is a very stable organic material, I have not checked this out scientifically although Palaeontologists do find viable pollen in strata that are very ancient, whether they are still yellow and fragrant i doubt! But in this case Laib having collected the material as a kind of pilgrimage or meditation means that we cannot keep faith with the work and replace the pollen should it spoil or be lost.

Rachel Whitread Elongated plinths
Whitread�s elongated plinths have an ambiguous surface they seem to hover somewhere between vanilla ice cream and pristine marble. The softness of the form contradicts its architectural genesis giving it a slight bodily feel. Optically the surface is neither hard nor soft it is almost translucent but not quite. These are calculated effects that give the work its layers of potential to instigate associative responses.

The form of the works seems to invite touch, a constant problem with contemporary works that seek to unsettle certainty about material facts; as a result they get very dirty. The dirt then gets into pores in the surface left as bubbles in the setting resin. this reveals the artists gestures made while smoothing the resin into the mould. This marking completely destroys the desired material ambiguity not to mention its pristine appearance. The attendants want us to place barriers around such objects but these would seriously impact on the experience of the pieces as occupying real space - real time. They are not intended to be seen as autonomous art objects but are in a sense site works. It is clear that some pieces are intended to be experienced as lying on the floor or propped against a wall as if encountered by chance, to put them on plinths or surround them by ropes or rails destroys their impact and they lose their being in the worldness.

The earlier silicon and rubber mattresses looked very casual but they too marked very easily and were often the subject of insurance claims in the 80s.

Anselm Kiefer Glaube hoffnung liebe
Anselm Kiefer Das Wolun-lied
The reverse is true of some works. Anselm Kiefer for example is very interested in processes in an almost alchemical way. He has been known to attach electrodes to paintings to grow salts on their crusted lead surfaces. I am not sure if any of these survived in the form he was planning in the studio � I doubt it but he was interested in the life of the materials and accepts a degree of life change in the work.

That is not to say he is unconcerned about conservation. There are some aspects of the work that are essential to the meaning and he definitely does not accept abject deterioration. I have seen works come back from exhibition where the plant elements have been badly broken off and this has to be remade.

Both the paintings here had to be restored. Not as you might expect the encrusted surfaces with their loose incorporations of straw, paper, sand bedded in a mix of oil and encaustic, but the sculptural elements that began to come unstuck when the lead detached in places from the galvanised backing that supports it. We made rigid steel braces for both these elements that are carefully concealed so that they are not visible from the front but ensure the permanence of the work.

When Glaube Hoffnung Liebe first arrived it became humid due to a conditioning problem and the surface sagged as if about to fall off. We realised that the painting is on photographic paper that has been part stuck part stapled to the canvas but is not adhered overall. Amazingly when it dried out the paper pulled back taught against the canvas and only two places showed any damage to the paint surface where the little rocks are attached and the sagging was restricted putting local pressure on the crusted paint. Neither of these cracks has lifted further and we have not needed to do any restoration on this in 15 years.

The chalk texts on the propeller have faded a bit particularly the one nearest the ground! I asked Kiefer if he would like to fix this up when he was visiting once and he said "not really it is the word 'faith' that is fading and in this it seems to be keeping track with the world!"

Tony Cragg Yellow Bottle 1982
Tony Cragg Spirogyra 1997
Cleaners are always a problem we have a rule that mechanical cleaners are not allowed to come within a meter of any artwork but it is not always the machine that causes the problem. Once this Yellow bottle was removed by a cleaner thinking it was rubbish. Hard to imagine why given its context but it was there on the floor. It took me some time to find an identical replacement.

Spirogyra encapsulates many of the persistent themes in Cragg�s work. The bottle rack is of course a reference to Duchamp�s famous Readymade, Egoutoire. Cragg often makes playful conceptual allusions to art history in this way. The spiral also suggests DNA and organic couplings that are ubiquitous in Cragg�s forms. The blasted glass bottles suggest seashores and scattered stories.

Spirogyra is prone to breakages. The artist provided a box of replacements and authorised us to go out and get more as needed. The difficulty is to maintain the random distribution of shape, size and colour; otherwise the character of the work could gradually change. I am not sure that Tony would mind this process of evolution in principle provided that certain considerations were maintained, for example including some very big bottles and a reasonable distribution of types and colour. The Egoutoir acts like DNA armature collecting suitable passing molecules at random.

Anthony Gormley A field for The Art Gallery of NSW 1989
Anthony Gormley A field for The Art Gallery of NSW 1989
Volunteers under Anthony�s direction made this installation at the gallery. The 1100 clay figures are unfired and do from time to time break. There are spares and there is also a bin of the clay that Anthony and I collected from the bush in 1989 while installing a site work that is also part of our collection, A field for the great Australian outback 1989. We will soon have to make some new figures. In this case the lay out of the work is very precise and there is a template that accurately positions every piece even if the pieces themselves may change.

Anthony Gormley A field for The great Australian outback 1989
Anthony Gormley A field for The great Australian outback 1989
This concrete form is made as a precise housing for own body a square on top is for the head the box below for his squatting figure with the knees drawn up under the chin. This work has its own problems since the Trustees are still unwilling to accession it unless the station owner undertakes full legal liability should anyone trip over it! When we show the Art Gallery work we usually also display the photo of the desert work. Clearly we exercise little control over its conservation and in any case Anthony has the idea that insects and other life forms will inhabit the form bringing it to life in a particular way.

TEMPLATES AND INSTRUCTIONS

Erwin Wurm performances 1999 Drawing instruction & apparatus
Erwin Wurm performances 1999 and billboard of performance 1999
The idea of work to be constructed according to a template or instructions that must be followed to the letter comes from a conceptual background that anchors the work in �the real� through adherence to systems and prescribed processes. Our participation in such works requires us to enter the spirit of the piece. Erwin Wurm has produced a series of instructions for One minute sculptures that are to be performed by volunteers or members of the audience. The instructions are in the form of drawings and the performer must find the materials supplied next to the drawings on a platform and use them to make the piece for exactly one minute. If the participants clown about and do not perform the work with deadpan accuracy the effect is lost. Done with complete earnestness standing in a bucket with another one over your head can be a hilarious and yet strangely tragic sculpture.

Mike Parr Push a line of tacks into your leg
Mike Parr Brand yourself as an artist
Mike Parr�s performances in the seventies followed a similar logic of instruction and rigorous enactment. In our collection there are works by Ken Unsworth and Mike Parr that consist of instructions for constructed spaces to be built by our crew.
Mike Parr O-O Othop in the wings of the oedipal theatre 1985
Unsworth Adieu 1985

Lawrence Weiner This and that put here and there out of sight of Polaris 1992
Lawrence Weiner Venice Biennale installation 1999
The Lawrence Weiner comes as a drawing and certificate permitting the work to be installed by our sign writers as we wish but according to his specifications. It technically exists in two laces at once since he originally intended it to go outside MCA. The Trustees took 3 years to come round to the idea of buying an idea. I had to make intellectual property arguments and track this back to the renaissance and 17th C studio practices where the artist might sign a student work that the artist considered to be acceptable.

INTERPRETATION AND (RE)PRESENTATION - INTERPRETING INSTALLATIONS IN PRACTICE

Where such works are owned by a museum the artists certificate or permission to make in proxy brings with it an enormous amount of responsibility towards the artist�s intentions. There are some fine lines to be drawn between legitimate interpretation of art works and (re)presenting them in such a way that the artist�s intentions are subverted. This is particularly troublesome when the installation of a work has to be realised by the curator according to an ethos statement rather than by a strict template or certificate. I will examine some striking examples of this including particular installations by Giulio Paolini, Tony Cragg and Richard Long. The issues raised also apply to more traditional works such as sets of images that are intended to be shown as a complete installation in a particular order and configuration. Clear documentation and procedures for consultation of the records are the best means of ensuring that these intentions are understood and adhered to.

These issues can be carried over into exhibition strategies and reproduction of objects that seek to bring out a particular view of the work. In this case the question of legitimate interpretation and critical analysis may at some point come into conflict with the moral right of the artist to determine the physical presentation and reproduction of the work that could otherwise be significantly distorted. While academic and critical interpretations of the work must be completely independent from the artist�s sensitivity it could be argued that the museum can be expected to have a rather different duty of care in (re)presenting the work on behalf of the artist. The Museum�s argument for copyright license from the artist is presumably predicated on such an assumption.

Giulio Paolini�s L�Altra Figura 1984
Giulio Paolini�s L�Altra Figura 1984

L�Altra Figura consists of two identical plaster casts of a classical head facing each other as if in a mirror but with their glance cast down towards the shattered remains of a third identical figure. There is no template for installation only an overall diameter of 3 meters and an earlier photograph of the installation by the artist. While it is possible to get a fair idea of the distribution of the fragments from the photo there is still room for subtle variation that can have a critical effect on the interpretation of the work.

It is possible to consider this work as a post-modern critique of originality and of the authenticity of representations. Because of the classical references in the heads it is tempting to think of classical myths that lend themselves to a poetic interpretation of these critical themes. Icarus is invoked by the shattered image as if the figure had fallen from a great hight. Icarus attempted to fly too close to the sun god Apollo the source of pure forms. This could be a metaphor for the neoplatonic aspirations that haunt Modernism. Narcissus also comes to mind because of the mirroring effect of the two figures and because every time the unhappy youth reached out to touch the object of his desire (his own reflection in the stream) he rippled the water disrupting the image.

It is perfectly possible to inflect the placement of the fragments on the ground so that they suggest an image disturbed by concentric ripples or alternatively to emphasise the shatter effect of the fall. It is the latter which seems to be closest to the effect shown by the artist�s photograph of the work but a small inflection can make a significant difference. However the ideal installation is more random and could be taken either way. The Icarus version has intriguing correspondences with other works in the collection that also invoke Icarus. Anselm Kiefer�s constant play with frustrated transcendence eg. Glaube Hoffnung Liebe, or Yves Klein�s Leap into the void 1961 in which he enacts the transformation from material to immaterial.

Kiefer Glaube Hoffnung Liebe
Kleins Leap into the void

Richard Long Slate cairn
Richard Long Mud drawing
Richard Long�s Slate Cairn 1977 is another very critical example. The certificates for the works are normally supplied with the stones. The instruction provides the dimensions of the piece, 10� high and 20� across. It is a flat platform of slate shards. On one occasion I left the installation crew arranging the stones and when I returned there was something horribly wrong. The instructions had been meticulously adhered to; it was 10� by 20� and it was a flat platform but it looked like a piece of landscape architecture. They had lined up the edges of the stones to create a nice clean edge. The exactness of the geometry is in fact an essential part of the work. In all Long�s work the shape gives the impression of absolute mathematical precision and yet the elements always appear to be randomly scattered. The splattered Mud drawings are a fine example of this geometry in total equilibrium with chance application of random gestures. In this case lining up the edges of the stone made it into a dry stone wall and completely lost the tension between natural distribution of elements and the geometric. The meaning inherent in this tension revolves around the coexistence of culture with nature. It would be possible for a creative installation officer to arrange the stones in order of their size or colour thereby making the work distinctly decorative or even figurative. Such nightmares are not total fantasy. I once had art students volunteering who raised the platform into a shallow dome. This immediately made it into an Andy Goldsworthy who makes images of natural forms by arranging natural pieces of stone, wood, snow etc. Longs work never had a mimetic reference. His piles only reveal process and the idea of geometry.

Tony Cragg�s New Stones Newton�s Tones 1978
Tony Cragg�s New Stones Newton�s Tones 1978
is a similar but more complex example. The work consists of several hundred fragments of coloured plastic. These include bits of broken toys, plates, pens and other indecipherable pieces of junk. They are roughly graded and packed according to their place on the spectrum. In many of Cragg�s works there is a template that is a hard and fast guide to placement but in this case that would be unrealistic because of the many tiny pieces. The installation plan gives the size of the rectangle that the objects must create when laid out and the instruction that the colour follow the order of the spectrum. There are other subtleties indicated such as; The edge of the rectangle must be crisply geometrical but the objects must not align self consciously with the edges. This is just like Long where the nature/culture balance is critical. There are ethos suggestions such as; the bands of colour must not make harsh lines, instead they should suggest the colour separation in a pool of oil. The space between the objects should be sufficient to suggest that they are attracting and repelling each other in a uniform field but the effect must be of a random distribution.

Most of these instructions are clear enough but they require sensibility and real aesthetic choices. The work looks different depending on each installer�s sensibility. Our interpretation of random is always subjective. The human mind seems unable to achieve it without the aid of some system. I recall a case where Allan Kaprow asked ten volunteers to cover a wall with random daubs of black paint. After two hours they had produced ten quite individualistic abstract expressionist paintings. It took me several hours to �randomise� and unify the effects they had created.

(RE)PRESENTING BY CONTEXT
Displaying works in a particular context may also change the received meaning of the work. This may be a legitimate interpretive strategy in some cases if it is properly acknowledged but where is the line to be drawn? The Curator has a formal duty of care towards the work and the artist�s intention but at what point does the right of every reader to interpret a work, once it is in the public domain, cross that line of duty. There is a difference between discursive interpretation in text and material (re)presentation of a work in a deliberately manipulated context. There may be a case made for the latter but justification for this rests upon the transparency of the argument being made. If a work is given a new interpretation by being (re)presented in a given context the argument must be overtly and clearly articulated by the curator. In such a case the work becomes an element in the creative activity of the curator and many people would argue against their right to use an artist�s work in this way.

EXHIBITION THEMES
The advantage of a theme for the public and for the artists is that a more coherent visual experience can be created. Common artistic goals bring additional energy to the exhibition as a product of collaboration between artist curator and the public. Further more by clearly stating the theme and presenting it in public the curator provides a context for transparency and accountability.

The counter argument to this is that curatorial themes represent unjustifiable influence on the artist's practice and impose meanings that may distort the viewer's appreciation of the work. I think we have all experienced curatorial themes that do just this and I am surprised that some artists allow themselves to be manipulated in this way.

The Curator may on the other hand evolve a theme as a response to the work of the artists as an act of interpretation that I believe to be the proper responsibility of a curator in their capacity as art historian and presenter. It is important to make a clear distinction between legitimate interpretation in collaboration with the artist and (re)presentation in which works are used to illustrate a theory that may not arise directly from the work.

REPRODUCTION CROPPING AND DEEP ETCHING

Bob Law Blue Black, Indigo Black 1975
Turnbull Untitled blue painting 1972
Both these images are problematic and on occasion designers deep etch them even more so all you see is a blue rectangle or a black square on the page this might as well be a square of coloured paper as a painting. Yves Klein of course made a work about this in 1955 when he presented a retrospective catalogue of his monochromes since 1947 where all the images were in fact squares of coloured paper tipped in and the sizes carried no units so that they could have been millimetres as they actually were in the book or reproductions of vast works in meters.

In this case I prefer to show the works as installation shots emphasising their presence as objects in space not as images per se.

Ian Burn No object implies the existence of any other 1967
Reproduction of complex works is also difficult. Even simple framed objects can present a problem. There is a recent case of an Ian Burn mirror work, No object implies the existence of any other, being reproduced without its frame. In this case the work becomes completely unreadable. It appears as a text inscribed over an image of an architectural space and could be read as a version of one of the artist�s late overwritten paintings. The material properties of the mirror are lost and along with that much of the work�s meaning which depends on the obvious contradiction between the text and the object. There are many cases of art works where the frame is a significant part of the work itself. What would happen if we cropped the rope off Picasso�s Still life with chair caning? The rope frame is acting as the boundary between art and life in the conventional way that frames do while treacherously retaining its own identity and associations in the real world. at the same time it forms a component in the pictorial composition as the rim of the table that supports the represented still life.

Giulio Paolini�s L�Altra Figura 1984
Here is poor old Paolini again. I recently rejected a design for our contemporary lecture series where the designer had the photographer light the work from below casting a strong and dramatic shadow onto the wall. This completely contradicted the intended focus on the pool of fragments that we have discussed and made the drama of the figures� silhouettes the apparent focus of the work. To add insult to injury they had printed it in negative. This was dramatic piece of graphics however it not only misrepresented the intention of the work but also completely trampled on our agreement with the artists to treat their work and their reputation seriously. Unfortunately I lacked the presence of mind to save the rejected image because it would have made a perfect case study.