Detective work and dentistry: the art of art conservation

An art conservator is something between a detective, an artist, a cleaner and a surgeon who occasionally needs to operate on patients. And just as with doctors, these operations can sometimes go horribly wrong.When you see Friederike Steckling reaching for her tools, you think of a dentist: the tweezers, the suction pump like the ones used to suck up saliva.But her patient has neither cavities nor tartar – it’s a real Andy Warhol. That’s right, Andy Warhol, the American pop artist.On the table in front of Steckling is a priceless black and white silkscreen portrait of the German artist Joseph Beuys by Warhol.It belongs to the Beyeler Foundation, based in Riehen, near Basel, where Steckling works as a picture restorer.During one of her routine checks she found an unusual amount of dust on the painting.“In the light you can see it, as if it had a beard,” she says, shining a sort of torch on the picture from the side so that the dust fibres can be seen standing on end.“It makes the black look quite grey,” she adds. Then she uses a soft brush to get rid of it. Carefully, because Warhol used glass dust to create a glitter effect, and that of course has to stay.But in what condition is an artwork authentic? What’s an acceptable patina? What has to be removed and what not? They’re difficult questions for artists, collectors and museums. And for conservators.In 2012 a Spanish pensioner hit the headlines when she tried to restore a 100-year-old church fresco of Jesus and made him look like a hairy monkey.She was an amateur, but in 2015 it was apparently professionals who botched the restoration of valuable Roman mosaics at the Hatay Archaeology Museum in Turkey, some of which were made to look like “caricatures of themselves.”And then there was the restoration of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, including the “Creation of Adam”.When, after a years-long restoration process, the bright colours of the fresco were revealed once again in 1994, many people could not believe that it was as Michelangelo had intended it – they were so accustomed to the 400 years of accumulated grime that had made it appear that the master painter had preferred muted colours.But in that case the criticism was unjustified, according to Steckling. Michelangelo doubtless used bright colours so that the painting could be seen from below – back in the 16th century there was no artificial light to help illuminate it.Conservation is not a protected profession, meaning that anyone can call themselves a conservator, though there have long been degree courses and diplomas which combine art history, chemistry, physics and microbiology to prepare people for the job.The code of conduct at the Institute of Conservation in London includes the following reminder for its members: “You must be aware of and acknowledge your limits of understanding and ability.”“Today’s generation of conservators is very aware that lots has been done wrong in the past,” says Markus Gross, head of restoration work at the Beyeler Foundation.“We’re over-careful: three quarters of our work is analysis, research, discussion with experts. We always ask ourselves: is an intervention even necessary? Our goal is to deliver what the artist has created to the future.”From the point of view of conservationists, he says, it’s always best to show a picture behind glass. “You put a Plexiglas cover on it and that’s that. But then there’s the question: does it still give off that real Warhol aura?”The conservators have to carry out a lot of detective work. A headlamp with a magnifying glass is a standard piece of kit for examining the condition of a piece. What kind of chemical composition do the colours have, what was the workshop like where they were created, how was it created?Often they have to experiment to find a completely new cleaning method for an artwork.With the Beuys portrait for example, there’s the question of where the dust came from and what it is.“Was he wearing a woollen coat? Or did a previous owner of the artwork have a Persian cat?” asks Steckling with a laugh. On the Internet she stumbled across a video which shows how Warhol took Polaroids of Beuys which became the basis for the silk screen.Only when restorers have thought of all the potential problems do they start work, millimetre by millimetre. It can often take months.“Warhol would probably have laughed himself silly to think that we worked for a year on his painting,” says Steckling. A plastic rail is mounted over the worktable with the picture so that she doesn’t touch it while she works.“It’s exciting to be so close to an artwork,” she says. “It’s almost as if you were sitting next to the artist.”When she leaves the workshop at night, she leaves a sign on the table, “Attention: art” so that the cleaners are particularly careful.That might seem strange, but there have been plenty of examples of industrious cleaners destroying artworks. In 1973 two cleaning ladies scrubbed out a bath that Beuys had filled with grease and bandages in a Leverkusen museum so that they could wash up glasses. The damage totalled tens of thousands of dollars. - DPA