Do you like painting? - probably not. It's at low tide now and contemporary painting seldom speaks to anyone but the painter (who usually has to `translate' what it means)- But it hasn't always been that way. and it won't be that way in the future, once the Revolution in Arts kicks in.
SO LETS TALK ABOUT PAINTING!
Gallery painting is irrelevant at best and absurd at its worst (as we point out in our Gem From The Pen feature), but zine art, illustrations, & collages; plus mail art etc. are reviving everyones interest in art. So in this article, when we talk about painting, we're not talking about present day
elitist gallery crud, but: 1) Contemporary art work from zines and chapbooks and 2) Any classic painting. drawing etc- that has stood the test of time (i.e. had relevance then & now).
One thing that has always stimulated an art form is mass production. Mass marketed music (records) made popular music popular. Mass marketed writing (printing in Renaissance Europe, mass marketed paperbacks in our century) brought pulp and literature to everyone.
Now combine 2 popular mass market technologies: 1) art print technology (Rembrandt did tons of them in the 1600's, Japanese woodblocks also hit their artistic peak in the 17th Century, & The British Museum has 8,000 prints from 1700-1800 (they were the newspapers for those who couldn't read) with 2) zine making (the copy machines have enabled zinesters to cheaply print and reproduce their zines) and you get PAINTING REPRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY. In our case, you're using the top of the line technologies from both fields.
What this all means is that we can reproduce and mass market canvas pix with the exact color and brush strokes of the original. Some companies are doing it now, usually charging $200 and up per copy- ouch! Results vary but the technology, if not now- soon, is not the problem. The question is should we.
Musea Columnist Zagreus Nebula says no; "..-cloning existing painting I consider a ridiculous exercise except for serious art students who loves these works." But I say yes.
First the acid (paper) test- Line up 2 copies and the original painting on the wall - when no one can point out the original, the technology is good enough.
Then take a Vermeer (or better yet all 40 of them), make 100 copies of each and send out 100 Vermeer road shows. Now, with copies you can tour, not just NY & LA but every 50,000 plus pop. town in Kansas - setting up the Vermeer exhibit in school auditoriums. Talk about taking art to the people!
Then there's the notion of reproducing them in mass (start your own collection of Gauguins at say $20 each, more for larger pieces) . And contemporary artists could keep the original and sell copies for royalties on each like pop composers.
And what about the original? Well believe it or not many originals are still being stolen or damaged each year (note: the day between the day I wrote this and the day I typed this, a vandal scratched deep marks into at least 2 major paintings from the Dallas Museum of art; the wall sized "Icebergs" by Church, and Hopper's"Lighthouse Hill"). Then too, displaying art work in light often slowly destroys them. If the COPIES are displayed then the original can be safely stored in the vaults. free from theft, vandalism, and deterioration.
But let's go further: 1) we have the technology to reproduce; 2)we have the inclination (though the role of Museums would alter considerably); 3) we have begun to reproduce contemporary artist paintings in such amounts that the single unit price is down to $20; now we want to begin reproducing old masters. But which version? Our string of thought now wanders in a new direction: RESTORATION.
There are 4 present day methods of painting restoration:
1.The Louvre (Fr.) and Hermitage (Russ.) favor partial cleaning - clean off the outermost layers of dust and then thin, but do not remove the varnish.
2.The London National Gallery and LA's Getty Institute favor complete cleaning - all varnish and other restorers paint must go. Then chipped portions and losses are repainted in removable water color
3. Johnz Brealey, retired master restorer for NY's Metropolitan Museum favors balancing cleaning - strip varnish in some areas but leave layers where color could be altered.
4. Art crusader, Prof James Beck, Columbia U. and founder of ARTWATCH. says that going even a millimeter below the varnish is a reckless act. "You risk rubbing off washes, glazes,
scrubbs, & other finishing touches- (Paint pigments decay at different rates. That, and a modern day propensity for brash color, make the restorers job very difficult. Take for example, the controversy around the Sistine Chapel cleaning.)
So we end with more questions than when we began. Can we mass market paintings? If not now, when? Should we? If so, should it be as display models in limited numbers for tours, or in the 1,000's? Should it just be consenting contemporary painters, (I'd gladly do it with my paintings) or Old Masters too? What's the new role of museums if we do? And from what state of the original work should copies be taken?
GOOD QUESTIONS! Now what do you think? (Restoration facts from "Restoration Drama" by Daniel Zalewski, sent to me by Michael Dittman)