Lindsay Morgan has worked as a conservationist at the Tate for
eleven years, and during her first week she was given the important and skilful
job of working on Allen Jones' 'Chair', which depicts a woman with her legs in
the air, dressed in fetish wear, and being a chair. In 1986, during Women's
Week and an array of feminist protests, an unidentified woman threw two bottles
of paint stripper onto the piece, leaving 30% of the body of the piece damaged,
mainly on the face, in protest against the objectification of women. The damage
was frightfully realistic in terms of looking like an acid attack on an actual
woman instead of a glass fiber mannequin, and it required conserving massively.
Before conservationists start their work,
they have to speak to the artist (if they're around). For example, when Tracey
Emin's 'My Bed' was destroyed by two performance artists from China in 1999 by
them jumping and having a pillow fight on it (creatively naming their piece '
Two Naked Men Jumping into Tracey's Bed'), Emin herself was bought in and
interviewed about the best way to go about reconstructing her piece, in which
she actively took part too. When Morgan interviewed Allen Jones about the best
way to start the conservation, he was genuinely startled that someone would
even attack his piece.
Jones had taken inspiration from Duchamp
in the way that he wanted his art to avoid the 'fine artists touch' by removing
the distance between art and people and turning it into something that the
public can engage with. All of Jones' furniture pieces (which also include a
hatstand and a table) were manufactured using fabricators, mannequin painters,
leather manufacturers and wig specialists - Jones had very limited physical
impact on the pieces at all apart from the original sketches. His work wasn't
made with the intention to subject woman and portray them as objects - the use
of fetish wear was simply a way of bringing art onto an erotic, accessible
level, one that Jones thinks everyone can relate to.
Due to 'Chair' being away from the fine
art touch of an artists and more towards manufacturing, Jones wanted to re do
the whole thing from scratch as he worried retouching would make it artistic.
As a conservationist, it was Morgan's job to try her best to salvage what was
lost (when you see the sculpture you wouldn't even think twice that it had been
re-done, the finish is flawless and symmetrical), however Jones things that the
work has been redefined by the attack.
Listening to Morgan describe the perils
and considerations of working in conservation opened my eyes to the amount of
work that conservation entails, for example with Emin's 'My Bed', plastic
deteriorate at a much quicker rate to paper and cotton, and liquids evaporate,
making this a very hard conservation piece - plastics had to be infused with
high levels of oxygen to slow down the deterioration protest, and everything
has to be heavily catalogued, recorded and photographed for future use. Things
even have to be bought in advance and stored through fear of them being
discontinued and then the work of art being lost forever.
Medium has changed drastically in the 20th
century too - no longer are oil paintings, marble and bronze the staple diet of
a conservationist - sculptures are made from multiple things such as chocolate,
fat, dead animals or foliage, and these things are more than a struggle to
maintain. For example, Damien Hirst's 'A Thousand Years' is quite clearly not
made of the same flies and cows head as it was in 1990, and it is a
conservationists job to make it as similar to the original as physically
possible.
Moral questions of conservation are bought
up too with this new found medium and the controversial themes addressed in
art. When poised with the question why she repaired a piece that was degrading
to women, Morgan answered by saying she hasn't not repaired a piece, thinking
of them simply as exciting projects, however she knows of someone who walked
away from a project when he found out that human skin was part of the piece.
These issues of disturbing materials such as blood and flesh, as well as issues
such as feminism, sexualisation, racism and religion are things that
conservators are faced with everyday.
Contemporary art has bought new, exciting
challenges into the field of art conservation, and has made the area more
interesting and appealing to young people who are keen to get into the art
world. Our ever changing opinion of art makes conservation a perfect field for
those who want to be a part of the cataloguing of history and play a vital part
in not letting us forget the past.
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