In retirement,
I’ve gone back to school, where I’m working on a bachelor’s degree in Art
History. Naturally, the history part is
relatively easy, but the art half of the equation is an uphill climb for
someone with no measurable amount of artistic talent. Still, the courses are fascinating and my
professors are all exceedingly kind to a ‘non-traditional’ student in their
classrooms (that’s education-speak for ‘old fart’).
After delivering a
little over 6,000 lectures, being a student again is a little strange. It took a while, but I finally stopped
answering the instructor’s hypothetical questions during a lecture. And with difficulty, I can sit quietly when
the audiovisual equipment acts up and my fellow students offer insanely
impractical solutions. It’s not my circus.
Just this week, I
was discussing the day’s reading assignment with another student before
class. When I opined that the author had
used thirty pages to say something that could have been more clearly stated in
two paragraphs, another student remarked, “You should take an upper level
history course—all the reading is like that!”
The student I had
been talking with almost lost it—as he had taken several upper level history
courses from me a few years ago.
The class in art
conservation and restoration is interesting.
We are practicing on terra-cotta flower pots. After carefully painting them and testing
them with various solvents and resins—the professor not-so-carefully broke them
into pieces and threw some of the pieces away.
It is now my task to somehow put the poor pot back together. I fear that my prized flowerpot will never be
able to play the piano again.
After being
checked out on cheap terra-cotta pots, I will be more than willing to do the
same thing for your prized Ming vase. I
know the procedure—first, you break it with a rock…
The pieces of the
pot do not go back together as easily as you might imagine. The terra-cotta didn’t really break cleanly,
some of the edges crumbled into dust.
Imagine a jigsaw puzzle where the edges of the pieces got sanded down a
little. As it is now, I suspect that my
restored pot may look like something Picasso produced.
All of this
reminds me of the remains of an old church I visited in Central Mexico. Once a prosperous Catholic church, the
building had been a revolutionary target during the War of the Reforms in 1850. Though it seems unlikely today, in Mexico’s
past there were several occasions when the prosperity and conservatism of the
Catholic Church came under attack by the Mexican people. There were even times when it was possible
that the church might completely vanish.
Today, the Mexican Constitution still contains anti-clerical provisions
that, though largely ignored, severely restrict the Church’s role in public
affairs.
At various times
during wars and revolutions, churches were sacked, priests were assassinated,
and the state confiscated church property.
During the War of the Reform, this particular church was looted and all
of the fabulous stone statues and sculpted facades were turned into
rubble. In particular, the stone
carvings that made up the front face of the church were busted into crumbled
debris.
What was left of
building remained more or less intact, and for over a century the former church
was employed for a variety of secular uses.
What had been intricate carvings became building blocks used to create
walls breaking up the vast chapel into rooms and hallways. For a while, the former church was used as a
dormitory for Protestant missionaries, as a warehouse, and even as a bowling
alley. Locals delight in telling
gullible tourists that the building was used as a brothel, but the tale is
almost certainly apocryphal since the building is far too prominently located
within the city to have ever been a whorehouse.
Eventually, the
city decided to restore the former church and with cooperation from the local
diocese, work commenced to restore the old building. The interior walls were dismantled carefully,
recovering as much as possible of the pieces of the former artwork. Luckily, most of the stonework had originally
been in the form of large stone cubes, sort of like a large stone three-dimensional
jig-saw puzzle.
As these stone
blocks were recovered, they were carefully placed on racks, awaiting a somewhat
problematic restoration. There were huge
problems with the restoration, however. Both
interior and exterior walls had been destroyed and it was impossible to tell
whether any individual carved block of rock was originally part of the altar,
of the nave, or of the church’s ornamental facade. Much worse was the fact that no one alive had
ever seen the original and there were no drawings or photographs.
Think of several
three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles mixed together, the edges all worn enough that
any piece will fit in several locations, and the boxes the puzzles came in are
missing the photographs and instructions.
There are almost an infinite number of possible reconstructions.
When I visited,
the conservation team was carefully numbering the blocks and photographing the
carved faces of the stones. Then, using
a computer, the digitized images were carefully fitted together until they had
recreated an image of the long-lost graceful carved facade of the old church.
Working carefully
and slowly, the team rebuilt the facade, using as little concrete filler as
possible between the stones. The result
was remarkable. Though still covered
with a protective net of wires to hold the work together while the concrete
cured, here was the beautiful face of an early church from the colonial period
of Mexico, lost for over a century and a half, restored.
Sculpted stone
columns flanked each side of a delicately carved portico. Niches in the walls protected the statues of
the church’s patron saints. Together once again, the stones that had been
carefully fit into place revealed a church with a clearly defined Baroque
style.
Within a year of
the restoration, a painting of the old church was located in Paris. The French artist had visited the town during
the heyday of the silver boom and, impressed by the beauty of the church, had
rendered the facade of the church in an oil painting that he had taken back to
France.
The computer
algorithms had matched the stones with mathematical accuracy, the restorers had
carefully fitted the pieces together, and according to the painting—not a
single piece was in the correct position.
Fascinating!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm not that surprised. Archaeologists constantly write books and give lectures where they extrapolate the history of entire civilizations based on pottery shards recovered from town dumps. Turns out the archaeologist who dismissed the Biblical story of the fall of Jericho, did so based on the absence of Cypriot pottery in the wreckage. Being a professional asker of stupid questions I immediately thought, "What if genuine imported Cypriot pottery wasn't just left lying in the streets of Jericho but were carried off with the valuables by the Jericho refugees?" Turns out, other archaeologists found fake Cypriot pottery in the city ruins. Turns out street vendors were hawking pottery knockoffs - fake ceramic Rolexes if you will. So the pottery shards that were there, did confirm the Biblical sequences after all. That hissing sound you hear is hot air escaping art restorationists....
ReplyDeleteI took the art conservation class when I was a student there as well. *SPOILER ALERT* Wait until you get to the second semester where you get to take a screwdriver to your painted canvas!
ReplyDelete