CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Image by Hrant Khachatryan.

After in 1902 the Campanile in Piazza San Marco, Venice collapsed, it was famously restored, ‘as it was, where it was’, in a display of the deeply conservative spirit of that city. When we visit Venice, we want that the city remain unchanged, insofar as that’s possible. That’s the desire of historians, art historians, and also of tourists. We all know that the lighting and plumbing has to be modernized, and the internet added. That said, we desire to see Venice just as it was in the past, as best we can. This is a familiar idea, which because it applies to most art, can be usefully generalized.

We want artworks preserved, as changeless as possible. With paintings, however, there are two opposed views of how to achieve this goal. We desire to physically preserve the original object. Or, alternatively, we seek to preserve the original appearance. The problem for restorers, then, is that obviously these two demands can come in conflict. And so, when the picture is worn, some restorers aim to show that wear-and-tear of the original object, while other restorers would rather reconstruct the original appearance. As we shall see, the preservation of the historical city of Venice raises some related, more complex issues.

It has long been known that the classic Greek and Roman sculptures from antiquity were originally painted bright colors. Those pigments have almost all disappeared. But traditionally these artworks are displayed pure white, without any trace of those now vanished colors. Indeed, some commentators turn this historical accident into a claim of principle, arguing that these sculptures were essentially not-colored. Any color, that is, is merely contingent. So strong is this prejudice that it was claimed by Clement Greenberg, the greatest modernist critic, that David Smith’s steel sculptures are better colorless, even when that........

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