James Beck trained as an artist, then took a PhD in Renaissance art and became a professor of art history at Columbia University, New York. Author of 11 books, including works on Michelangelo and Raphael, 20 years ago he saw the restored Michelangelo frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, and was reminded of a Disney cartoon. Something was badly wrong in art restoration: too many technical experts and too few artists. In 1991 an Italian court tried him for libel for saying a restored sculpture looked “as if it had been cleaned with Spic and Span and polished with Johnson’s Wax”. He won the case and set up a restoration watchdog, ArtWatch International, now fighting Florence’s Accademia Gallery.
Michelangelo’s David is being cleaned to remove the grime of 170 years in time for his 500th “birthday” in spring 2004. How can you object to that?
That “170 years” is pure baloney. The work was taken indoors from the Piazza della Signoria in Florence after a major cleaning in the 19th century. There’s surface dust, that’s all, no new pigeon dirt. Normal maintenance has been neglected for decades, but all the statue needs is a good dusting. The reason for this and for most cleanings is aesthetic. The idea is to make David look a little “nicer”. I oppose such interventions, because not only does the aesthetic vary from person to person, but also from one historical moment to another. So the aesthetic of the 1980s, when the Sistine Chapel ceiling was restored, is different from that of the 1960s, and will be different again from the aesthetic of the 2010s. Why bind ourselves into such a straitjacket?
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How could a mixture of distilled water and cellulose pulp harm marble?
Marble is not inert, it reacts to the environment around it. So the chances are that David’s chemistry is now complex, a reflection of his life history. He is no longer pure calcium carbonate, the principal component of marble. He has almost certainly absorbed sulphates from pollutants in the environment – wood-burning fires, for instance. Now, unless those are actually damaging him – and no one says they are – why remove them? The water and compresses will draw them out and change the marble’s appearance by removing or altering the patina that it has acquired, which contributes to an image most people find attractive. If the surface is brightened, it may become obtrusive. Observers may find themselves noticing it at the expense of the forms carried by the stone. What is certain is that our image of David will be damaged. Besides, water and paper pulp are not all the restorers are using.
The Florentine authorities claimed publicly that there would be no petroleum-based solvents, then once the Italian culture minister had given his permission to proceed they admitted that these would be necessary in some places, because there are spots of wax on the marble surface. Wax is not soluble in water.
David has been digitally mapped to highlight any cracks and blemishes so that restoration efforts can be more “targeted”. Do you disapprove of that too?
Sure, because they are highlighting areas invisible to the naked eye. As far as the surface goes, they have talked about deep black areas behind the ears that need cleaning. But no ordinary visitor to the gallery has ever laid eyes on these areas. I have never seen them.
So what do you suggest?
Don’t forget that fundamentally this is about money. The actual restoration itself may cost relatively little – a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe a million. But in terms of the increase in the number of admission tickets sold, the number of books, videos and toys purchased at the museum store, the reproduction rights – you’re probably talking billions. Why do you think the city of Florence and the Italian state are arguing over who owns David? The science they use to defend their decisions is irrelevant, it’s just window dressing to disguise a power struggle.
I have asked for a commission of disinterested parties to evaluate the situation, including the need for intervention at all. Science demands transparency of ideas and open exchange. So far, these have been excluded.
But given that David has been struck by lightning, lost his left arm to rioting mobs and been doused with hydrochloric acid in the last clean-up, does it matter if restorers wash gently behind his ears?
If this restoration goes ahead, we will end up with an image of David that is an interpretation made in 2004, instead of the historical image that we have lived with for 170 years. I am opposed to any alteration of the image unless it can be proved that the work is in imminent danger. David, even according to local officials, is not in danger.
Do you believe Michelangelo intended his sculpture to age gracefully?
Of course he did. Every artist intends that when he or she creates a work of art. To suggest that Michelangelo wanted David to stay as it was when it first came out of his studio in 1504 is to suggest that he was a moron. He only had to look around him to see how all works of sculpture age, from those of the Romans to Donatello’s. The restorers and their enablers talk about restoring David to his original glory, but that is impossible. We all know that facelifts drop. They’ve made a circus out of it: David is supposedly going to have a bath before his birthday, so that he’ll be cleaner and more beautiful than ever. It’s all been hijacked by the political and PR world. There is a not-for-profit organisation called the Friends of Florence behind it, whom I think of as the enemies of art and of Michelangelo. Sting is helping to pay the bills, and someone else called Mel Gibson.
It’s vulgar and unnecessary. There are thousands of works of art all over Italy, rotting away in the basements of churches and museums, that are more deserving of our attention.
Should they be restored?
They should be conserved. We must conserve our rare works of art, maintain their integrity and their life, but we shouldn’t change their imagery without very serious philosophical debate – even if they have been abused in the past.
At some point you have to begin again with a tabula rasa. You have to say, OK, this is the object that has come down to us. Let’s all get together as a society and decide what we want from our past. Do we want our past to look like our present? Once we’ve come to a decision, we can work towards it. But at the moment the aims are haphazard because this debate has never taken place.
Towards the end of last year British restorers announced that they had removed layers of gold paint from the Dream of the Virgin, a painting by the 14th-century Bolognese artist Simone dei Crocefissi, to reveal an entirely different image underneath: a Tree of Life in place of the conventional crucifixion. Where the artist’s original message has been so distorted, surely restoration is justified?
I’m not sure. What if a 16th-century artist – El Greco, say – was responsible for the changes? If I had my way, we would leave the picture alone, generate a reproduction of the “original” appearance, then hang it beside the unabused “text”. That’s how it should be properly conserved.
You suggest that art is, or was, a joint enterprise. Are we never looking at a single artist’s work, but at the work of many?
I’m afraid in some cases you are. You can’t get around that. A work of art is pretty much like a human being. We all get battered, we break bones, they mend, we go and get some disease, we get cured, and then we die. There’s an organic life to a work of art, too. It accumulates experience as humans do, and those experiences shape it. Once you’ve understood that, the idea of going back to the original seems pointless, even if it were possible.
Isn’t modern restoration just the latest “disease”?
It comes down to the training of these people. Up until the past 50 years or so, restorers were painters or sculptors, so whatever changes or repairs they made, they were made with an artistic eye. They tried to keep to the style of a Michelangelo or a Bernini, though they did not always achieve it, of course. Today restorers are not trained as artists, or even art historians. They look not through the artist’s eye, but through a microscope. Theirs is a far more brutal approach. In the past they added, whether it be tonalities or a layer of glue, so it wasn’t so harmful because although it was not honest to the object, the object was still physically there. Now restorers remove, they scrape down. And they rob posterity of the object itself.
What was your initial reaction when you saw the restored frescoes in the Sistine Chapel?
Something didn’t ring true to me, but I didn’t quite know why. I just thought they were making a grave mistake. Then I went up on the scaffold and looked at the ceiling up close, and I realised they were taking off layers of application without knowing what they were. Among those layers were Michelangelo’s own glazes, and that angered me deeply. So I spoke out in public.
Why did it take you another 10 years to found your organisation, ArtWatch International?
After I won my case against the Italian restorer, friends said to me, we’ll help pay your legal fees. But I said no, let’s create an organisation instead. The Sistine Chapel restoration had alerted me to an activity that was going on without any philosophical base. There was no structure to restoration. In my opinion, this was led by insensitive officials, and restorers just went ahead as best they could, trying to “clean” things, but without any real idea of what they were trying to achieve. In the process they were altering for all time masterpieces such as Michelangelo’s Vatican frescoes or Holbein’s Ambassadors in London’s National Gallery.
Is there anything else that concerns you?
Yes. Take the National Gallery. Its science department has methods for ageing things. For instance, the colour Prussian blue was invented at the beginning of the 18th century, so if a painting older than that has got Prussian blue in it, the blue must have been a late addition. That’s how they justify removing that layer. The danger is that in the process they remove a little of the original, because there is a migration of molecules between the different layers of a painting over time. It’s the same with varnishes. But the danger is they also remove some traces of the artist’s original applications.
Can scientific procedures be applied to art?
Science can be used for diagnostic purposes to great benefit, to determine if a work of art is in danger or friable, but recreating an art object seems to defy science. For example, researchers have tried to find some kind of pattern or system to Impressionist painting that would allow them to recreate such a painting by following certain rules. They have all failed. There’s no way you can decide scientifically what Michelangelo painted and what he didn’t, or what he may have retouched.
Yet you suggest that an alternative to restoration would be using computers to rewind the ageing process by generating facsimiles of the originals?
Yes. You can use science up to a point. I don’t mind the proposal: this is as close as we think we can get to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. But a picture has a history. How do you deal with the ageing process? You can approximate it. I don’t mind that in a computer image because you’re not altering the original text. You can refine that image year after year, as scientific techniques are honed and our knowledge of the artist’s style increases. There’s nothing wrong with experiment per se – what I object to is experiment on the original text.
You have been accused by those in favour of cleaning works of art of “anti-restoration terrorism”. How do you respond to that?
It’s a serious charge, and an absurd one. All I’m saying is “hands off”. The one thing I wouldn’t do is touch any of these objects. So, according to my understanding of the word terrorism, the terrorists are more likely to be those museum superintendents and curators who tamper with – and irrevocably alter – these beautiful things.