It's interesting how that in order to properly preserve a specific area, monument, artwork, etc., you sometimes need to desecrate it in the process. Restoration is both a fragile and intense task. All this goes through your head as you clamber over a century-old-sculpture.
Artwork is sometimes described as precise, and maybe for some people it is. My impression of art is that the creation is often a chaotic jumble, a frantic rush to ground the esoteric ideas floating around in your head in this tangible reality. The mark of a good artist is how messy their sketchbook for notes is. Only the artist should be able to decipher the arcane doodles and unknown shapes that fill the pages; to everyone else, it's just a collection of messy lines that they can't make heads or tails of. No-one sits down with an immediate idea of what they want to do, they just sort of scribble down whatever pops into their head, hoping that out of the horrific clutter genius will emerge. The finished product may be orderly, but the creation never is.
And who's to say that the process for maintaining it should be any neater? Art is a messy process, and so is life. It rains one day, it is sunny another, but we adapt and change to it. You break out the towels, dry out the statue and overcome. We may curse the rain because it picked the worst day to fall, but we still go about our day. And that's what conservation's all about, isn't it? Man does not establish his dominance over nature; instead, we adapt and change, and coexist.
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July 15, 2013
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Last updated: July 15, 2013