In art institutions across the globe, time machines and investigation rooms exist behind closed doors. Dusty artworks go in and come out looking centuries younger; artists’ secrets are brought to light; and hidden, unfinished images emerge from behind famous compositions. Every week, we’ll peek beneath the microscope and zoom in on the art of preservation, where art meets science and just a little bit of magic: this is Conservation Lab.
It’s easy to imagine how ten years in a college dining hall might spell disaster for a work of art. Yet in the case of Mark Rothko’s Harvard Mural Triptych, which was on view in the penthouse dining room of Harvard University’s Holyoke Center in the 60s and 70s, the damage had little to do with proximity to food trays or excitable teenagers. High levels of sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows, along with the artist’s use of an unstable organic pigment, made for an unfortunate combination that caused excessive color fading in an incredibly short amount of time (you can see the changes here).
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In the late 80s, Harvard conservators ruled out the possibility of directly retouching the faded paint. “Because of the large areas of color loss, and because of the delicate, thinly painted, and unvarnished surfaces, such a treatment would be irreversible and would potentially obliterate the artist’s hand—violating key principles of conservation,” explain the Harvard Art Museums in an announcement.
Narayan Khandekar, senior conservation scientist, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums, holding up a white card which shows the digital projection on Mark Rothko’s Panel Four in the exhibition Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals, on display at the Harvard Art Museums November 16, 2014–July 26, 2015. © 2014 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Peter Vanderwarker, © President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Over 20 years later, the museum teamed up with research groups at MIT and the University of Basel to digitally restore color transparencies of the works from 1964, and use projection mapping on the canvases to bring the original hues back to life. The team developed custom software and a camera-projector system that reads the painting’s current colors, compares the information to the original photographs, and calculates a “compensation image” that is sent to the projector. The fruits of this innovative collaboration between art historians, conservators, and scientists were presented in an exhibition that ran last year, returning the murals to public view after their long hiatus.
Experimental lighting display Color the Temple Scene 1 at The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The project is a collaboration between the Museum’s Department of Egyptian Art and MediaLab. Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Gustavo Camps
A vaguely similar experiment is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on far more ancient surfaces. The Temple of Dendur, on view in the Egyptian wing, are devoid of color today, but scholars know that its detailed reliefs were likely to have been painted when it was built 2,000 years ago. Staff from the museum’s MediaLab helped to light up a scene on one of the temple’s walls, depicting the Roman emperor Augustus as a pharaoh making an offering to Egyptian deities. According to Diana Craig Patch, the Met’s Curator in Charge of the Department of Egyptian Art, this kind of reconstruction, although thoroughly researched, remains hypothetical. It is primarily an educational tool. “Using digital media, we can much more easily share how the object changed over time if it had a long history of use,” she says.
Even in far less hypothetical recreations like the Rothko murals, however, accuracy is still debatable. Writer Robert Moeller, reviewing the Harvard exhibition in Hyperallergic, couldn’t shake the feeling that the work was a “holographic representation of [Rothko’s] intent.” Artist Terry Winters, in a video interview, says it wasn’t until the lights went off, and visitors could see the works in their current state, that he “really felt as if Rothko entered the room.” The technology is, no doubt, awe-inspiring, but the pixels may be getting in the way of something more important. Art, when viewed in person, has ineffable power, and perhaps the only way to fully experience that connection is to focus on what is still here, even when the losses are great.
Mark Rothko’s Panel One, Panel Two, and Panel Three (Harvard Mural Triptych), with restored colors using light from digital projectors in the exhibition Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals, on display at the Harvard Art Museums November 16, 2014–July 26, 2015. © 2014 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Peter Vanderwarker, © President and Fellows of Harvard College.
More information and videos about Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals, and their digital restoration, is available here. The Met’s Color the Temple is on view for one more weekend, through April 24.
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