04 Nov 2018 09:00 AM - 11:00 AM(America/Vancouver)
20181104T090020181104T1100America/VancouverExpertise in Art and Science: Art (History), Conservation and Modern Science and Technology
The session focuses on the development of a science-based conservation practice and the emergence of art history as a ‘science of art’ (or Kunstwissenschaft) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With which scientific methods was technique in the arts studied, and how did they relate to larger developments in modern science and technology? And in which institutional contexts was expertise in the study of art claimed? From the nineteenth century conservators turned to chemistry and material science (developing, for example, methods of pigment analysis) to understand the material make-up of art objects. Moreover, the early twentieth century saw the adoption of new imaging techniques (especially X-ray technology) requiring new observational skills from art historians. These developments are connected to the establishment of museum laboratories in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, the disciplinary formation of art history, and the professionalization of conservation. Questions of authenticity and the attribution of art works were settled in courtrooms where judges weighed the conflicting opinions of experts. This session investigates these conflicts of expertise between chemists, art historians, artists and art dealers to understand who was considered an expert in the arts, and for which reasons. It has been argued that artistic expertise, or connoisseurship, emerged in the eighteenth century in the context of changes in the art market and museum practice. This session investigates the effects of the emergence of a science-based conservation practice and of art history as a ‘science of art’ for the delineation of expertise and connoisseurship.
Organized by Sven Dupré (Utrecht University)
Medina, Third FloorHistory of Science Society 2018meeting@hssonline.org
The session focuses on the development of a science-based conservation practice and the emergence of art history as a ‘science of art’ (or Kunstwissenschaft) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With which scientific methods was technique in the arts studied, and how did they relate to larger developments in modern science and technology? And in which institutional contexts was expertise in the study of art claimed? From the nineteenth century conservators turned to chemistry and material science (developing, for example, methods of pigment analysis) to understand the material make-up of art objects. Moreover, the early twentieth century saw the adoption of new imaging techniques (especially X-ray technology) requiring new observational skills from art historians. These developments are connected to the establishment of museum laboratories in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, the disciplinary formation of art history, and the professionalization of conservation. Questions of authenticity and the attribution of art works were settled in courtrooms where judges weighed the conflicting opinions of experts. This session investigates these conflicts of expertise between chemists, art historians, artists and art dealers to understand who was considered an expert in the arts, and for which reasons. It has been argued that artistic expertise, or connoisseurship, emerged in the eighteenth century in the context of changes in the art market and museum practice. This session investigates the effects of the emergence of a science-based conservation practice and of art history as a ‘science of art’ for the delineation of expertise and connoisseurship.
Organized by Sven Dupré (Utrecht University)
Chemists in the Field of Archaeology: Pigment Analysis of Paint Samples in Nineteenth-century EnglandView Abstract Part of Organized SessionTechnology09:00 AM - 09:30 AM (America/Vancouver) 2018/11/04 17:00:00 UTC - 2018/11/04 17:30:00 UTC
During the nineteenth century, chemists were involved in conservation treatments of polychrome artworks. Appropriate methods for the cleaning of easel paintings, for instance, were sometimes done in consultation with chemists. In the field of archaeology, paint samples were extracted from historical objects and wall paintings with the aim to perform chemical analyses of pigments. This paper will show that the methodology and tools used by chemists for such analyses, agree with the standard chemical practices of the period. It also investigates the motivation behind the increasing engagement of chemists in the nineteenth-century field of archaeology. It has been argued that the main interest of chemists involved in the analysis of antiquities was not the preservation of objects, but the characterization of materials. In this paper it will be argued that, to the contrary, nineteenth-century primary sources reporting chemical analysis of pigments, show that chemists were also concerned about the physical integrity of historical and archaeological objects and their preservation. Such concern can be observed particularly in the extraction process of the paint samples used for chemical examination of pigments and binding media. The focus is on the nineteenth-century English context, since during this period the country held a leading position in the field of conservation practice.
Art Histories around 1900View Abstract Part of Organized SessionTechnology09:30 AM - 10:00 AM (America/Vancouver) 2018/11/04 17:30:00 UTC - 2018/11/04 18:00:00 UTC
Between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century art history arises as a scientific discipline, taking part in the process of systematization of the human sciences in their relationship to the natural sciences. From the perspective of the history of science this period can be seen as the most productive for art history, as it is confronted with a fundamental rethinking of its tools, aims and methodologies. Kunstwissenschaft (‘science of art’) emerges at that time as a counterpart to the well-established connoisseurship. If the latter looks at the work of art in its singularity, studying its material and technical aspects, with an attributionist aim, Kunstwissenschaft deals with analyzing the work of art within its broader cultural context, in reconstructing its social, cultural and political dimensions, and in the dialogue with other disciplines. Both groups of art historians want to legitimate their methodologies on a “scientific” basis, the former grounded in the direct observation of the work of art, the latter developing a series of general concepts (Grundbegriffe) and formal laws, which should be valid for interpreting works coming from different cultural contexts. This paper aims to discuss the methodological gap between different approaches to art history in the epoch in which there was a more intensive aim to build its disciplinary identity, and to follow its development in the actual art historical practices.
Maria Teresa Costa Max Planck Institute For The History Of Science, Berlin
How X-Rays Changed the Practice of Art HistoryView Abstract Part of Organized SessionTechnology10:00 AM - 10:30 AM (America/Vancouver) 2018/11/04 18:00:00 UTC - 2018/11/04 18:30:00 UTC
Despite earlier experimentation with X-Ray technology applied to paintings in German science laboratories, it was only in the 1920s and 1930s that the technology became more widely and systematically applied to art. Alan Burrough’s acquisition of the first and extensive archive of X-ray images of paintings, first of the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the most important driving force behind this. Burrough’s efforts were inspirational for Kurt Wehlte, the German Maltechniker, who in the 1930s established a laboratory for the X-Ray investigation of paintings in Berlin. In this paper I discuss how and in which ways X-ray investigations of paintings were consequential for art history. To this end, I look at the work of two other researchers: Christian Wolters in Munich and Berlin; and Martin de Wild in Delft and Utrecht. The history of X-ray technology in the history of art in the 1920s and 1930s shows that it was not simply a matter of art versus science, that is, of the eager adoption by scientists embarking on the art historical terrain from their recently established museum laboratories versus the outright rejection of the technology in circles of artists and humanists. X-ray technology was accepted when it supported a particular style of art history which was structured around formal analysis and which radiating from Vienna made school across Germany and the Netherlands. These art historians maintained that new ways of scientifically examining art in the laboratory required students of art history to learn new ways of seeing.
In Search of the "Secrets of the Old Masters": Early Analytical Approaches to the Characterization of Traditional Easel PaintingsView Abstract Part of Organized SessionTechnology10:30 AM - 11:00 AM (America/Vancouver) 2018/11/04 18:30:00 UTC - 2018/11/04 19:00:00 UTC
Throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, scientists and conservators at a select number of cultural institutions worked towards developing a more accurate understanding of the techniques and materials used by Old Master painters. Some of the first pioneers in this area include A.P. Laurie based in Edinburgh, Max Doerner and Alexander Eibner at the Deorner Institut in Munich, Rutherford Gettens together with George Stout and David Thompson at Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum, Paul Coremans at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels, and Joyce Plesters at the National Gallery in London. Early accounts describe spot or “wiping” tests, heating/burning tests, and microchemical tests performed on samples or on the actual artworks themselves. In addition, this period witnessed a marked improvement on the methods used to both extract and preserve paint samples, ultimately culminating in procedures used to prepare intact cross-sectional samples, methods that are still used to this day by the conservation community. This talk will outline the evolution of these tests and how they were very much influenced by international collaborations and current art historical debates; nearly all of these early initiatives were driven by two primary questions: 1) how did the transition from egg to oil manifest during the early Italian Renaissance and 2) what was the chosen medium of Jan van Eyck and his workshop? Based on the outcome of these early tests, scientists and conservators were able to draw certain conclusions and theories, many of which will be discussed during this paper.
