Artistic restoration has always had to strike a balance between preserving a piece in its original form, and allowing signs of the artworks history to give it the appropriate gravitas. We don’t really want our classic artwork in new, shiny frames, we like them to be aged. We think patina is pretty, and at this point, people would be offended if you tried to put the arms back on Venus de Milo, even if they were a perfect recreation. 

Over the history of the field, specialists have developed techniques that preserve artworks’ beauty and intent while allowing some signs of its age, developing specialized treatments for canvas, brass, marble, wood, fine metals. 

But these preservationist are now faced with a new problem: the art that now is beginning to need restoration, to be moved to the realm of archivists and historians, is that from the “Modern” era (in artistic terms), aka the early to mid-twentieth century. These modernist pieces (particularly sculptures) aren’t made of brass or marble. They’re made of plastic, and latex, and polymers.  

Plastic doesn’t chip or patina or tarnish. It warps and yellows. Latex doesn’t crack, it shrivels and then disintegrates. To our contemporary eye this isn’t aging that gives gravitas, it doesn’t make art look stately, it makes it look… old. 

It also fundamentally changes the shape of the artwork. Modern artist Eva Hesse created beautiful three dimensional sculptures made of billowy latex balloons and framing in the 1960’s. They traveled around through a variety of museums and installations but over the decades, the latex has obviously taken on a completely different shape. The once puffy balloons now sag, the color warped by its stretching. In some places the latex has melted, pooling underneath the statues. The aging hasn’t just changed some colors but the shape of the art itself.¹ And unlike patina on brass, or peeling paint, this change, at the moment at least, is irreversible. So if we want to preserve this era of work, we’re left with two options: to hide it away and show images of what it looked like once, or to watch it fall apart in front us. 

In the case of Eva Hesse, she says to leave it up. She instructed museum staff to leave it, to not intervene, and to let it crumble. In her words “life doesn’t last, art doesn’t last.”² 

Can we watch something disintegrate and still call it art? Still call it beautiful? Can we watch it yellow and warp and crumble and resist the urge to hide it away, to remember it only as it once was? Do we have the grace inside us to watch something die without covering our eyes? 

In our world, in our churches, in our work, and in our souls, what do we need to watch age? What practices, ideas, rhythms of our lives call us to face their terminus with grace and courage without trying to save it, hide it, or hasten it? 

This one is hard. I admit this one sits heavy in me. But I believe there is grace here as well, there is sacredness here as well. God is here as well. 

1. https://nautil.us/should-science-save-modern-art-234745/ ↩︎
2. https://nautil.us/should-science-save-modern-art-234745/ ↩︎