Conversation and restoration of works of contemporary value

• Grant number: 14/50986-2
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants - Publications - Books published in Brazil
• Start date: April 01, 2015
• End date: March 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Information Science
• Principal Investigator: Martin Grossmann
• Grantee: Martin Grossmann
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This paper, the result of a doctoral thesis defended in 2010 at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, avers the hypothesis that the conservation and restoration of unconventional art whose nature requires not only awareness of how materials degrade, but above all in-depth knowledge of the ideas, processes, contexts and symbolic network that constitute it are only possible after proper assessment of the contemporary status of a work of eat. With this in mind, it first analyzes the artistic representations of the 20th century, the development of the field of conservation and restoration during the same period, and the issues pertaining to the institutionalization of these works, and then addresses the value of contemporaneity and how it affects the choice of a proper approach. To better understand this value, the paper assumes that works of art possess information fields, both subjective and objective, that interact through a process of metonymic understanding, even if their internal organization is based on the metaphorical process. Thus, we have different structures inserted in various contexts that accord different weights to the potential values of these works, and that decisively influence the choice and the extent of intervention. This paper demonstrates that disregard for contextualization may lead to errors of judgment and, therefore, to mistaken and often unnecessary interventions. (AU)