26 ASIAN ART Conservation


Scenes in and around the Capital, second half 17th century, Japan, ink, colour, and gold on paper, 67 7/8 x 149 3/4 in, Seattle Art Museum. Photo credit: Natali Wiseman Purchased with funds from Mildred and Bryant Dunn and the Floyd A Naramore Memorial Purchase Fund


PRESERVING OLD JAPAN


by Xenobe Purvis


collection of Asian art. Tey are called ‘Scenes in and around the Capital’, and portray the city of Kyoto using a rich mixture of ink, colour and gold. Teir surfaces are covered with incredibly detailed scenes:


A period,’ the


Imperial Palace and the Nijo Castle, as well as the activities of Kyoto’s residents, its cityscape receding into the countryside at the panels’ edges. Te screens belong to a genre called Rakuchu rakugai zu. Raku is


the


literary appellation for Kyoto, which was


the capital since the Heian Xiaojin Wu, Seattle Art


Museum’s Curator of Japanese and Korean Art, explains. ‘Te earliest extant screens of Rakuchu rakugai zu were made in the 16th century when Kyoto was still the capital and still held the cultural authority,’


she


continues, ‘but that would change in the late 17th century when the ‘Eastern Capital’ Edo took over that function’. Rakuchu rakugai zu was immensely popular at its peak;


so what


distinguishes the screens held at Seattle Art Museum from other works created in this genre and at this time? Wu notes that it is the quality of the painting and the materials used which sets this pair of screens apart from contemporaneous creations. ‘Te Japanese collection in Seattle Art Museum was already one of the best in the country by the time these screens were acquired in 1975, but the collection did not have exemplary works of the early Edo period or in the area of genre painting, so the screens were a significant acquisition for the museum in its collecting history,’ she says. Te screens are extremely fragile, however, and now require crucial structural conservation.


beautiful pair of 17th-century Japanese screens are held in Seattle Art Museum’s


Te conservation work is funded by Bank of America Art Conservation Project, and is overseen by SAM’s Chief Conservator, Nicholas Dorman. Dorman arrived at SAM in 2001 to establish the museum’s first in-house conservation department. ‘At SAM, I have had the pleasure of overseeing the preservation and conservation of our general collection, including the great founding collection of Asian art, for the past 16 years,’ Dorman says. ‘In recent years, we have been fortunate to secure funding to carry out surveys of our entire Asian paintings collection, thanks to the generosity of external agencies: our small collection of Korean paintings was surveyed when scholars from the National Research


Institute for Cultural


Heritage in Korea studied the collection for a catalogue; we latched onto our Getty Foundation-funded on-line scholarly catalogue for the Chinese paintings collection, bringing Kewei Wang, then at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, to survey that collection of paintings. Tis year, thanks to Andrew W Mellon Foundation support, we complete a comprehensive multi-year condition survey of our Japanese paintings in collaboration with conservator Tomokatsu Kawazu of Studio Sogendo in California’. As a result of the delicate and precise nature of the required


for this


conservation work pair


of Dorman explains the


Kawazu and his team at Studio Sogendo have been engaged to conduct the necessary conservation treatment.


process that will be undertaken when these screens are removed from SAM: ‘Once the paintings arrive at the studio, the current conditions will be carefully documented with a written report and a photographic record. Tis is a critical component of conservation.


ASIAN ART SUMMER QUARTER 2017 When I worked [at the Doerner


Institut] in Munich, we had access to reports written in the early nineteenth century by our professional predecessors, and these records were invaluable to us as we commenced our work anew’. Te paintings are then documented and the treatment proposal is reviewed and approved, he continues,


before old


mounts and backing papers are removed,


layer by layer, until the


painting can be accessed directly. ‘Once the backings and other old restoration has been removed, the conservator carefully fills and supports holes and other damages in the original painting support and then builds up the layers of backings. In the case of this work of art, all of this has to happen twelve times, because it is comprised of a pair of six-panel screens,’ Dorman notes. Finally, he says, the panels are backed and pasted on the drying board, losses are carefully in-painted, the mount fabrics


are


applied and the paintings are attached to the panel frames and reconstituted as a pair of standing screens. Studio Segondo are trained to


conserve in the Japanese tradition, and Japanese materials and techniques are used in the process. Te conservation work required by this


screens,


The 17th-century screens were seen as a


significant acquisition in 1975


restoration,


pair of screens is vastly different to the last Bank of America-funded conservation project undertaken by Seattle Art Museum in 2012, the restoration of Jackson Pollock’s Sea Change. Dorman concurs, observing that ‘certain underlying conservation principles prevail across many cultures and enable us to apply fundamentally shared approaches to preserving a broad variety of artist materials’, but he also comments on ‘the distinctive temperament that is associated with different fields of practice’. Tis is especially true of the conservation of Japanese paintings, which, he says, ‘is steeped in a craft tradition that isn’t readily available to most Western collectors or collections. Indeed, many of us transport our collections considerable distances, just to bring the art to the relatively few experts who possess the long training and skills that are required for the care of these works of art. Te Bank of America conservation programme is a very special programme,


provides funding for projects,


since it like


ours, which lie beyond the means of our normal department funding. Teir support allows us to do the projects and to do them to a high standard.’ Conservation work can be dogged


by controversy, but Dorman assures that for this pair of Japanese screens the prospect of conservation is less contentious, relating solely to ‘the structural failure of the old mount materials: hinges have failed and the adhesives between the multiple backing and lining layers have failed, rendering them structurally very weak. Tis happens with mounted paintings after a certain length of time. When they return from conservation, the paintings themselves won’t actually look very different, but they will be more secure. In Japanese conservation practice, old damages


may well remain visible following conservation in some cases.’ And yet, as Dorman acknowledges,


no act of conservation is without a certain amount of responsibility. ‘If you change a mount on an Asian painting, or a frame on a western painting, you really do have a powerful impact on the way it is perceived,’ he remarks.


‘We do not take such


decisions lightly, and work as a team with our curatorial and other colleagues to reach decisions. We do often aim to preserve old mount fabrics, where possible,


since this


conveys a sense of passage of time that can be particularly harmonious with an old painting.’ For this reason, expertise is key, and the intent behind the creation of the work is always foremost in the conservators’ minds. ‘In most areas of conservation,


professionals frankly


acknowledge that there is no going back to the “original” and that patina has a (sometimes considerable) value,’ Dorman says. ‘It may not always be possible but it nevertheless remains important to be as well-informed as possible and to try to determine what an artist intended. Reaching that state may be inappropriate or impossible, but we try to subjugate our own impulses and to think about what the artist would have wished.’ Seattle Art Museum is concurrently


working on several other conservation projects, conserving a group of paintings by Northwest modernist Mark Tobey, refabricating components of Roy McMakin’s Love & Loss, and working with Mark di Suvero’s studio to re-carve massive log components of Bunyon’s Chess at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Tis coincides with the restoration of the Asian Art Museum itself, a large-scale overhaul which involves preserving the historic buildings, upgrading internal climate control to protect the museum’s collections, and expanding gallery space. Seattle Asian Art Museum has not been substantially restored or renovated since its inception and is currently closed for a major renovation, which


is needed to address


infrastructure issues, including climate control system and seismic upgrades, as well as to increase disability access to the museum. Te new gallery space will enable the museum to more regularly show art from all of Asia— not only its original collection featuring works from China, Japan, Korea, but also its growing South Asian collection. It plans to reopen in 2019.


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