Leseprobe

Ursula Haller The development of preservation strategies on the basis of compre- hensive conservation and scientific examinations of each individual figure depends directly upon the answering of these questions. Such a procedure is the usual theoretical principle of restoration because the prerequisite for any restoration is the recording of all material, historical and aesthetic aspects of a work. Only on this basis can coherent treatment concepts be developed and can one even remotely consider actually setting one’s hand to the task. An unreflecting intervention into the material substance of a work, demonstrated by the distressing experience with figures that have already been “repaired”, can not only damage it materially or even destroy it but even distort its immaterial significance beyond recog- nition. This applies not only to the conservation work, which exclu- sively encompasses methods that serve the purpose of direct pres- ervation, but primarily also restoration, which also has aesthetic improvements as its goal, for example, the restoration of the read- ability of a work. To this purpose, however, it must be determined what a work should convey. Is the focus on conveying history and the work viewed as a historical document, whose aged condition may not be changed? Or is the focus on the restoration of the con- veying of former content or artistic intention of some kind? 3 Under ideal circumstances, both of these seemingly contradictory posi- tions come into their own. The development of conservation and restoration concepts is an exciting challenge, especially when one still knows comparatively little about the materials of which a work consists. Art-technology and conservation science research occupies itself with the materials from which artefacts were produced, and especially with their signs of ageing. However, in contrast with materials such as wood, metal, paper or various paints that have been used for the production of art for centuries, research on the ageing of the large variety of plas- tics is still for the most part in the initial stages. Now, however, problems have increasingly appeared in the past few years, because damage is appearing due to the quickly advancing chemical pro- cesses of change of many of these materials. Materials of semi or fully synthetic polymers, which also include cellulose derivates like the cellulose acetate (CA) and cellulose acetate butyrate (CAB) or, later, the poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) of the transparent shell, the skin of the Transparent Figures, were actually not produced with the goal of lasting for generations. Yellowing or browning alters the colour or transparency of the material, degradation processes or the loss of plasticisers result in mechanical changes such as embrittling, shrinkage or the formation of cracks and can in the worst case lead to complete degradation. In the case of the Transparent Figures, the development of an active conservation strategy, as the sum of the measures serving the direct material preservation or the prevention of further damage, re- sembles the proverbial squaring of the circle: the transparent cellu- lose acetate of the skin, the novel material that caused a sensation 106