Art wars II
Sir: May I add a cri de coeur to Michael Daley's denunciation of the 'restoration' industry at the National Gallery (Arts, 30 January)? This is an international plague, as prevalent as Aids, and as deadly. It has entered — no, it has been invited — into every museum in every country that has the money with which to establish an industry as esoteric as it is ignorant of art, of its cre- ation and nurturing. (Its exclusive talent appears to be secrecy, as Mr Daley's corre- spondence with our gallery reveals.) The old masters cleaned their paintings with the softer centres of stale bread to brush off dirt and grime, after first remov- ing the harder bread crusts for fear of abra- sive damage. (I've seen this done privately; it is simple, inexpensive and effective.) Anything more is vandalism. We, in this century, who can create nothing on their level, are only caretakers. How dare a cura- tor argue with Titian?
Mysteriously, these `restorers' are unaware of or indifferent to the damage they cause, for when they remove a Rem- brandt hand, they do not paint it back. They do not know how. Paul Valery pre- dicted near the beginning of the century that we would have only 'fragments' and that is what the 'experts' are determined to leave for us, unless stopped (as in the past) by public outcry.
I urge all who love art to 'Go look!' If they can bear to, they will see in the National Gallery a Renoir transformed into a chocolate-box illustration; elsewhere in London, a Titian oil with the thin, impres- sionistic substance of a watercolour; muti- lated Rembrandts, Boningtons glaring like neon lights . . . They can pursue this ghoul- ish tour to New York or to Venice or to Philadelphia (in its Museum of Fine Arts, they will find a wholly destroyed Rubens head, reduced to an amateur kind of abstract expressionism) or to Paris and so forth.
You will agree with Annigoni, who cried `Murderers' at the door of the National Gallery. Restorers are. While we probably can't incarcerate them (although they could use their time profitably inside by reading John Ruskin's anti-scrape philosophy and by reflecting that the ageing process itself is part of a living work of art), the public can disarm these vandals. It cannot be too diffi- cult to withdraw all funds for 'restoration'. Give the monies to Welsh National Opera or London City Ballet, to any body engaged in the creation of art, and not in its destruc- tion.
Dachine Rainer
33 Stratfield Road, Oxford
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