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Large panel paintings by
Konstantin Korovin are mounted following restoration. 2010 |
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If fin du
siècle Russian artists were experimenting with multiple painting techniques
in a single work in an attempt to expand an already lavish arsenal of artistic
devices, the revolutionary and post-revolutionary events of the early twentieth
century had the reverse effect, giving rise to wildly different – sometimes
unbelievable – combinations of materials as a way to make up for the lamentable
depletion of that same arsenal. The unavailability of quality paints, canvases,
and paper in many cases compelled artists to replace the traditional oil
painting support – canvas – with sackcloth or paper, and to use newspapers
instead of paper and plywood instead of Bristol board. The result is that today
the museum is in possession of a huge number of artworks that, right from the
beginning, were not made to last.
However, despite the limited access to art supplies,
Russian avant-garde artists stayed firmly on the path of experiment in the 1920s
and 1930s, augmenting their paintings with such extraordinary media as sand,
tar, plaster, gold leaf, tinfoil, and many others. In addition to these mixed
media artworks, the Russian Museum holds (in its folk arts collection) a large
quantity of folk paintings (in the Fedoskino and Palekh styles) and shop signs
painted on tin. The Old Russian art collection also has a number of distemper
and tempera paintings on canvas.
The museum, in addition, has copies of unique Old Russian
church mural paintings, many of which can no longer be admired in their original
versions. The paintwork of these copies, usually made on paper by leading
Russian artists or copyists, is mainly in watercolor, gouache, and tempera, but
also often includes “impromptu” additions such as lime, sand, or crushed brick.
These exhibits, too, require some unconventional conservation solutions.
Every artwork created in mixed and/or unconventional
media, being highly nuanced, requires careful study, custom treatment when it
comes to the methods of conservation most suitable for the particular work, and
experimentation. In the few years of the studio’s existence, it has restored
some great works of art, including a study for the famous painting The Pool
by Viktor Borisov-Musatov (oil and tempera on canvas); Portrait of Yelena
Olive by Valentin Serov (watercolor and pastel on cardboard); The Royal
Hunt by the same artist (tempera and gouache on paper); drawings for stage
designs by Sergey Sudeikin, Aleksandra Ekster, and Nikolai Sapunov (oil,
gouache, pastel, and gold leaf on canvas and cardboard); Pavel Kuznetsov’s
Crimean landscape series (oil on cardboard); paintings by Ivan Bruni, Boris
Anisfeld, Nicholas Roerich, Aleksandr Golovin, and Mikhail Vrubel; studies by
Aleksandr Vedernikov (oil on paper); and collages by contemporary artists.
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Lead restorer Nina Rusakova
working on a 1930s folk art panel painting. 2008 |
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Quite a few mixed media paintings would be impossible to
restore without synthetic materials. The paintwork of a mixed media painting
often has a peculiar way of disintegrating – they are sometimes susceptible to
erosion by moisture, or their texture may be excessively matted and prone to
powdering, requiring the use of specially formulated adhesives, or
consolidants. In addition to their main purpose, which is to firm up the
paintwork, these glues leave no gloss on the painting surface and do not alter
its colors or thicken its textures. It frequently happens that, due to the
varying properties of the base, the primer, and the paintwork, different
consolidating materials have to be used on different parts of a painting.
It was not long
after the mixed media conservation workshop was established at the State Russian
Museum that its conservators were able to assess all the advantages of
synthetic conservation materials – their high penetrative power, their ability
to strengthen the parts of the paintwork eroding as a powder without any risk of
an “halo”-staining effect or of thickening the texture, and their ability to soften
hard areas where the paint is flaking before they are hardened again with a
stronger adhesive, all without any threat of damaging the paint layer. When
it comes to the overall strengthening (impregnation) of worn-out paper bases or
thin canvases, cellulose ester formulas are by far superior to any other
material, and incur a much smaller risk of paintwork erosion. Even when the
paintwork is not moisture-resistant, a cellulose ester solution will remove all
surface soil without any physical damage to the paintwork. Among the extensive
range of cellulose esters currently available commercially, the ones most
frequently used by our restorers are hydroxylpropylcellulose (Klucel G and
Klucel E) and carboxymethyl cellulose (Cellofas), produced by US manufacturer
Aqualon and intended for the preparation of water-based and
water-and-alcohol-based solutions.
Acrylic water-soluble materials by “Lascaux” company (Switz) are currently also
very much on hand.
The use of synthetic materials in the conservation of
mixed media exhibits does not mean that traditional materials have been
abandoned – far from it! Supplies like sturgeon glue and wheat paste, wheat starch
and, more rarely, gelatin, are still part of the conservation specialist’s
toolkit, as are the traditional know-how and techniques for conservation of oil
paintings and works of Art on paper.
One of the landmark projects for the sub-department was the
restoration of large painted panels by Konstantin Korovin in the run-up to his
solo exhibition, which opened in the Russian Museum in 2011 and was a great
success. In recognition of their hard work on this project, Russian Museum
restorers Ivan Bezsolitsin, Andrey Bogomolov, Nina Rusakova, and Yevgeniya
Shchukina were awarded the Ivan Sautov Special Prize in the category of Art
Conservation, part of the Museum Olympus Awards given by the St. Petersburg
Culture Committee and St. Petersburg’s Interdepartmental Museum Board.
The
Mixed Media Paintings Conservation Studio became an official sub-department of the Art Conservation
Department of the Russian Museum as of January 1, 2019.
