It is so nice to feel an affinity for something that one reads about, and then when one actually visits, for it still to surprise, provoke and delight. So was it for me and the Neues Museum last Friday. I must have read about it around its re-opening in 2009, and then again inTogether by Richard Sennett which I have just finished. When I talk about the museum I predominantly mean the building, rather than its collections. Originally designed by Friedrich August Stüler and opened in the 1850s, the building was bombed in WWII and left unprotected until the 1980s.
In his book, Sennett refers to the museum in relation to concepts of repair, in which the repairer responds to or, in a way, collaborates with the original craftsman or woman and the object to be repaired. He identifies three ways to repair – restore so that there is minimal trace of damage, remediate using new materials to improve the object while retaining its form, or reconfigure. He ascribes the reopening of the Neues Museum to the last category because the form of the building has been reimagined so that it too tells a story (although it is done with subtlety when compared to other reconfigured buildings).
How does this relate to my work? Notions of repair are very relevant to the act of resewing in which my canvas works are joined or made whole again (see below). It is, as I am sure you can imagine, laborious, resewing by hand each thread, and physically arduous, hunched over a small canvas with my fingers pricked and rubbed raw. What I keep coming up against is the question of why this should matter to the viewer of the final work. So I went to the Neues Museum, as an example of something celebrated for the richness of the narrative created through the way it has been repaired, to relate the strategies adopted by the architect, David Chipperfield (supported by Julian Harrap), to the context of my own work.
In his book, Sennett refers to the museum in relation to concepts of repair, in which the repairer responds to or, in a way, collaborates with the original craftsman or woman and the object to be repaired. He identifies three ways to repair – restore so that there is minimal trace of damage, remediate using new materials to improve the object while retaining its form, or reconfigure. He ascribes the reopening of the Neues Museum to the last category because the form of the building has been reimagined so that it too tells a story (although it is done with subtlety when compared to other reconfigured buildings).
How does this relate to my work? Notions of repair are very relevant to the act of resewing in which my canvas works are joined or made whole again (see below). It is, as I am sure you can imagine, laborious, resewing by hand each thread, and physically arduous, hunched over a small canvas with my fingers pricked and rubbed raw. What I keep coming up against is the question of why this should matter to the viewer of the final work. So I went to the Neues Museum, as an example of something celebrated for the richness of the narrative created through the way it has been repaired, to relate the strategies adopted by the architect, David Chipperfield (supported by Julian Harrap), to the context of my own work.
Detail of work in progress: onion skin and silver birch leaf dyed canvases, sewn together. Photograph: Bridget H Jackson
The building weaves several narratives together in its restoration. Where the original building could be preserved it has been, complete with the highly decorated surfaces, originally intended by Stüler to make the building as aesthetically interesting and instructive as the objects it housed. In places the building has been restored using original fragments, or similar materials – walls were rebuilt using bricks reclaimed from demolished houses – or materials were painstakingly recrafted. One man apparently spent three years making 30,000 cylindrical clay pots to repair the domed ceilings. The damage isn’t hidden by the repair, old and new are distinct. In that, the building echoes the way that its collection of Egyptian and European antiquities have been conserved so it is clear what is the historical original (see below). So on going round the museum I believe that each visitor’s experience is probably unique, in that we engage with the three narratives available to us – the original building, the history of its destruction and the collections it housed - to a different extent. I would like to know how someone arriving completely cold to the building, not knowing any of its history, would respond. For me the building dominated my experience as it was the purpose of my visit.
Ethnographical hall, with conserved stone relief in the foreground. Photograph: Bridget H Jackson
The Egyptian Court, with fragments of original wall paintings and new structures. Photograph: Bridget H Jackson
Fragments of Egyptian reliefs of agricultural scenes, clearing showing what is the original antiquity and what has been added to preserve them. Photograph: Bridget H Jackson
It is a hard building to photograph. There wasn’t a single view which I felt captured the essence of the building so I have tried to show a few details below. It is dramatic and busy, and reveals itself slowly as one walks around it. It has a physical presence rather than the fragility of a ruin (in contrast to the way the Hotel Esplanade has been preserved, in glass-encased fragments, elsewhere in the city). It is entirely contemporary, not a relic of a bygone era. While it is not my craft, I believe that the way the architects restored the building must have involved engaging closely with each space on its own terms. Engaging, with what was there and salvageable, developing strategies to replace what was not; architect’s models and historical documents being secondary to the materiality of the building itself. On walking around the building the word that turned over in my mind was integrity: in preserving or replacing the original materiality of the building, in retaining its history, and in not creating a pastiche of the past.
Detail from the restoration of the Neues Museum - ceiling. Photographs: Bridget H Jackson
Detail from the restoration of the Neues Museum - wall. Photographs: Bridget H Jackson
Detail from the restoration of the Neues Museum - floor. Photographs: Bridget H Jackson
In my work, it brings me back to the possibility that I need to use materials with a richer narrative than new raw canvas. I am reluctant to leap to a new material because it needs to feel right – something which I choose to use and display for a specific and reason - and it is clear to me that I don’t know what that is yet. The act of repair in my work is methodical, slow and visible as in the Neues Museum. But where mine is imperfect, the repaired parts of the building have been done so expertly, flawlessly complementing the damaged original. To balance a different and potentially damaged material it may be that I need to demonstrate greater skill, or seek unity and integrity through the materials I use in my repair.
A slightly longer version of this post was first published on my Reside Residency blog
A slightly longer version of this post was first published on my Reside Residency blog
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