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McBride: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. My name is Patrick McBride and on behalf of
myself and my colleague, Rebecca de But, I'd like to talk to you today about our paper,
What's In and What's Out: A Decision Making Model in the Conservation of Primitive Art.
Much of our talk today will center around the two images you see on screen currently.
Both are by James Dixon, an outsider artist from Tory Island and the top one is the East
End of Tory Island, and the bottom painting is the West End of Tory Island. But before
I begin I would like to apologize for not being with you in person. We had planned and
hoped and were looking forward to traveling with you and attending the conference, but
unfortunately we got let down with sponsorship at the last minute. Hopefully, this alternative
is acceptable and we will be following the conference on the net, and I hope you are
having a great day. I'm going to talk to you today very much in
two parts. The first part of our presentation would revolve around James Dixon and Tory
Island and the Tory Island School of Art. He's nailed in the paper supports he used
in creating the two images are his means of creation, the paint layers, the paper support,
the additions to the surface, and the manipulation of the media by the artist himself. But this
experience, trying to conserve the two works of art, led us to do a lot of research in
the area and we moved on very much to deciding on a decision making model, weighing of conservation
options, researching the decision making models that were there, and defining what is meant
by insider and outsider art, and then amendments to the decision making model to come up with
our own suggested model for conserving outsider art.
And so it's James Dixon. James Dixon was born on the 2nd of June, 1887 on Tory Island, and
throughout his lifetime only left the island on very few occasions. Tory Island is an island
off the coast of Donegal, the northwest coast of Ireland. It is associated with Ulster Irish
speaking community in Donegal known as the Gaeltacht. You can see on screen where the
island is located, map on the left-hand side of Ireland and Tory Island is a small island
and pictured there on top right, and it is located just off the northwest coast and the
lower ordin [short for ordinance] survey map on the bottom right hand corner gives you
a better idea of its size and its location. James Dixon came to painting very late in
life at the age of 72 having viewed an exhibition by the Irish artist Derek Hill. His paintings
demonstrate a physical mapping of Tory Island and the surrounding seascape, while at the
same time being beautiful works of art in their own right. His technique involved the
use of paint and local materials to mimic that of the landscape and the surrounding
fisheries industry. He painted his environment in a traditional way, but with very untraditional
materials, reflected in the additions to the surface. What his materials comprised of,
very many paint layers and ethnographic objects found on the island.
His experience of the fishing and the agricultural industry on the island very much flavors his
work. The island, and the rugged nature of the land and sea, gave form and dialect to
his work and are expressed using coarse and rough artistic forms. Areas of impasto and
grooving on the paper support mimic the contours in the landscape and the coarse nature of
the island surroundings. In 2011, Paper Conservation Studio received a commission to conserve these
two works of art. The two works provided a different challenge for most others for the
studio, for a number of reasons. The size of the images, the mix of materials, the support
paper, how the support was constructed, the approach of the artist, and indeed how the
images were created all provide to be unique and challenging. The creative approach of
the artist was clearly very different than anything experienced by the conservers previous
and forced them to question the nature of the conservation interventions needed to stabilize
and conserve them. The supports, in each case, consisted of 8
to 13 sheets of heavy machine made paper, most likely carthage paper, which had been
joined together using an adhesive. The sheets were tiered in a format seen on the right
here and 13 sheets being used for one painting, and 8 on the other. The joints have deteriorated
completely and were in need of some support due to multiple layers of paint. Heavy paint
layers and additions of material to the surface made while the paint was created, were very
heavy and stressed the joints. This led to the joints being lined with strips of Japanese
paper as part of the treatment to support them. Very little is known about the type
of paper that Dixon used, apart from few lines regarding materials given to Dixon and particularly
the paper size and paint from the artist Derrick Hill.
Dixon's style of painting, his physical surroundings, and the landscape of the island, motivated
his choice in paints used. Multiple types of paint, such as painters oils, house paints,
and even boat paint had been used by Dixon during the course of his work. This has led
to several layers of paint being adhered together to create features of land and sea. Now this
is undertaken, some of the paint samples showed that they were oil based house paints common
in the 1960's. Other materials found on the surface were newsprints, fragments of raw
wool, horse hair, insects, earth and straw. On screen at the moment you can see four images
depicting some of the damage. Figure 4 is the flaking of the paint on Tory Island West
End and you can see the way some of it has quite bubbly and blistered and fallen away.
Figure 5 shows the paper joint from the image surface, from the surface where it has split
and the paint layer has begun to peel back. Six shows the impasto on the surface and the
addition of straw on the surface itself of Tory Island. You'll see some of these on the
next slide and then Figure 7 shows, is a shot from the reverse of the joints of paper and
the brownish area would appear to have been vanish, he seems to have used vanish and to
adhere his paper supports together to make one overall sheet. As you can see from the
discolored [?] backing, there is also a fair bit of debris and damage and discoloration
right across the back of the painting which is very visible in Figure 7.
On this slide we can see the additions to the surface applied by Dixon. Figure 8 shows
the addition of straw on the surface of the Tory Island West End, both highlighted by
the red arrows. Figure 9 shows the addition of newsprint on the surface of this photograph,
again taken under magnification. Ten shows a mixture of paint and earth applied to the
surface of the painting, while Figure 11 shows the additions of paper and horse hair on the
surface of the work. And this final four sets of images show the surface manipulation and
that Dixon undertook this manipulation of the media as he was applying or soon after
he applied it. Figure 12 shows the undulations in the paper's support [?] Tory Island East
End and what's particular about it he shows the delineation between the paint, the blue
of the sea and the land, and he very much kept the glass for the blue of the sea and
the land was slightly [?]. Figure 13 shows scrapping effect, surface donkey hairs and
it was very much like a technique used within water color painting where you would apply
color and then scrape it away quite roughly to reveal an under layer. Figure 14 shows
the pastel layer where he created a mountain effect. He's very much mixed earth in with
the pigment itself to create that unevenness and finally he grooved out some of the surfaces
to show plowing lines or to show divisions within the fields on the island itself and
they are visible in Figure 15, and the grooved surface mimicked the plowed fields on Tory
Island East End. Before leaving Dixon and moving on to the
second part of our talk today, I would like to emphasize two things; both paintings were
very beautiful works of art and it was a pleasure to work on them, but you have to be pointed
out that they were large and very unwieldy. Tory Island East End comes in 102 by 366 centimeters
and West End is 108 by 292. They were large, unwieldy, difficult to manage objects in very,
very poor condition. And faced with such difficulty we did what most paper conservers would do
in that situation; we procrastinated for a long time. We went off and we talked about
it, and ultimately the aim of our intervention was to ascertain the best possible treatment
to maintain the paintings, whilst trying to maintain the historic and artistic integrity
of the objects themselves. Normally when such difficulties are encountered
solutions are researched from the literature, but the literature relating to the treatment
of works of this type is limited and provides care and conservers only with a partial solution.
In this instance it was felt that a decision making model would be of assistance. Initial
attempts to identify published treatments of other similar works failed, although there
clearly were parallels within the conservation of contemporary art.
Model on screen at the moment is one model we discovered which was developed by a working
group for the Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art and was to guide decisions into
the conservation of contemporary art. This model was built upon similar work undertaken
by Ernst Van der [?], whose main focus was on the conservation of traditional art. What
is central to the contemporary art model is the assessment of the condition and the meaning
of the object, the discrepancy between both the art and conservation options that arise
and finally how these options are weighed to enable a treatment to be arrived at. Conservation
program adopted would naturally be a compromise between the various different factors. The
model represents this process in linear form with the condition and meaning have an equal
importance at the start of the process. Combining both allows for the discrepancy to be determined.
We also added a series of other factors to the list when trying to weigh the conservation
options; the restoration options, financial limitations, legal aspects, technical limitations
and possibilities, relative importance and finally, restoration and conservation ethics,
both of which are depicted on the model on the screen. You can see the linear model on
the left hand side and the section, section 6, the weighing options is highlighted on
the right, and they say that within the weighing options these ten features apply. To quote
the group, " A discrepancy therefore can only be determined with extensive knowledge of
the work on the one hand and investigations of the physical condition of the work on the
other hand." The other piece of research we came across,
which we thought was particularly relevant was work by [?]. His evaluation of the knowledge
is central to effective conservation. He goes on to say that effective conservation needs
the understanding of what constitutes a discipline base for conservation and assessing the causes
and effect that develop between the philosophy of intervention and the practice. He notes
a number of attributes that are needed to be present for good conservation to take place.
These are the presence of a community of scholars, a traditional history of inquiry, a model
of inquiry that defines how data is collected, an ability to define what constitutes new
knowledge and effective communication network. Clearly the level of knowledge that is present
about an object is essential to effective conservation. The contemporary art model cannot
be relied upon to govern interventions to treat outsider art because, as we have seen
earlier, certain conditions are different. These two factors cannot be viewed as being
equal if you've considered the modern art sector, there is clearly a body of knowledge,
communications network, community of scholars associated with it. This is not the case with
outsider art. Recent researches researched by Davies and
[?] around a definition of outsider art highlights the emerging nature of the sector. Indeed,
Davies notes that although there is a growing curatorial interest in outsider art there
has been no articles addressing this topic in either the British Journal of Aesthetics
or the Journal of Aesthetics in Art Criticism over the past 25 years. Modern art appreciation
is considerably more mature, and this has implications for conservers trying to develop
and implementing proper treatment plans today. In trying to adopt the model to guide outsider
art interventions, what became apparent to us was there are two clear areas of difference.
Firstly, the attribution of meaning to an object is not straightforward when dealing
with outsider art, and secondly, there is rarely complete knowledge of the work being
treated. A next step in trying to research a model governing outsider art intervention
was to compare contemporary art or insider art as you'd call it in this light, and outsider
art. Conservators are not interested in labels of certain types of art or artists, but rather
with an understanding of detecting materials and how these are used to express their art
and how that result articulates the meaning they are trying to communicate.
Figure 16 illustrates the difference in the literature and also the similarities of insider
art versus outsider art. Indeed, the meaning of both types of art can be contrastingly
similar and dissimilar at the same time. It is possible to have two similar appearing
works of contemporary art image and an outsider artwork who are trying to communicate two
very different messages. We came across an example of this with the Dixon. On the surface
were some insects and the removal of these was considered. Curiously, they appeared to
be imbedded within the pigment. Insects within frames are not uncommon in works of this period
and particularly for works of art of this size. But the removal of the insects was questioned.
Later it was discovered James Dixon created these works outdoors. The insects were more
than likely to have been the end result of this. The removal of them would have been
wrong as it would have removed something that was integral to the history of the images.
Another example we encountered within the literature was the works of James Hampton.
As I'm sure you all know, Hampton was inspired to build a throne for the second coming of
Christ. He gave it its proper title, The Throne of the Third Heaven with the Nations' Millennium
General Assembly, and he dedicated 14 years of his life to its creation. Found after his
death, it consisted of alters, pulpits, winged objects, and 25 heavenly crowns. But the thing
that interested us in reading about the object in the literature was the 177 found objects
which he wrapped in silver and gold foil recycled from disused wine bottles and included within
the sculpture. After it was found, the sculpture became entered
into the collection of the Smithsonian Institute for the National Museums of America. What
was critical to us was what happened to the sculpture after it had been acquired by the
Smithsonian. Would the gold foil be replaced whenever it became tarnished or would it be
preserved as it was when it was discovered? Either intervention is a valid conservation
approach, but they depend on how the object is viewed, essentially the meaning that is
attributed to it. Clearly, in both examples the meaning drives the condition. If the Dixon
insects were regarded as having landed on the work when it was being created outdoors,
they are an integral part of it, if not, then they are debris which can be removed. If the
Hampton piece is viewed in a narrow conservation focus then the emphasis will be on preserving
the current foil on the 177 objects. If a wider view is taken then it may be possible
to remove the old tarnished foil and replace it with new or currently recycled foil. What
is important here though, is the present and future condition of the object is dependent
on the meaning attributed to the work. This has implications for its condition. Future
condition is dependent on the meaning attributed it and this has implications for the model
governing interventions. Earlier we have seen that knowledge of materials
and a category to which the materials being conserved belong to, is essential to conservation.
A complete knowledge of the object may be the ideal but it rarely happens. Conservers
rely on the knowledge of others of a range of allied professionals including curators,
academics, owners, collectors, the artists, and friends of the artists to complete their
knowledge. While faced with a deficit they will revert to their own instinct as conservers
and their experience to enable the best decision for the care of the work to be made. The extent
to which they would have to rely on this instinct is logically related to the level of maturity
within the sector. Put simply, if there is a good school of scholarship, a network of
communication and ability to find to new knowledge, then a conservers instinct should be relied
upon less. This knowledge gap and conservers reliance on their own experience, is one of
the key differences between the model for conserving contemporary art as opposed to
outsider art. If it wasn't known that the Dixons were painted outdoors, would the insects
have been removed? Possibly. The one thing that might have caused us to question this
was fact that the insects were somewhat imbedded within the pigment.
Conservers are conscious of this knowledge gap and it is reflected in the developing
understanding and the continuing philosophical debate around the nature and appreciation
of collections. Conservation ethics and theory have been challenged, questioned and reformed
over the past decade. New ethos of common sense intervention has been promoted in the
face of the growing realization that the old rules of intervention were lacking and inadequate
when faced with rapidly developing conservation challenges.
And so to propose a decision making model. The argument that the meaning adopted by the
conservers conserving outsider art objects has an impact on how the condition is determined
must be reflective of the model. The meaning is more dominant and this has a direct inference
on the assessed condition of the piece being treated. By adjusting the model and making
it more linear, placing the meaning over the condition, this assumption can be incorporated
within it. Meaning must come first for the condition of an object when treating an outsider
work of art. Modern art model places the condition and meaning of an object on a similar plane
giving each process the same value. Indeed, the working group of the Foundation for the
Conservation of Modern Art noted in the original [?] model the emphasis on objects' meaning
is generally unambiguous. Perhaps there is a relationship there, as the outsider art
sector continues to mature, the model that we propose could move to replicate the contemporary
art model which in time may move to replicate the original [?] model.
What if there is no meaning or what if meaning in relation to an outsider art piece being
conserved, is ambiguous? Then clearly there is a knowledge gap, and this knowledge gap
will be assessed by the conserver, and the conserver will rely upon their own knowledge
and instinct, their experience, to formulate a sufficient and right policy for the conservation
of that work of art in that instance, being conscious that the meaning may emerge in time,
or the meaning may never be determined but their experience would be relied upon in this
instance. And we have put knowledge gap into one of the discrepancies, and we feel that
it is a key factor in considering decisions and making decisions but intervening to conserve
outsider works of art as opposed to the contemporary field where the knowledge is far greater.
And so to our conclusions and recommendations. The main conclusion we would have will be
that the area is a fascinating one for research, which holds huge prospect for topics and for
advancement. We found it wonderfully enjoyable working within the area, and it has forced
us to question not just how we intervene for outsider art but also how we treat more traditional
works of art on paper, be it contemporary art or traditional works. Our recommendation
would be to use the model. I would be delighted for any feedback you may have in relation
to this. Outsider art seems to be an area which is growing and which is growing interest
in. We hope that the model can contribute in some way to that development. Any feedback
you may have we would be grateful to receive. My name, Patrick McBride and my contact detail
is up there on screen currently, as is my colleague, Rebecca deBut.
Before I finish, I'd like to say a very big thank you to Jason Church for all his efforts
in relation to organizing today. It was an inspired choice for a conference, and I hope
you are all reaping the rewards and the benefit of that idea and of his efforts. From my point
of view and my colleague Rebecca, we'd like to say a very big thank you to Jason.
Thank you for listening this afternoon, it's been a very strange experience dictating this
and seeing it travel across the Atlantic via the internet to then possibly hear your voice
on the other end as we listen to this again later on today. But we trust you have enjoyed
it and thank you for your time and attention.