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Journalism of Courage
Applause and abuse have greeted the unveiling of the restored Last Supper on May 24. This was expected. In recent years, especially after Prof James Beck of Columbia University went on trial in Italy for questioning the artistic legitimacy of restoration practice, the limits of restoration work and its ethics have become important issues in the art world. So much so that Beck has actually initiated the founding of ArtWatch International, a body which concerns itself with such issues.
The Last Supper restoration has been on for the last 20 years and is hopefully the last of a series of restoration work which began certainly in the 18th Century and quot;probablyquot;, to quote Kenneth Clarke, quot;several times beforequot;. In an essay written for the Leonardo exhibition New Delhi and Mumbai, 1986 catalogue, the chief restorer Pinin Brambilla Bercilon has listed the restoration attempts from 1726 to 1945. The interesting point here is that succeeding restorers have overturned their predecessors8217; work. Obviously Beck8217;sconcern is not at all misplaced.
Leaving aside the more weighty question of the limits of restoration, let us turn to the issue why the Last Supper had to be restored, because this has a serious bearing on much of Indian modern art.
Broadly speaking, a work of art requires restoration because of damages caused by either external or internal causes, or by a combination of both. In the Last Supper both the causes were operative: damages caused during the Napoleanic wars and World War II being the external causes, and Leonardo8217;s experiments in painting providing the more fatal internal cause.
Though there are very few paintings and no sculptures by Leonardo, he was revered, then and now, because he epitomised all the qualities of the true Renaissance man. The ill-fated technique which he used to paint the Last Supper arose from his desire to perfect a medium which would allow the artist freedom of time to contemplate in the midst of creation.
In the traditional method of fresco painting, the pigment onceapplied to the lime-plaster cannot be changed without damaging the ground. This means that every detail of the painting has to be worked out in complete detail before the paint can be put down. Leonardo8217;s innovation was to use pigments with a quot;medium containing oil and varnishquot; instead of the traditional method of pigments ground in water.
While the painting itself won enormous praise both during and after completion 1499, within a very short time the new techniques8217;s inherent instability became alarmingly visible and was made worse by the dampness of the wall which served as the support.
What remains of the Last Supper indicates that the visual impact of this work is essentially orchestrated through movement. Leonardo8217;s Last Supper is a composition of four groups of three disciples each with Christ in the centre making the table in the painting as much a part of the dining room on whose far wall it was painted. Yet each of these distinct groupings is linked to each other by gestures and movements, somuch so that the painting8217;s visual unity which should have been hampered by the group arrangement is enhanced to create a sense of great drama and passion.
Given the complexity of the treatment, both in terms of rejecting the easy route of repeating the historically-sanctioned method of representation and in working out a new way of executing a subject familiar to everyone in the Christian world, Leonardo understandably had good reasons to try a technique which gave him the freedom of time to contemplate in midst of creation. The other equally important reasons were that this technique allowed this genius with many interests presumably the time to pursue other activities simultaneously and also satisfied his in-born instinct to experiment.
The world has not seen a Leonardo either before or after him. Therefore to speak of Indian modern artists in this piece would appear totally inappropriate. However, within the context of the restoration controversy it is pertinent because of the mainly internal problemswhich are causing near irreparable damages to quite a few works of well-known Indian painters. For instance, it is an undisputable fact that most of Amrita Sher-Gil8217;s oil paintings unlike say Ravi Varma8217;s are in a state of disrepair. While it is the fashion of the day to blame the NGMA the principal holder of Sher-Gil8217;s for this, the truth is that it is the careless technique of the painter which lies at the root of the problem.
One would imagine that given the progress in art education painters who began their work after Sher-Gil would be aware of the problem. Even a cursory examination of the paintings in the privately-owned Jehangir Nicholson collection, exhibited recently at the NGMA, reveals that the optimism is misplaced. While some of the paintings on view had serious structural flaws which should not have appeared given their relatively young age, a few are coming off the supports. In most cases the problems have been caused because the artists were either clueless about techniques or carelessabout the craft side of their calling in their unhealthy impatience to beat time and meet the market demand.
Leonardo8217;s problem was just the opposite: it stemmed from his scientific curiosity and his desire for a technique which gave him more time; but which ultimately failed to withstand the test of time. Strangely enough, the works in the Nicholson Collection which seem to have passed this test are the works of Ara who did not go to an art school. Perhaps having an art education in India is not entirely an advantage after all.
