restoration – FTN-blog

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Possibly, the Stedelijk Museum had the most important Barnett Newman painting in their collection until……Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III was destroyed by a mentally unstable artist . The painting was cut several times, over almost its total length of 5 meters with a Stanley knife. Destroying the painting completely.

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There was an attempt to restore the painting by Goldreyer, but the result was just an overpainted painting without any nuances in the monochrome colors. This restoration resulted in a lawsuit in which there had to be decided who was responsible. Goldreyer claimed 250 million with the Amsterdam Municipality. The result Goldreyer had to be compensated and the Stedelijk Museum “lost” its beautiful iconic colourfield painting because of the bad restoration. The last few years the painting Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III is on and off on show again in the Stedelijk, but unfortunately the restoration has devalued it tremendously in a financial and artistic way. www.ftn-books.com has the Stedelijk Museum catalogue ( a.o. Newman titles ) for the Barnett Newman exhibition for sale.

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There is an article on Newman and its destruction in the Stedelijk by the New York times over here:

Sandberg as a curator admired Matisse as an artist and Sandberg as an artist must have been inspired by Matisse, when he made his famous paper cuttings because of his illness. Matisse himself called it “painting with scissors”. Could this have been the inspiration for Sandberg to use modelled torn papers for his book designs? Because these torn pieces of paper together with the lay-outs made the Sandberg publications highly personal and iconic. There is of course a difference, but the period in which these works of art existed is the same so it is not unlikely that his paper torn pieces were inspired by Matisse. The designs by Sandberg are now in, what are considered, classic publications and now used worldwide as examples of great design .

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Printed on paper, they easily survived 50 years or longer, however it is totally different with the Matisse cut-outs. These have to be restored now to conserve them for future generations and i know of two projects which have taken place in the last 10 years. There is of course the large cut out composition LA PERRUCHE ET LA SIRENE 1952/53 from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam collection which was totally restored and made future proof for the decades to come and there was a project in the Beyeler in which one could follow the progress of the restoration /conservation of a large canvas titled ACANTHES, 1953.

Both works are on show again in all their splendor and show exactly why Matisse is possibly the greatest artist from last century. Great art in great museums and for those that want to read on both artists…visit www.ftn-books.com for some nice publications.

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Tag: restoration

Barnett Newman (1905-1970)

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Matisse and Sandberg

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