Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DURARE (DYNAMICS OF THE DURABLE. A History of Making Things Last in the Visual and Decorative Arts.)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-09-01 al 2023-02-28
Our cultural heritage comprises many art objects that are hundreds and sometimes thousands of years old. How did they survive this long? While many factors determine if and how art can be preserved, one has fundamentally impacted its long-term survival: The desire to make and own objects that withstand the test of time. The members of the DURARE project study the impact of this ambition of artisan’s and patron’s to craft, own and theorize durable objects on the long-term development of the visual and decorative arts along three key objectives:
(1) The role of durability in the development of art and craftsmanship
We creates a synthetic overview of durability practices in a wide variety of arts, including, but not limited to, painting, pigments, dyes and surface coatings, ceramics and glass, textiles, woodworking, metalworking, and the lapidary arts. To this end, we study guild regulations, historical recipes, artists’ handbooks, books of secrets, and surviving art objects. Studying the history of durability in art also requires hands-on experience with some of the materials and processes used to make and explore permanence. DURARE therefore uses an innovative methodology, combining historical research into art objects and textual sources with hands-on reconstructions of materials and techniques.
(2) Variations and concepts of durability in art and patronage
Beyond how the durable was made, DURARE maps the social practices influencing durability; an artisan producing a work for the art market was faced with a different challenge for durability than an artisan making something for a private commissioner who would determine the materials and processes used for crafting. And while guilds typically controlled the materials and processes of artistic practice to ensure a durable end-result, the academies took a more theoretical interest in the durability of art, sometimes at the expense of what was materially durable.
(3) The impact of artistic expertise in durable materials on the history of knowledge
Here, we show how the history of durability in art influenced theories about mineral hardness, the formation of stones, the unreactive nature of gold, the permanence of colors, etc. The team investigates how the making of long-lasting objects resulted in new knowledge about stability and aging and triggered fundamental knowledge exchanges between artistic and learned traditions on the subject of durability.
With today’s concerns about the future of our planet, to live and act “sustainably” has become a fundamental societal issue. DURARE considers durability a key practice within sustainability frameworks from an as of yet unexplored perspective. Rather than focusing on how materials and objects can be long-lasting after the fact of their creation, it considers how the initial desire for, and continuous efforts to produce objects that have the ability to last, stimulated materials knowledge about aging and stability and, in the field of cultural heritage conservation, shaped ideas about what it means for materials and objects to be durable.
(1) The role of durability in the development of art and craftsmanship
We creates a synthetic overview of durability practices in a wide variety of arts, including, but not limited to, painting, pigments, dyes and surface coatings, ceramics and glass, textiles, woodworking, metalworking, and the lapidary arts. To this end, we study guild regulations, historical recipes, artists’ handbooks, books of secrets, and surviving art objects. Studying the history of durability in art also requires hands-on experience with some of the materials and processes used to make and explore permanence. DURARE therefore uses an innovative methodology, combining historical research into art objects and textual sources with hands-on reconstructions of materials and techniques.
(2) Variations and concepts of durability in art and patronage
Beyond how the durable was made, DURARE maps the social practices influencing durability; an artisan producing a work for the art market was faced with a different challenge for durability than an artisan making something for a private commissioner who would determine the materials and processes used for crafting. And while guilds typically controlled the materials and processes of artistic practice to ensure a durable end-result, the academies took a more theoretical interest in the durability of art, sometimes at the expense of what was materially durable.
(3) The impact of artistic expertise in durable materials on the history of knowledge
Here, we show how the history of durability in art influenced theories about mineral hardness, the formation of stones, the unreactive nature of gold, the permanence of colors, etc. The team investigates how the making of long-lasting objects resulted in new knowledge about stability and aging and triggered fundamental knowledge exchanges between artistic and learned traditions on the subject of durability.
With today’s concerns about the future of our planet, to live and act “sustainably” has become a fundamental societal issue. DURARE considers durability a key practice within sustainability frameworks from an as of yet unexplored perspective. Rather than focusing on how materials and objects can be long-lasting after the fact of their creation, it considers how the initial desire for, and continuous efforts to produce objects that have the ability to last, stimulated materials knowledge about aging and stability and, in the field of cultural heritage conservation, shaped ideas about what it means for materials and objects to be durable.
We built a team comprising of technical art historians (one of whom is also a practicing visual artist) and a cultural anthropologist. We work collaboratively across disciplines with chemists, physicists, geoscientists, artists, conservation scientists and designers to connect our historical research to contemporary issues of durability in art and science.
Making Scents of the Past
This project (collaboration with Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), explored the problem of durability through the historical reconstruction of a seventeenth-century scent with contemporary perfumers, historians, literary scholars and neuroscientists. It showed how historical recipes and their re-enactment help study past and sometimes forgotten artistic materials and methods and make them relevant for contemporary artistic practice, in this case that of the perfumer. We presented it to the Dutch minister of education Robbert Dijkgraaf (8 April 2022) at the exhibition opening of "Constantijn Huygens. Geuren en Beelden".
Durability and Binding Materials
DURARE also explores how “binding materials” were used to give durability to art objects. Binding materials are, for instance, coatings used to protect surfaces from outside influences, or the great variety of adhesives used to put things together (ranging from pigments to wood). As part of the “Gold & Mercury | Metals in Transit” workshop, we organized a hands-on workshop that explored medieval glues for gold leaf.
Colour and Change
The human search for long-lasting colors is key to understanding the history of durability in art. We explored such questions of color changeability and stability in in a hands-on workshop on lichen-based colorants, in the Making Carbon Project (see below) and in collaboration with ERC-projects AlchemEast (G.A. 724914) and UseFool (G.A. 101043939) in an ongoing workshop series on organic yellow dyes.
Making Carbon: A Materials Workshop Series on Durability (2022 – 2023)
This workshop series explores how can we can open up a conversation about materials to humanists, scientists, and artists through open-ended and creative engagement with carbon-based materials, such as plastics, dyes, and clays. In collaboration with The Utrecht Young Academy, “Making Carbon” facilitates multidisciplinary problem-solving with “carbon” as a lens for understanding the (un)sustainability of a range of human activities that aim to make things last. In so doing, we make explicit and evaluate multidisciplinary visions of the future, the role of carbon in these imaginaries, and for whom we are pursuing its many durabilities.
Making Scents of the Past
This project (collaboration with Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), explored the problem of durability through the historical reconstruction of a seventeenth-century scent with contemporary perfumers, historians, literary scholars and neuroscientists. It showed how historical recipes and their re-enactment help study past and sometimes forgotten artistic materials and methods and make them relevant for contemporary artistic practice, in this case that of the perfumer. We presented it to the Dutch minister of education Robbert Dijkgraaf (8 April 2022) at the exhibition opening of "Constantijn Huygens. Geuren en Beelden".
Durability and Binding Materials
DURARE also explores how “binding materials” were used to give durability to art objects. Binding materials are, for instance, coatings used to protect surfaces from outside influences, or the great variety of adhesives used to put things together (ranging from pigments to wood). As part of the “Gold & Mercury | Metals in Transit” workshop, we organized a hands-on workshop that explored medieval glues for gold leaf.
Colour and Change
The human search for long-lasting colors is key to understanding the history of durability in art. We explored such questions of color changeability and stability in in a hands-on workshop on lichen-based colorants, in the Making Carbon Project (see below) and in collaboration with ERC-projects AlchemEast (G.A. 724914) and UseFool (G.A. 101043939) in an ongoing workshop series on organic yellow dyes.
Making Carbon: A Materials Workshop Series on Durability (2022 – 2023)
This workshop series explores how can we can open up a conversation about materials to humanists, scientists, and artists through open-ended and creative engagement with carbon-based materials, such as plastics, dyes, and clays. In collaboration with The Utrecht Young Academy, “Making Carbon” facilitates multidisciplinary problem-solving with “carbon” as a lens for understanding the (un)sustainability of a range of human activities that aim to make things last. In so doing, we make explicit and evaluate multidisciplinary visions of the future, the role of carbon in these imaginaries, and for whom we are pursuing its many durabilities.
DURARE pioneers the comprehensive study of the impact of the artisan and patron’s ambitions to own, craft, and theorize durable objects on the long-term development of the visual and decorative arts in the West. We combine rigorous research into sources on art technology and historically informed practical reconstructions, a novel approach, which examines history through hands-on experiments with historical materials and techniques. This method results in a radically new understanding of the history of durability in art and shows how it has influenced or may inspire contemporary thinking and ideas about durability in art as part of the problem of cultural heritage preservation, contemporary art production, and the sustainability of our planet. To this end, the team works across disciplines:
1. We consider durability in art an artistic and social phenomenon that fundamentally connects the history of art to the history of science.
2. We integrate methods from art history and the history of science with sets of historically informed laboratory experiments—an experimental method more typically associated with today’s scientific practice and conservation and restoration.
3. We work with contemporary artists and designers and analyze with them the role of durability in contemporary artistic practice.
4. We use our historical perspective on durability in art to open up discussions about durability today within scientific sustainability frameworks, heritage conservation and contemporary artistic practice and design.
We shared (or will share) output in visual blogposts, scientific papers, a monographic study, an exhibition and through collaborative material engagement workshops (see e.g. the Making Carbon project above).
1. We consider durability in art an artistic and social phenomenon that fundamentally connects the history of art to the history of science.
2. We integrate methods from art history and the history of science with sets of historically informed laboratory experiments—an experimental method more typically associated with today’s scientific practice and conservation and restoration.
3. We work with contemporary artists and designers and analyze with them the role of durability in contemporary artistic practice.
4. We use our historical perspective on durability in art to open up discussions about durability today within scientific sustainability frameworks, heritage conservation and contemporary artistic practice and design.
We shared (or will share) output in visual blogposts, scientific papers, a monographic study, an exhibition and through collaborative material engagement workshops (see e.g. the Making Carbon project above).