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 create 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.
