Cupid, Canvas, Circle, Plane: Conservation and Conceptual Fine Art Practice

Abstract

ABSTRACT A selectively cleaned oil painting, Cupid asleep in a garland of flowers, circle of Mario di Fiori (1603–73, GV43) was installed alongside a series of photographic works by artist Sophy Rickett. Cupid and the Curious Moaning of Kenfig Burrows was an exhibition at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, UK, that featured this partial restoration undertaken as a conservation-intervention following discussions between the artist and painting conservator Jenny Williamson. Rickett and Williamson wish to explore this conservation-intervention as a methodologically oriented dialogue that mirrors, reflects and represents the similarities as well as some of the tensions, between the distinct, but related, fields of fine art practice and conservation. In conceptualising and then carrying out this conservation-intervention, a new artwork has been created. They envisage this methodological approach as a strategy encompassing principles and ethics that is replicable in other contexts and at other institutions. Through this conservation-intervention, the authors consider the role of the artist’s original intention, truth, meaning, aesthetics and ethics in the field of conservation, and explore how subjective, affective processes are a part of more objective, finite, scientific ones. This version of Cupid, in his fragile, temporary, incomplete state highlights the subjectivity, contingency and to an extent, arbitrariness that is a feature of much conservation practice.