Do We See What We Know or Do We Know What We See? Conservation of Oil Paintings in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Abstract

Some important issues in relation to the conservation, treatment and display of paintings at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam over the last 25 years are discussed. Examples of the treatment include key works by Kazimir Malevich, Modern American painters from the 1950s-1970s and Cobra artists. The challenges for conservators and criteria for decisions about treatment and display at the museum included reviewing former conservation treatments and the question of material authenticity. The discovery of water sensitivity in oil paint used by artists including Jasper Johns and Karel Appel in the 1950s and 1960s has had an impact in relation to cleaning these works. The relationship between painting technique and paint quality is discussed in relation to the works of Karel Appel and Asger Jorn. These studies have led to the characterisation of novel degradation phenomena and technical evidence has helped to predict water sensitivity and inform more specific cleaning methods. Despite these advances not every work of art can been treated and sometimes we have to except that ‘less is more’.