Here is a bit of an older piece from last year, inspired by a post from the Mucha Foundation on Facebook
A close up of a woman from behind. She wears a pale red-violet coat, draped off her shoulders. Behind her, we see a man looking beyond the frame, another woman’s head can be seen in front of the first woman. As we look closer at the primary subject’s coat, a series of craquelure—a dense network of cracks formed on the surface of a painting—is present in the egg tempera of the canvas; this is not uncommon for a painting with tempera, but it is fairly uncommon for paintings not even a century old.
Unrolled in early 2017 in Japan 5,630 (or so) miles away from their rightful home, the art world was greeted by a conservator's greatest fear, easily avoided damages to works of art. Detailed photos of the twenty canvases of the Slovanská epopej (Slav Epic) were posted on social media documenting the damage, for the world to see.
Another detail on another canvas; this image mostly depicting snowy earth. In the top right corner a man’s legs are seen. He is wearing brown pants and what appears to be leather shoes. In the snow, we can see even deeper craquelure, dark grey on the white modeling of the snow. At times, it looks like portions of the paint have chipped off the canvas. Upon re-reading this description, I cannot help but disassociate from the fact that I am describing a series of paintings that are not even ninety years old—is this even craquelure? The writings on craquelure describe how paint from various times and places age over time; for instance, a pattern usually ascribed to Italy is a series of small rectangular blocks. The damage in these images cannot be aligned with one of these patterns attributed to a specific region.
The survival of the Slovanská epopej is in peril, being destroyed in the name of access—even if that access destroys the beauty of the work. The Slovanská epopej has been owned by the city of Prague since around 1928. Alfons Mucha and Charles Crane gifted the twenty monumental-sized canvases to the city because they believed that the paintings that depicted the history of the Slavic people belonged to all Slavs; just like the history they depict could not be owned by one person. Having gathered dust in odd corners of Czechoslovakia after Mucha’s death in 1939, the epopej eventually found itself in various galleries and was once again able to be viewed by all the Slavs who, in Mucha’s mind, were the rightful owners.
A small segment of a hand clutching a stack of papers appears in the top right of the frame. The majority of the frame is modeled buff-colored paint, a field of some sort. Green shrubbery dominates the top fifth of the painting. The buff-colored ground features dense collections of this cracked and aged paint. Did the rolling up and transportation of these incredibly delicate works cause this damage?
At the end of 2016, the Prague government removed the paintings from display to prep them for a world tour, in the name of allowing all to see the amazing works. On one hand, this unparalleled access for the entire world seemed magical and fulfilled many dreams, but then the conservators came forward. Many specialists said because of the size and delicacy of the paintings, moving the work could destroy them. They urged the city to change the plan and house them permanently in Prague where no more damage could occur. But the city refused. Some in the arts community claim that Prague was more interested in how much money they could make from the tour than the survival of the paintings—the very paintings that they had hidden in a church outside of Prague for four decades instead of hanging them for all to see as they had promised. The Mucha family attempted to sue, claiming that moving the canvases would be a violation of the city’s contract with Mucha and Crane, and lost. The canvases were taken off their stretcher bars, rolled up, and shipped off to Japan. And now, we can see that the capitalist display value of the work is more valuable to an owner than the survival of the work. Now that I have begun to ponder the economics of art, I am flooded with doubts in regards to art’s purpose in life.