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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Using X-rays and Silicon Valley technology, conservators have discovered a previously unknown painting behind the artist's "Rue de Montmartre."
Sep 14, 2004 | Thanks to TV shows like "Antiques Roadshow," many of us believe there's treasure inside our junk. One need only tear apart Uncle Henry's paint-by-numbers clown portraits to discover -- sacre bleu! -- a first draft of the Declaration of Independence!
We know it's a fantasy, but what is less obvious is how destruction sets these discoveries in motion. The bulldozers, the jackhammers, the eager boxes awaiting the garage sale stand at the ready when -- wait a minute! -- what's that odd glittery thing sticking up through the layers?
Now imagine a scenario in which the hidden treasure lurks within a greater masterpiece, a priceless painting by Pablo Picasso, for instance. On Sept. 14, the show "A Hidden Picasso" opens for a two-month exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao, in Bilbao, Spain. There on display (thanks to digital technology) will be a full-color version of a painting that Picasso made in 1900, and discarded. He then reused the canvas, painting atop it the famous "Rue de Montmartre."
Will Shank, the show's San Francisco curator, has traced the evolution of theme and subject from the discarded work to a painting art historians consider to be Picasso's first masterpiece, "Le Moulin de la Galette," also painted in 1900, but on a canvas four times the size of "Rue de Montmartre."
Yet the first composition of cancan dancers and nightclub goers (far more detailed than a working sketch) remains covered, as it has been for a century and will doubtless remain. It's a sleight of hand that turns philosopher Walter Benjamin's famous dictum "Art in the era of mechanical reproduction will lose its power to awe" on its head.
The appearance of an unknown work by Picasso will not only add a new chapter to reams of existing scholarship, it will also offer the public a rare glimpse of the craft performed by conservation scientists, whose role in the modern museum is as crucial -- and as low-profile -- as that of the legions of assistants who once painted alongside the masters.
Museums deal in laboriously authenticated rarities, taking care to weed out the forgeries and fakes. No one ever scrapes off the top of something valuable in search of a mere preliminary sketch underneath. The rare exception occurs when a second artist has made a later change to a painting or statue. For the opening of the new Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 1998, for example, conservators were working on a 1335 icon by Bernardo Daddi that featured a portrait of the Madonna, to which a 16th century artist had added a picture of the baby Jesus. After much research and discussion, the conservation department carefully excised the added image to restore the icon to its original form.
Knowing these protocols poses the question: Exactly who is allowed to poke around with Picasso? How could you even find an image sandwiched between layers of paint? And how, like a magician snatching a tablecloth from a table laid with crystal and china, did someone figure out a way to pull forth the image?
