The Subjective Element in Conservation

Abstract

This article sets out two contrasting conservation theories and their historical context in Western attitudes to the past. The first is exemplified by restoration practices seen in Europe from the late eighteenth century. This
is the period of an aesthetic discourse known as neoclassicism. The guiding philosophy directed that classical antiquities should be restored back to the ancient classical models of art, which were thought to represent the
most perfect expression of human achievement: emulation by later societies was therefore a means of perfecting themselves. This gave
restoration a social purpose and recognition as a public good. The tension between the need to remain faithful to ancient forms and personal
artistic expression has remained a subject of debate until the present day.
By contrast early twenty-first century conservation philosophy has been more recently shaped by some key projects executed during the 1970s. The work of the architectural firm Venturi and Rauch is representative of the wider rejection of total restoration in the postmodern period, and of the search to strike a new balance between fidelity to a lost original and personal expression. Instead of trying to restore ruins by completing them, many postmodernists attempted to present them as incomplete wholes, expressing the missing parts as absences. Personal interpretation became a means not only to participate in the contingent completion of historic objects
through story telling, but also a way for people to edify themselves through contact with historic objects in a critical, rather than passive, way.