Art restoration efforts are often better known for the controversy and arguments they generate than for successfully preserving the original artists' intents. Everything from cleaning to repainting can alter original details, subtly change colors, or, in the hands of amateurs, turn out absolutely tragic.
What if restoration didn't require retouching a single element of the artist's original paint strokes and carvings? MIT's Media Lab, in partnership with Swiss researchers and the Harvard Art Museums, found a perfect art restoration situation that could benefit from a no-touch solution: the university's long-hidden murals made by modern art legend Mark Rothko.
In a report from NPR affiliate WBUR, museum and MIT staff discussed a unique light projector solution to restoring the Rothko series. The five-mural collection was originally installed in 1963 in a particularly sunny dining room with a view of the Charles River, and Rothko donated the pieces under the condition that they'd remain in that room with the curtains drawn. That didn't happen, leading to a wealth of sun damage, not to mention stains from dining room partiers. The university chose to put the murals into hiding to preserve what little of the faded details—and the original "deep crimson, plum" color scheme—remained.
Prior attempts to clean and restore the murals were frowned upon by the Rothko Foundation, but MIT's efforts have elected not to restretch the canvas or touch up the paint, the latter of which originally blended hard-to-replicate elements like whole eggs and animal glue. Instead, Harvard's next presentation of the Rothko murals will benefit from light projection. A lengthy color-mapping analysis has informed the points, hues, and intensity at which "transparent light" will shine on the murals.
Rothko in particular seems like a perfect case study for such a restoration tactic, as his simple, bold designs focused so heavily on specific colors and intense, deliberate brush strokes. MIT's method, which is still being developed and tweaked, may very well reclaim the former without altering the latter. The public will have to wait until this fall to see the results.
Mark Rothko's son Christopher Rothko has already declared his support. "My father’s brush strokes are still there,” the younger Rothko said to WBUR. “And the texture of the paint, it’s all still there.”
Update: WBUR provided a color-corrected photo of the Rothko mural to Ars, which has been updated above.