November 12, 2020

At least in art restoration, you can see what's gone wrong when things have been handed over to people who don't know what they're doing.


Strangely, it doesn't just look awful. It looks awful in the same way that the most famous botched restoration looks awful: If I wanted to create a conspiracy theory, I would say that there's a secret sect that worships a god that looks like that — one eye up, the other eye down, mouth like a sucker (or sex doll). 

35 comments:

mikee said...

Look at "primitive" art, from stone age cave murals to Appalachian folk paintings. There is your basis for these restoration calamities. People untrained in art, i.e., untrained in perspective, unable to perform realistic reproduction of faces, doing restoration work make stuff that looks like this. It isn't a mystery, except as to why the untrained restorers were allowed to proceed with the attempts to fix artworks.

Some of my favorite paintings hang framed on my walls. They were done by my kids in elementary school, and include portraits of pets, landscapes, animals, and even my wife and I on our wedding day (done from a photo, with good line drawings of my tux and her gown, but very little in the way of faces).

Dave Begley said...

Here's the real issue: Who hired these people?

Didn't they look at their prior restorations?

John henry said...

Seinfeld!

It looks like the picture Of George in the skin cancer episode.

John Henry

Temujin said...

Experts!

They are all around us.

Matt said...

Amazing! Looks like a character on Gumby and Pokey.

MayBee said...

Nothing brings me more joy than these two things.

tim maguire said...

The sculpture, at least, looks like it can be rescued. Based on the picture, the new mortar is slapped on top of the old so it might be possible to chip off and start over (if it really needs to be restored at all).

tim maguire said...

Did the person doing the restoration think they did a good job? Are they proud of their work and deeply hurt by the reaction?

Birkel said...

I would say it is a conspiracy to get Brian Stelter's face onto works of art.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

If Joe Biden did that, the media would insist those restorations are amazing and saying otherwise is disinformation.

cacimbo said...

I still laugh out loud over Monkey Christ. But Monkey Christ was understandable.It was just a woman in a tiny village doing her best to maintain her church.The city hired someone do do that to the statue.

If you click on the link in the twitter post, they claim the botched statue head resembles Trump.Trump is a God to them, a terrible omnipresence that can not be escaped.

Darrell said...

That's the view of humanity through the eyes of the Left.

Ann Althouse said...

Another conspiracy theory is that it was done on purpose to attract tourists to the town. That worked in the "Monkey Christ" case, by accident, so why not try it again? Just because you have to sacrifice a seemingly worthy item of art? They may need the money.

robother said...

Madonna and Son now resemble each other, in the Spanish Cult of Grandma Moses.

Matt said...

Birkel at 8:17 - LOLOLOLOLOL! You win the internet today.

daskol said...

They should have hired Gabriel Allon.

Andrew said...

You forgot the "Picasso" tag.

That's honestly the name that came to mind with the statue photo. Or perhaps Miro. This is Spain, after all.

It wasn't a botch, it was a modernization.

chuck said...

There are a bunch of trickster gods, maybe they got together in retirement.

Whiskeybum said...

The botched art restorations are nothing compared to the global cabal of 'journalists' trying their damnedest to crown Joe Biden the emperor of America. I foolishly clicked over to the Guardian article linked in the tweet, and at the bottom of the article (like a last paragraph of the article instead of a separate item), there is a statement that Joe Biden is the new President and Orange Man very bad for challenging that. Incredible what a snow job we are under now!

I'm also seeing this on YouTube videos on any subject that could be peripherally related to the election... a statement that AP had declared Biden the winner an a button to click to see more. Don't listen to these experts on YouTube - just click over to our coronation article on Joe!!

Browndog said...

This never would have happened under Franco.

Portlandia: We have the best restoration artists in the World. Because of jail.

Nichevo said...

I've got one for you: doesn't this remind you of Picasso a little? Without his skill, obviously, but in his distortions of humans there is an echo in the work of these amateurs.

Frankly, Althouse, with your taste for what is bad, I wonder you don't like these. Maybe you do and we're not parsing you hard enough.

LordSomber said...

"We always liked Picasso anyway."

Howard said...

These restorations make the features more rounded whereas Picasso seems to prefer angularity and sharpness perhaps related to and influenced by his dabbling in Cubism.

Bilwick said...

I attend mass at the church of Monkey Christ. Instead of communion hosts, the priest, Father Zippy, hands out slices of banana. "Do this in memory of Cheetah."

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Oh no, Mr Bill!

NorthOfTheOneOhOne aka Doug Emhoff's Pimp Hand said...

Dave Begley said...

Didn't they look at their prior restorations?

Having worked very closely with a group of Spaniards I can authoritatively say; "No".

rcocean said...

Don't forget that Spanish Leftists murdered 10,000 Priests, Nuns, and other clergy in the Spanish Civil war. The Spanish "Republicans" destroyed every Church in their zone. So, if some leftist Government is deliberately botching the restorations, I wouldn't be surprised.

todd galle said...

Both my wife and I have worked in Conservation Labs, her in a Textile lab working on Civil War Flags, myself in an Objects lab that handled 3-D items mostly. Competent conservation services are expensive. I bought two 17th C Dutch paintings at auction recently, and I expect my conservation costs to be either as much as their cost or slightly above. Maybe not, as I'm still friends with the conservator I worked with. I can easily see a cash strapped town rolling the dice on a local mason rather than going with an AIC (or whatever it is there) conservator and paying that bill.

JAORE said...

I suspect the restoration "artist" knew some very well connected individuals.

Joe Smith said...

"I would say that there's a secret sect that worships a god that looks like that — one eye up, the other eye down, mouth like a sucker (or sex doll)."

Project much? : )

Jamie said...

On the flip side... my church held icon-painting workshops for several years, led by a skilled iconographer. Under her brush, any amateur's mistakes could be fixed - usually with just a stroke or two. It was amazing. And because she was also deeply Christian, she expressed this almost-magic touch as "You see, all things can be redeemed through Christ."

Unknown said...

We need to turn all the statues into

People of Color

Raggedy Andy

Rabel said...

It's just some plaster crap on top of a bank building built in 1923.

Too bad the restorer didn't give her a gigantic, projecting muffin to match the man spreader on her left.

Now that would be a work of art.

Ken B said...

It’s part of the war on western art. Defacing and destroying art is en vogue.

mikee said...

The Goddess of Liberty atop the Texas capitol dome, seen up close, is also amazingly rough and odd looking. The statue was restored a few decades back, and the restoration regained the original rough and odd looking face. Sometimes you just go with what worked before.