She retouched Correggio’s frescoes and rescued a badly damaged work by Cobra artist Carl-Henning Pedersen. But no matter how prominent the names, the curator Elisabetta Bosetti never allows any work to become a fetish. Perhaps this has something to do with her enthusiasm for ephemeral art. An enthusiasm that arose in 2016 when she was involved in Christo’s installation on Lake Iseo. […]
She retouched Correggio’s frescoes and rescued a badly damaged work by Cobra artist Carl-Henning Pedersen. But no matter how prominent the names, the curator Elisabetta Bosetti never allows any work to become a fetish. Perhaps this has something to do with her enthusiasm for ephemeral art. An enthusiasm that arose in 2016 when she was involved in Christo’s installation on Lake Iseo. For the European CAPuS project, Bosetti is researching the materiality and forms of expression of street art – for her, the epitome of a new shared cultural heritage
Elisabetta Bosetti didn’t hesitate for a second when she received the invitation to take part in Christo’s two-week installation “Floating Piers” on Lake Iseo in Italy. Around a thousand workers assembled the yellow fabric-covered piers that criss-crossed the lake and connected the shore with the islands. As the railing-free walkways sloped slightly towards the edge, visitors had the impression of walking directly on the water. Or on a whale, as Christo himself remarked.
“Christo was extremely friendly to us all,” reports Bosetti. He visited the headquarters almost every late afternoon after their team returned by boat from the work shift. He patiently posed for selfies with his fans. She also managed to get a souvenir photo herself, Bosetti says happily. “For me, this temporary installation is one of the most remarkable in contemporary art,” summarizes the Italian. “It shows how art creates or transforms a space, a situation, an environment or even a landscape.”
Even if the Floating Piers left no physical traces, they had a lasting intellectual and emotional impact on people. “Ephemeral art promotes an inner process that is free from any attachment to a specific, ephemeral medium”. Preserving works of art, on the other hand, often borders on fetishism, criticizes Bosetti. “We tend to grant the object a cult-like status and try to preserve the material forever, which is basically a huge contradiction in terms”.
She thus touches on a much-discussed dilemma in the conservation of contemporary art in particular: “The materials in the artworks are susceptible to the ravages of time. It would be wise to keep this in mind when we conserve.” In Italy, which has a centuries-long tradition of preserving art and cultural assets, her profession is highly respected.
Soon after moving to Copenhagen, Elisabetta Bosetti realized what a fundamentally different status restorers or conservators had from a Danish perspective. At least in the 1990s, many Danes were not really able to categorize the profession. “To make matters worse, the Danish word for conservator and taxidermist is identical – that often led to confusion.”
Overall, however, she found the “clash of cultures” mostly enriching. Above all, she likes the problem-solving approach, the sense of community and the solidarity of the Danes. She came to the decision to go to Copenhagen after listening to a Danish restorer’s presentation on working with contemporary art at a symposium in Milan.
“The Italian methodology I was familiar with was so much more dogmatic,” Bosetti realized. Her curiosity was aroused: Having previously worked mainly on old wall paintings – such as Correggio’s frescoes in the church of San Giovanni Battista in Parma or those of the Giotto school in Milan’s church of Santo Eustorgio – she felt an urge to explore contemporary terrain abroad.
The conservator moved to Denmark in 1991, where she worked for various private and state conservation studios and studied art history and project management in Copenhagen. Bosetti believes that every work is unique and cannot be repeated. That’s why she doesn’t fixate on a specific era, the conservator emphasizes: “I like the challenge, the variety of tasks and the privilege of getting very close to exquisite, problematic and exciting art.”
This includes the painting “Tænksom Fugl” by Carl-Henning Pedersen. It had suffered severe damage during a theft. Not only was it seriously distorted, it was also disfigured by a cut over seventy centimetres long, with the paint layer detaching from the canvas in many places. The repair turned out to be a real challenge. The treatment of the tear in particular caused Bosetti a lot of headaches.
She ruled out a simple lamination, as this would have completely alienated the original expression and the genesis of the painting. In line with the theory of art historian Cesare Brandis, she is convinced that a work can only be given respect during conservation if it is understood as a unity of materials and intellectual process. “I had real nightmares during the lengthy restoration process,” the expert recalls. But with a great deal of patience and skill, she turned the supposed mission impossible into a happy ending: “Tænksom Fugl” appears untouched today.
However, the trained fresco restorer has a particular passion for the spontaneous muralism of the streets. This is why she supports the European CAPuS project alongside her work for the MaleriKonservering studio. Bosetti has set herself the task of identifying and documenting the works of art in Copenhagen that fall under the category of “urban art” or street art.
Read more in RESTAURO 6/2019.
