Paradise endangered: garden snakes and mice are appearing in the shadowy corners of Dutch Old Master paintings.
We are similar to a museum. My function is to present old masterpieces in modern frames.
Back when I was restoring art and antiques, finding ivory was very difficult because it's illegal, and the only difference between bone and ivory is that bone is free and not illegal.
In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education.
There is tragic evidence to show that the paintings at the French prehistoric art sites are deteriorating.
You don't restore 'The Last Supper' by filling in the missing bits - you preserve. You accept the material that has somehow survived.
Art is very mysterious. I wonder if you can really do any damage to art. I think that when we're writing, something comes through or should come through, in spite of our theories. So theories are not really important.
The one thing you can rely on is if you get disturbed halfway through a painting and it looks a bit naff, then someone will preserve that piece, remove it and a few months later it'll be paraded round Sotheby's by people wearing white gloves.
I really prize and love great painting. It's so out of date now. It's slightly come back in.
We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.
Restorers of paintings and pottery follow a code of conduct in their work to distinguish the original material from what they are adding later.
I have a passion for modern and contemporary art. I spend a lot of time in museums; I particularly like the Guggenheim, MoMA in New York or LACMA and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, for example. I cannot wait for the Louis Vuitton Foundation to open.
If I owned a Rembrandt and it had some dull colors, I don't think I'd go put reds and yellows in there just to brighten it up. I feel the same way about old golf courses. When you have a masterpiece, I sure wouldn't tinker with it.
It is a question in that case of breaking up one piece of art, and whether that piece of art can be as best as possible put back together. So it's an argument to say, maybe that's one of those instances, like the bust of Nefertiti, I think that should be given back [Egyptian piece currently in Neues Museum in Berlin]. It's one of those pieces you look at and think that would probably be the right thing to do.
If you were going through your attic and found a Van Gogh, what would you do? You wouldn't put it in your bathroom; you'd want to share it with the world because you know people will love it.
If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there's any restoring necessary.
Restoration is a skilled profession. You might even call it an art in its own right, except that it is frowned on to be original. First rule of restoration: follow the intention of the artist. Never try to improve on him.
I used to jokingly say, "I don't teach art. I'm an art doctor." Students come to me and say, "My art's sick," and we help them make it well.
It is not easy to recover an art when once lost.
Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser.
Like surgeons trying to save a life, the conservators and preservers at New York City museums dedicate themselves to ensuring the longevity of works of art for public view.
I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.
In the back of every painting there's an entire universe that makes it possible for the painting to be there: an army of conservators, technicians, people who maintain these things, the market.
The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.
I'm going to start these art museums that are basically converted homes, and I have one for modern art, and I have one for 19th century European art, and one for French impressionism. I've got Japanese.
