Artful
History: A Restoration Comedy
by Jason Simon
and Mark Dion
First Run / Icarus, Brooklyn, NY, 1988
VHS video, 30 minutes, color
Sale, $225; Rent, $50
Distributor Website: http://www.frif.com.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
Department of Art, University of Northern
Iowa, USA
ballast@netins.net
I love this film——for a number
of very good reasons. First, it is terribly
funny, in the sense that it makes frequent
use of a wonderfully dry sense of humor
(it is replete with art historians' jokes),
the first indication of which is the film's
subtitle, "a restoration comedy." That
phrase is typically used to refer to 17th
century British stage plays, known for
their double entendres, especially the
comedies of William Congreve. This film
has nothing to do with that meaning of
"restoration comedy," but rather it is
all about the tragicomedy of how historic
works of art become ruined while supposedly
being "restored" by duplicitous art dealers.
I suppose we shouldn't be surprised by
any of this, since everyday we see (and
likely also buy) exquisite handmade plates
removed by antique dealers from rare historic
books, and then sold separately as prints.
This film, which includes a confessional
interview with a former restorer, discusses
the odious methods employed by dealers
and restorers in making a buck from the
residue of history. One common trick (with
paintings) is to cut up the original canvas
in parts, thereby multiplying the inventory.
In selling African art, it is not unknown
to add on parts from a box of odds and
ends, or to hack off those that do not
fit stylistically. In one sequence, a
British painting of a ship in the foreground
and a second in the distance is divided
into two smaller paintings: one of the
detailed foreground ship, and the other
a somewhat impressionist view of a more
distant vessel. This film was made almost
15 years ago, but surely none of these
problems has been remedied, and in fact,
one suspects that they've worsened.
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast
Quarterly Review, Vol. 19, No. 4,
Summer 2004).
