“Art Detectives” is a television series aired on TVO that is on my regular watch list. It centres around the ongoing search of Britain’s “Art UK” website — containing more than 500,000 works by more than 55,000 artists, which are held in the collections of more than 3,400 institutions — in an attempt to discover lost masterpieces.

Often, the artworks they target are found in poor condition and, based on the opinion of British art historian, Dr. Bendor Grosvenor, vis-à-vis a possible attribution to the artist, they undergo extensive restoration in the studio of Simon Gillespie.

It is a source of amazement to me how, under the expert hands of Gillespie, these sad and shabby, often damaged paintings are transformed to expose their original colours, figures, backgrounds and, often, glory.

I can only speculate about the number of man-hours devoted to each restoration and the cost associated with that investment.

After viewing a recent episode, a question occurred to me: What would happen if the preservation and restoration of art was treated in a similar fashion to how we, far too often in North America, approach similar considerations for architecture?

In the case of architecture, the decision of whether or not to restore and preserve an important building is often one purely measured in dollars (cost versus return) with little or no consideration for its less tangible — but nonetheless equally important — historical, cultural and societal contribution. 

This thought process has driven the development of a concept advanced by some that it is acceptable to conserve important architecture as a “ruin.”

In other words, one can destroy a significant building provided a small part is preserved and a memorial plaque containing a description of the heritage, history and importance of the lost building is erected on site.

I would argue that this concept is fundamentally flawed.

A given piece of architecture, whether modest or grand, is a physical representation of the architect’s (or the property owner’s) creative expression, defined by its purpose, and set within — or sometimes in contrast with — the prevailing political, economic and cultural conditions of society.

No plaque or simple memorial can evoke the visual, emotive and tactile responses that are elicited by the whole expression, nor can a mere symbol connect us to the people who lived around and within its walls.        

To answer my earlier question, let’s imagine that the cost versus return approach and the “ruin” concept are applied to the conservation of paintings.

You are visiting the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in one of the galleries, there is a frame that contains no art but highlights a section of plain wall surface measuring roughly 73 inches by 80 inches.

At eye level in this framed space, there is a small painting of a golden cupid and mounted beside it a bronze plaque which reads:

“Here once hung the jewel of our museum’s collection, ‘Danaë’ by the Dutch master Rembrandt Van Rijn, which he painted between 1636 and 1643. In 1985, a deranged individual scored it with a knife and splashed it with sulfuric acid. The damage was so extensive that it was deemed uneconomic to restore the painting, however, we did save and restore a portion of the painting — the cupid you can see hanging to the right.”

Similarly, in our imagined progress, you might visit Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, where another empty frame and “memorial” could be found — this one commemorating the 12-foot by 14.5-foot Rembrandt painting “The Night Watch,” completed in 1642.

In 1975, this masterpiece was attacked by a knife-wielding vandal who slashed the lower portion of the canvas multiple times, leaving over a dozen gashes through the painting.

Now, while the vandalism in these two illustrations did actually occur, both museums committed to restoration without considering the cost.

In the case of Danaë, it took Russia’s finest experts 12 years to complete the restoration, while the work on The Night Watch spanned four years.

In real terms, if a purely economic decision was the sole criterion in the restoration of artworks, there would be a lot of empty frames in collections around the world.

Consider the damages from the 2019 attack on Pablo Picasso’s painting “Bust of a Woman” with a restoration cost of $460,000 — just one amongst many others.

We have visited the question of why many people struggle with architecture being considered as fine art in past columns (e.g. “Arch-i-text: Can a building be a work of art? Yes, but many simply are not,” Jan. 5, 2023), so I will refrain from doing so again.

However, let me ask, how can it not be?

A painting is art that is lived with. Architecture is art that is lived in.

For those who argue that a painting is the work of one person and architecture is the work of many, well, not so much.

Most of the European masters had studios full of juniors who were trained to paint in the style of the master.

Indeed, when I knew Canadian artist William Kurelek in the early 1970s, he happily created in a studio organized along these lines.

The master created the concept and blocked out the piece. The juniors applied the paint with the occasional intervention by the master to “tweak” the work in progress towards fully realizing his artistic vision.

To me, that sounds pretty similar to creating architecture.

Brian Marshall is a NOTL realtor, author and expert consultant on architectural design, restoration and heritage.