The x-rays of Baron Thyssen's collection...
7:32 p.m.
03/23/23 - In 2018, TBA21(*) commissioned the Lebanese artist Walid Raad (1967) a project related to how the Tyssen-Bornemisza collection went from being private public. The investigation covered the set of works, archives, deposits and the family's relationship with art. During the search, Raad recovered fragments of world history, documents and certain "artifacts".
The project was given the title Cotton Under My Feet and was exhibited, as expected, at the Museo Nacional Tyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.
Throughout the different rooms, the exhibition commemorated the genesis of the museum. It was displayed on the lower floor, something similar to a basement that turned out to be a sort of gynoecium for the Baron's permanent collection, exhibited in the floors above.
From all of the above, we want to talk about a series of x-rays of the paintings, because go how they were originated and how they ended up being exhibited.
The X-Rays
Within Walid Raad's historiographic labyrinth, we meet restorer Lamia Antonova, who X-rayed the works in the collection. What did Antonova discover? That the frames would end up contaminating the paintings they guarded and also that these images were capable of detecting future pathologies.
Everything in the previous paragraph is explained in the signs that accompanies the exhibited x-rays and the following concept of the restorer is also added:
“(The paintings) would take action to defend themselves. And what I feared the most was that they would decide to run away, escape.”
What does the curator want to tell us with these words of the restorer? It includes us in the story so that we believe or not what we are reading: As if it were a game.
The poster continues explaining that due to Antonova's superstition, the number of staples and nails in each frame tripled and quadrupled...
That is what we see in the photos of the x-rays: one painting has 77 additional nails, another 7 screws, another 18. We wonder if such an action worked so that the images did not escape. So far so good.
(*) TBA21 is an international artistic and philanthropic foundation that defends the power of art as an agent of transformation. It has offices in Madrid and Venice but its radius of action extends to the entire planet.
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