CRITICAL AND ANALYTICAL APPROACHES IN A CONTEMPORARY MURAL PAINTING' RETOUCHING PROCESS: THE KEY STUDY OF MURALS BY ANTONIO CARENA

Abstract

This paper focuses on critical and analytical approaches behind the reintegration process in the conservation project of two contemporary mural paintings designed by Antonio Carena and located in the outdoor contemporary museum of Piscina in Italy. Moreover, there will be evaluated materials and techniques applied, in this selected case study, where contemporary criteria on chromatic reintegration, still connected to a case by case situation, confirm that the aesthetic presentation of a work of art is the phase of the restoration in which the exquisitely critical nature of the intervention is best expressed, since it implies a scientific plan at the basis and the objective critical judgment of the operator which is called to interpret some formal, visual and historical values of the work of art, acting on them. Finally, there will be analysed theoretical and technical methodologies to explain how scientific criteria, which are also objective and based on the visual perception of colour by the human psyche and its consequent aesthetic elaboration, passes through a scientific-critique interpretation of the constituent materials in the work of art.