Week #15 Conservation III

Dream Series No.2 before and after conservation.

Dream Series No.2, 1962, oil on canvas, 22” x 18” Conserved.

This week in the wonder that is art conservation we have one of Dusti Bongé’s works from her abstract expressionist period. In particular, we are featuring one of her Dream Series paintings, which, incidentally, is currently on display in our 30^th Anniversary Show. Exhibiting this work would not have been possible without the extensive conservation it received.

The Dream Series are a unique set of paintings directly inspired by Dusti’s dreams. In general, since her surrealist days, she had appreciated and tapped into dreams as a source of inspiration. But in this series, which came much later, she literally would see a work in her dreams and then get up immediately to paint it, no matter what time it was. In fact, for a while she had an easel with a small canvas at the ready beside her bed, so she could “record” the composition she had dreamt immediately.

Dusti's works from this era face a problem that not all her paintings face, and that is the fact that her abstract expressionist style significantly manifests not just in abstraction and bold gestures, but also in the incredible layering, texturing and build-up of the paint itself. Thus, the application of the medium is a significant part of the process, and consequently also part of the conservationist's problem. The heavy impasto of paint can be more prone to cracking, flaking and separating from the canvas.

In this painting (even in photographs) one can see the thick, heavy brush work, and the significant paint losses that eventually resulted. The central dark void in the work is framed by exceedingly heavy semi-circular swaths of mustard yellow and white, and this is where the worst flaking occurred. In its conserved state one can once again appreciate the interplay of both the colors and the brush strokes as they simultaneously interact and battle one another, as they did in Dusti’s dream.