Temporalities and the Dawn Response to the Conservation and Restoration of Paintings.

This paper will consider the temporal implications for drawing in the light of conservation and restoration treatments to paintings by the Seventeenth Century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Using three critical frameworks: Norman Bryson’s becoming model for drawing and the relationship of liminality to a painting during conservation/restoration, George Didi Huberman’s anti-chronological reading of the detail and the pan in painting, and Walter Benjamin’s definitions of drawing the paper will seek to address some implications for a drawing practice that responds to a pre-existing museum artworks. The paper will present some findings from my own drawing practice that responds to Vermeer’s The Love Letter (c. 1667-1670) and The Girl with the Red Hat (c.1665-67). It will make particular reference to the non-chronological sequencing and staging of the drawings as they consider the stages of conservation and restoration treatments of paintings