1. The progressive development of conservation/restoration principles recognized and shared by the international community.

Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris is one of the most emblematic monuments of Paris and some France. Its construction spans about two centuries, from 1163 to the middle of the xiv^e century. The cathedral benefited between 1845 and 1867 from an important restoration, sometimes controversial, under the direction of the architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, which incorporates new elements and patterns.

At the beginning of xxi^e century, Notre-Dame is visited each year by some 13 to 14 million people. The building is thus the most visited monument in Europe and one of the most visited in the world until 2019.

THE violent fire of April 15, 2019 destroy the arrow and the entire roof covering the nave, THE choir and the transept. This is the largest disaster suffered by the cathedral since its construction. This partial destruction of one of the most emblematic heritage monuments provokes reactions of sadness and support throughout the world.

Since the fire, Notre-Dame has been closed to the public. After a major controversy, its identical reconstruction is decided in 2020, and its reopening to the public planned for 2024.

 On the very day of the outbreak of the fire, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, announces that the cathedral will be rebuilt and the next day, during a special televised address, he declares: 

We will rebuild the cathedral even more beautiful, and I want it to be completed within five years. » 

 

From the night of the fire, donations from individuals, businesses and public institutions poured in from France and from abroad, making it possible to envisage the reconstruction of the affected parts.

The question of an identical reconstruction of the spire of the building, a work by Viollet-le-Duc erected in the 19th century century and which bears the building at a height ofand 96 meters, is particularly debated : supporters of an identical reconstruction are strongly opposed to those who, like Emmanuel Macron initially, want a contemporary architectural gesture. From the 17 April 2019, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced the launch of an international architectural competition to rebuild the spire. The firm of the British architect Norman Foster thus proposes a crystal and stainless steel spire surmounting a glass roof. Eventually, faced with the opposition of most architects of the mnational monuments, starting with that of Philippe Villeneuve, chief architect of historic monuments, Emmanuel Macron agrees with the advice of the experts and takes the decision, in July 2020, to rebuild the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris identically.

 

 

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Here we are faced with a case study: How should we approach the repairs that a disaster, a destruction, or more simply a "natural" alteration due to climatic conditions and the effects of time, when we are at a historic monument of such heritage value? In what is considered to be the intrinsic value of a work like that of Notre Dame Cathedral, what should take precedence: its status as a work of art (a Gothic masterpiece), its status as a place of memory (site of Napoleon's coronation, etc.), its status as a witness to the persistence of ancient works, its status as a symbol – of a common heritage (at local, national and/or international level), of a faith, of a city, its commercial status (the most visited place in Europe, with what that means in terms of economic benefits)? Who should decide? The strongest authority, the one who pays, those who specialize in reconstruction or restoration, the one who uses the place? According to what criteria?

A week after the destruction by fire of the roof and the spire of the cathedral, proposals from architects and engineers continue to flow in to rebuild Notre-Dame de Paris. Two schools oppose each other: that of an identical reconstruction and that of a more contemporary reinterpretation of the monument.

What would Viollet-le-Duc himself have thought of it, he who, after winning the call for tenders launched in 1844 by the French Ministry of Religious Affairs, worked tirelessly to restore the cathedral until 1864? He who added the famous gargoyles, straight out of his imagination, to the cathedral? And whose modification decisions may have been deemed untimely by his contemporaries and the generations that followed them?

Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879) clarified his ideas during a famous controversy with Ruskin (1819-1900), in a theoretical debate which crystallized the fundamental opposition between art and history as a priority criterion for dining choices.

Viollet-le-Duc intends, thanks to a grammar of architectural styles and by analogy, to find the stylistic unity of the monument:

Restoring a building is not maintaining, repairing or redoing it, it is restoring it to a complete state that may never have existed at a given moment [Viollet-le-Duc, 1875].

 

Ruskin, along with Morris, denounces this approach by affirming that the authenticity of the work lies in its material and that any modification of it amounts to renouncing its authenticity, its very essence [Ruskin, 1848]. Two contrasting conceptions: one supports corrective measures to achieve an ideal, duly documented, the other insists on respecting the marks of time which are part of the history of the work.

The restoration aiming to prolong the life of the work, it necessarily consists of a direct intervention on it. During this intervention, the work risks losing what gives it its value, namely its aesthetic and historical integrity. Based on these values and respecting them, restoration principles have been formulated in theories and then in international charters to guide restorers in their approach.

An important milestone in the journey that will lead to the corpus of principles of restoration and conservation with international recognition is the work Conserver ou restauration, les dilemmas du patrimoine [Boito, 1893] by Camillo Boito (1836-1914), in which he stages a dialogue between two characters inspired by Viollet-le-Duc and John Ruskin and constructs a more reflective approach. Founded on the notion of authenticity, its doctrine nevertheless asserts that the present has priority over the past, that is to say that the restoration can acquire legitimacy if it is careful not to pass itself off as the original. For this, he develops the bases of a restorative style by which the restoration gives itself to be seen. Additions, corrections, replacements will thus be staged by colors, textures, different materials to avoid any confusion with what remains of the original.

It specifies that the appropriateness and necessity of any intervention must be carefully assessed. In doing so, he lays the critical foundations of the discipline. With Boito, the restoration also acquires a philological dimension by conserving the successive phases of the monument.

The object of philology, says Bréal, is “the critical study of the monuments of language”, therefore the study of texts; in contrast, linguistics “studies the constituent elements of articulated language”. Applied to the monument, the philological dimension would therefore be a question of revealing the choices that this critical study led to making on the monument.

Deepening Aloïs Riegl: In 1903, Aloïs Riegl published Le Culte moderne des monuments, sa nature, son origine [Riegl, 1903], a central work because he analyzed monuments from a social and cultural point of view. It shows, among other things, that restoration must deal, through critical judgment, with two sets of values in conflicting relationships. In the values of memory, we first find the value (the cult) of seniority, which excludes any modification and advocates non-intervention. At the same time, the monument can also represent a moment in history (historical value), in which case the interest lies in its unaltered condition: the more intact the monument, the more valuable it will be. Here the intervention is content to slow down its destruction. In topical values, three values can motivate restoration: the value
utilitarian, the art value, which includes the value of novelty (a new aspect, integrity, which flatters the eye) and the relative art value (qualitative evaluation of an art of the past compared to the will of art modern). A monument has these different values in varying proportions, so we see that if the restoration seeks to restore one of these values, it will necessarily be to the detriment of another. For example, an overly restored object will lose its old appearance which gave it its specificity, whereas a state of ruin can be respected.
because it is the result of a story.

 

Overcoming Cesare Brandi: Based on his predecessors, Cesare Brandi (1906-1988), in The Theory of Restoration [Brandi, 1963], defines as the goal of restoration the re-establishment of the potential unity of the work and recognizes two instances as a guide: the aesthetic instance, without which there is no work, and the historical instance. He then breaks down the work into image and matter, which alone can be restored. This restoration is framed by the double risk of false art and false history:

on the one hand, the restoration of a gap must not pass for authentic, and on the other hand, one must not go back on alterations if they are meaningful. A statue broken by a fall can be repaired, but if it is broken by an iconoclast, then the restoration is illegitimate because it amounts to erasing an episode from the history of the work.

Another example: the patina must be preserved, because to remove it would force the material to find a freshness in contradiction with the seniority that it attests. Similarly, an addition has as much historical legitimacy as the original act, it is a new testimony to human action. But from the point of view of the aesthetic instance, this addition prevents the work from rediscovering its potential unity. To resolve these conflicts, it is necessary to assess the weight of each instance and adopt a conciliatory and educated approach, since only the restaurant owner's culture will allow this assessment. Hence also the need for interdisciplinarity in restoration approaches.

Critical restoration: In the field of architecture, critical restoration [Bonelli, 1959], whose main representative is (1911), appeared at the end of the Second World War, at a time when reconstruction was a pressing need. Giving absolute priority to the value of art, Bonelli assumes and claims the act of restoration as an extension of the original creative act with the aim of finding and freeing the true form. Bonelli does not seek stylistic unity but rather a unitary image. After a critical analysis of the object to be restored, the architect-restorer is free to actualize the creative act, that is to say that criticism in fact defines the conditions of re-creation. From an attitude of respect for the monument, one can assume responsibility for an intervention and the appropriation of the work. This approach should be linked to urban planning studies:

the architecture is seen as an unfinished work, which is integrated into the urban fabric, itself in constant evolution. In this context, the restorer is therefore authorized to destroy elements that hinder the true form or to insert new ones to find it. The intervention is then done in an effort of synthesis between the past and the present which coexist to guarantee a continuity of the image. It is ultimately about the living continuity of the creative work, which by innovating preserves and by preserving innovates.

From principles to normative action: The first charters

As restoration theories developed, the need was felt to reformulate these principles in reference documents of international scope. Along with the Italian Carta del Restauro (1931), one of the first charters was the Athens Charter on the Restoration of Historic Monuments, drawn up at the first international congress of architects and technicians of historic monuments in 1931. Among the principles set out, one can cite the need for international organizations and laws protecting heritage, the primacy of community interests over private interests, and the need for collaboration between states and between conservators and scientists on matters relating to materials. We also see the appearance of the notion of environment and site of the monument, such as the perspectives in the urban environment which are to be protected. At the level of the restoration itself, the charter
abandons Viollet-le-Duc's approach and recommends respect for "stylistic strata",

as well as the use of monuments, guaranteeing regular maintenance, restoration being seen as an operation of last resort. It authorizes the use of modern materials or techniques for consolidation purposes, without this modifying the appearance of the monument, in accordance therefore with aesthetic values. In general, it encourages the critical examination of each restoration project to avoid errors and the loss of essential values.

The Venice Charter : Taking up the principles of the Athens Charter, the Venice Charter1 [ICOMOS, 2001] written by ICOMOS in 1964 is the reference document for restoration. It is the point of convergence of the different theories. Giving himself up for
aim of restoring the work of art and the witness of history, it consecrates prudence in terms of restoration: the restoration ends where the hypothesis begins. Rejecting unity of style, it recommends documented collegial decisions on possible operations, and recommends that replacements or modifications be integrated harmoniously, without falsification of the document. Likewise, it authorizes additions insofar as they respect the interest of the building, its setting and its relationship with the urban fabric. The path to restoration is therefore narrow between the values of art and history, only a critical mind can guide the restorer's approach. The Venice Charter is also the matrix for subsequent developments. It constitutes a starting point because it opens the field to the extension of notions linked to heritage, mainly the categories of objects concerned, which are more and more varied, and the globalization of heritage issues.

Necessary extensions: The drafting of the Venice Charter and the relative international recognition of which it is the subject did not mark the end of the debates. Indeed, faced with the multiplicity of works, objects, and urban and natural sites to be preserved, the need to complete the reference corpus has given rise to the birth of more specialized charters (on historic gardens, archaeology, vestiges under mariners, on authenticity, etc.) or specific to a nation (Burra charter for Australia) [ICOMOS, 2001]. Similarly, restoration was seen until recently from an exclusively Western point of view, but the notions of heritage and cultural property have been "exported" and their content now varies from one area cultural to another. If in the field of monumental heritage a relative consensus seems to be emerging around the ICOMOS charters, we must not neglect the specificities of treatment specific to each culture, each type of property, even each work.

More generally, Michel Favre-Félix [Favre-Félix, 2003] note that the charters are renewed every thirty years, that is to say at each generation, as if the restorations of one generation could not be suitable for the next. This clearly underlines the very strong link between changes in mentalities and the attitude adopted vis-à-vis the work of art. As such, the trend seems to be towards a greater primacy accorded to respect for the historical value of the work as a document and to the rejection of overly radical interventions. Alongside these charters, restaurant associations have adopted codes of ethics specific to their discipline. On the whole, they take up the principles outlined above, but they tend to metamorphose into professional statutes, in terms of the rights and duties of the restaurateur vis-à-vis the client, or even into "legal cover", which moves away from strict theoretical considerations.

In fact, monuments and works of art have owners, who must themselves submit to the legislation in force in the places where the works are located. These laws, by framing more or less strictly the possible restoration and conservation operations, set the margins of maneuver of the decision-makers, decision-makers that the legislator also appoints.

These legislative frameworks are built or reformed based on charters and declarations which seek to guide what the work of restoration and conservation of heritage should be, while this same conservation-restoration work relies on networks of actors who make the sector vital. We will study these documents and these actor networks in the second section of the module.

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WHAT YOU MUST REMEMBER

* To let age, restore or preserve a work is to opt for a solution in a spectrum of discriminations which will necessarily modify the perception of the work, and therefore its value

* Each work is a particular case, and it is the estimation of its aesthetic, historical and heritage value that will determine the operations to be carried out.

* The growing awareness of the need to preserve heritage will lead to the development of theories of restoration in the 19th and 20th centuries and to the Venice Charter, a key document of international value for all restorers and conservators. In particular, the principles of visibility of the modifications and reversibility of the operations carried out are established there.