The Comparison of Conservation Approaches and their Relation to the Reading and Understanding of Artistic Work

In the nineteenth century, conservation meant keeping the truth of a work and revealing it whereas in later periods it was defined with other meanings such as facilitating the act of reading. In both revealing and facilitating the act of reading, conservation refers to understanding and interpretation of the work. Paying attention to spiritual as well as material aspects of the work causes understanding and reading of its meanings to elucidate other aspects of understanding and reception. Accordingly, the main question raised in this research is what relationship does exist between approaches of interpretation and reception of the artistic work and conservation theories. Moreover, can it be said that the task of the conserver at the moment of conservation is interpretation of the work and later stages of conservation form on the basis of it? Accordingly, investigating the theories of conservation and hermeneutic approaches, this research aims to study their common features. Also, it is shown that the moment of conservation is the very moment of understanding the work and such knowledge is not obtained unless the conserver interprets the work like an interpreter to the extent that the theorists of conservation have based the principles of conservation on interpretive approaches like intention of the artist, work and reader from the beginning to the present. Using analytic-inferential method and written documents and sources, this article compares the approaches of conservation, hermeneutics and reception theory with each other. Moreover, their common aspects are identified in order to show that conservation in both definitions and its theorists’ view requires interpretive approach. Although in some theories an aspect like the intention of the artist has become prominent, each of interpretive approaches is necessary but not sufficient alone because each work has a unique existence and requires a particular interpretation and all works cannot be conserved based simply on one approach.