L’art désœuvré, modes d’emploi. Entre esthétique et théorie de la restauration

Abstract

In the ontology of the work of art and its regimes of existence, Gérard Genette  gives but little room to the theory and practice of restoration. However, restoration is seen in relation to the identity of the work itself and to its material and  pragmatic temporality and anachronism. In the wake of Nelson Goodman, it is also understood as a form of actuation of the aesthetic experience. Starting from these premises, the present essay intends to examine the relationship between Genette’s and Daniel Arasse’s reflections on restoration and the history of art, highlighting their similarities and differences with Cesare Brandi’s theory of restoration and, therefore, pointing out their as yet undischarged debts to Sartre’s phenomenology of image.