SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION FOR THE INVESTIGATION AND CONSERVATION OF FAR EAST ASIAN MURAL PAINTINGS

If compared to western wall paintings, the study, conservation and restoration of far east Asian wall paintings is a more difficult task, owing not only to the varied supports and painting material constituents they are made of, but also to the particular social environments in which they are located and the consequences it has on the adopted theoretical and practical approaches to conservation. For instance, in some countries an element of devotion and the desire to offer the best to the gods leads religious communities to rebuild damaged sections of structures instead of trying the preserve them. Therefore, when talking about far east Asian mural paintings conservation the main issue is their imminent risk of loss or damage. This has sometime led to certain standardization of treatments (pigments, consolidants, protective coatings and industrial products) as it happened, for example, with external architectural polychromies where the need to identify alternative treatments for conserving exterior surfaces that have retained a reasonable amount of historical material is of the outmost importance. Consequently further scientific research on traditional materials, techniques and skills would be desirable and could continue to improve the results in the future. In this regard collaborative studies on the subject of far east Asian architectural polychromy at the international level should be encouraged and implemented.