Pasternak © Arnold Berke - CLICK FOR FLICKR SLIDESHOW!
Often the relic remains in full view—a “palimpsest” or object that echoes its history, a surface feature that probes within. Or, like the Pasternak sign, it slumbers hidden for years, until alterations bring it back to light. A similar process, pentimento, marks painting, as writer Lillian Hellman wrote in her eponymous memoir: “Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. Arnold Berke – for the National Trust for Historic Preservation – May 16, 2011
For more on Pentimento:
pentimento- A pentimento (plural pentimenti) is an alteration in a painting showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting. The word derives from the Italian pentirsi, meaning to repent.
Street art and photography
The term has sometimes been used in a modern sense to describe the appearance of the sides of buildings with painted advertising. Often they are painted over with newer ads and the paint wears away to reveal the older layers.
Examples of this can be found at http://www.fadingad.com and http://www.frankjump.com that had been taken by Frank H. Jump in Amsterdam, 1998. The caption was “Amsterdam August 1998- This an example of what I call “ediglyph” – where fading ads and graffiti intersect”. http://www.fadingad.com/009.html
