Just over 130 years ago, Norwegian painter Edvard Munch went on a fateful evening walk that changed the course of art forever. “The Sun was

A New AI Project Involving 12 Major Institutions Aims to Transform Art Preservation with Color Reconstruction

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2024-08-31 13:00:07

Just over 130 years ago, Norwegian painter Edvard Munch went on a fateful evening walk that changed the course of art forever.

“The Sun was setting. The clouds turned the color red like blood,” Munch wrote in one of his notebooks. “I painted this image, painted the clouds like real blood. The colors screamed.”

Time and circumstance have stifled the shrieks of Munch’s famed image: There are four versions of The Scream, two paintings and two pastel drawings; the colors in all of them have faded or degraded after more than a century of exposure to varying light and humidity. And the theft of the 1910 version in 2004 guaranteed an unfortunate acceleration of that process for at least the one copy: recovered in 2006, it was found to have new moisture damage on the lower-left side. Munch’s lurid colors—the blood reds and deep blues as he saw them himself—seemed more irretrievable for the modern viewer than ever. Related Articles AI Is Trying to Take Over Art Authentication, but Long-time Experts Are Skeptical Suzanne Kite Is Making Sure Indigenous People Aren't Left Out of the AI Conversation

All artworks face this same destiny to age. But for the 12 organizations involved in the European Union–backed PERCEIVE project, a solution has never appeared more attainable: authentic color reconstruction with the aid of rapidly evolving artificial intelligence tools.