I鈥橫 HOLDING a long black stick just millimetres from a delicate artwork worth at least $45 million. The work is a painting called Victory Boogie Woogie, the last piece by influential Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. And if I lose concentration, I could end up poking the stick right through it.
At the end of the stick is a painted white circle that is being photographed, together with my hand, by a member of MOLAB, a roving team of Italian art conservation researchers. Along with their transport 鈥� a van stuffed full of the latest analytical equipment 鈥� these researchers form part of a collaboration of 12 European institutions called Eu-ARTECH. Another part lives beneath the glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris, where museums from across Europe bring their artefacts for analysis. A significant number of artworks are fixed in place, however, such as Renaissance frescoes on chapel walls. Others, like Victory Boogie Woogie, are simply too fragile to be moved. That鈥檚 where MOLAB comes in. The team heads out onto the road about eight times each year. So far, it has checked out the origins of ceramics at London鈥檚 Victoria & Albert Museum, determined which of a father-and-son team of painters created artworks in the Czech Republic and found remarkable art hidden beneath existing paintings at London鈥檚 National Gallery.
Here at the Gemeente Museum in The Hague, Netherlands, MOLAB is collaborating with the Netherlands Institute of Cultural Heritage (ICN) to give Victory Boogie Woogie its first thorough scientific examination. The artwork is a feast of colour and motion 鈥� an impression created by patterns of interlocking coloured squares, some painted, others simply bits of coloured paper, card and plastic tape that are stuck or glued to the canvas. Mondrian almost certainly planned to replace the paper and tape with paint, but he died before he could complete the task. So the researchers鈥� aim is to find out exactly what materials he used, which parts were painted first or painted over later, or if bits were removed altogether. The secret hope of almost everyone here is to get a glimpse of Mondrian鈥檚 working style, a chance to get inside his head 鈥� and perhaps even discover how he intended this work to look when completed.
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Mystery materials
MOLAB鈥檚 cordial leader is Bruno Brunetti, a chemist and consummate art buff. He tells me that Victory Boogie Woogie is by far the most modern work his team has ever analysed. For conservators, modern art breaks new ground. In preserving oil paint on canvas, for example, they can draw on centuries of experience and so understand many of the main processes by which these materials degrade. Preserving modern materials like acrylic paint or plastics, meanwhile, throws up a completely new set of questions. How should these works best be displayed, transported and cleaned? And if Victory Boogie Woogie, like some modern works of art, is falling apart far faster than older paintings, is there any way to halt the process?
Right now, the researchers are busy photographing the picture under ultraviolet light, which makes certain pigments fluoresce. By calibrating the colour of the fluorescence against a known standard 鈥� the white circle on the stick I鈥檓 holding 鈥� they can determine the precise wavelengths and get a handle on the identity of the chemicals present. The UV transforms the picture鈥檚 primary colour scheme into blues and browns with the occasional splodge of brilliant red. The camera clicks one last time, the room lights go on, and the painting appears normal again.
Victory Boogie Woogie stands in sharp contrast to Mondrian鈥檚 previous works, rigid compositions with bold black lines and large patches of primary colours. Instead, it is a vibrant, rhythmic counterpart to the jazz music that surrounded Mondrian as he worked in 1940s New York. In January 1944, during the final two weeks of his life, he worked furiously on the painting. Those who saw it say the painting changed dramatically during this period, as Mondrian used coloured paper and plastic tape to quickly change the composition. The complexity this created makes the painting enormously difficult to analyse: it comprises some 582 different coloured sections which the Gemeente Museum team has meticulously numbered and recorded. No one is sure what bits the artist may have painted over or removed, or what bits he intended to change.
Identifying the layers and constituent pigments in the painting is a complex piece of detective work. First, the team tries to spot the characteristic fingerprints of atoms by shining energetic X-rays onto the pigments and measuring the fluorescence this generates. The resultant spectrum provides a laundry list of the atoms present, but reveals little about the way they are arranged into pigment molecules. That requires other tools 鈥� mostly based on absorption spectroscopy, which measure how much light goes in rather than how much comes out, and reflectance spectroscopy, which records how much light bounces back. This step is vital: the pigments malachite green and green verdigris, for example, are identical under X-ray fluorescence but their molecules have different structures. So the MOLAB team must use further tests, including photography under UV and spectroscopy with infrared, to nail down which is present.
Modern art such as Victory Boogie Woogie presents a number of challenges to researchers and conservators. One problem is the pigments themselves: products of a lab rather than a mine. Think of the blue pigments used by, say Renaissance artist Giotto: azurite, lapis lazuli 鈥� they were grated stones, Brunetti says. 鈥淐ontemporary materials are organic, many of them polymers.鈥� The advent of cheap synthetic pigments, many in the past 70 years, means that a host of exotic molecules are available in an ever-growing number of coloured concoctions that often remain industrial secrets. From an analysis perspective, it鈥檚 a nightmare.
Even if you know the recipe, there remains the issue of preservation 鈥� how to keep bright colours vibrant for centuries. Since 2002, the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles has been working with the UK鈥檚 Tate galleries, the University of Torino in Italy and the National Gallery of Art in Washington to understand .
Acrylic-based paints or primers, for example, are present in around a third of the Tate鈥檚 collection of modern paintings 鈥� they were used by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, among others. Meanwhile op art proponent Bridget Riley favoured household emulsion, while Jackson Pollock preferred gloss enamel paint. Unfortunately, many of these are proprietary mixtures, and conservators have little information on how to identify them, how they might alter with age, or how they may be affected by conservation treatments or conditions in a gallery.
There is a delicate balance between the interests of curators wishing to show off a work and the conservators who wish to preserve it. What is certain is that light is bad news, almost always causing damage over the long term. Acrylic and enamel paints, for example, suffer when light breaks down their constituent polymers, creating a more brittle, cross-linked structure. This can lead to cracks like those that have appeared in the enamel paint used in Pollock鈥檚 paintings.
The mixed-media nature of modern art is making conservation even more difficult. Paint and canvas have given way to new means of expression; everything from rubber and steel to the man-made fabrics on an unmade bed. Plastics cause particular concern since, like some paints, these materials are vulnerable to damage by light, which can turn them brittle. In addition, plasticisers or solvents left over from the manufacturing process can migrate out and react with nearby material. In , for example, 13 per cent of the museum鈥檚 plastic items were found to need essential repairs. Meanwhile, some of Tate鈥檚 cellulose acetate sculptures by Russian artist Naum Gabo are undergoing triggered by moisture and oxygen in the atmosphere. All conservators can do is record them in detail before they crumble away.
鈥淎ll conservators can do is record the sculptures in detail before they crumble away鈥�
Victory Boogie Woogie itself incorporates a number of vulnerable materials. Mondrian used masking tape to stick the coloured cardboard shapes he was using to the canvas. The adhesive layer in the tape can fail, and some kinds of cardboard eventually break down, releasing an acid that can eat away at anything nearby. He also used tapes made from cellulose-based polymers. Of those available at the time, many 鈥� including cellophane and cellulose acetate 鈥� are prone to degradation and discolouration, with light being the culprit. These materials contain chemical softeners which can migrate out, leaving them brittle and prone to cracking. Cellophane also tends to shrink as it dries out, so it often breaks or tears. The question is, how badly has the painting suffered?
Time is running out. To keep up with MOLAB鈥檚 hectic schedule, which allows just a few days for each project, the operation must run like a well-oiled machine. As some of the team shifts equipment around, analysis of the infrared results has already begun.
Meanwhile, the museum鈥檚 modern-art curator, Hans Janssen, takes me to the basement to look at an all-paint copy of the Mondrian commissioned by one of the painting鈥檚 early owners, who was evidently concerned by its fragile nature. Ironically, the copy is noticeably degrading. The whites are not-so-white and many sections are cracking.
When we return upstairs, I learn that Victory Boogie Woogie鈥榮 yellow sections are painted with two different versions of a pigment called cadmium yellow, one which fluoresces and one that doesn鈥檛 鈥� even though the colours look identical to the naked eye. Janssen knows that earlier Mondrian works 鈥� those he painted in Europe before moving to New York 鈥� used a fluorescent cadmium yellow, and those from his New York period did not, so Mondrian chose to use some of his old stock of cadmium yellow for his last painting.
The conservators are relieved to find that Mondrian mostly relied on a relatively simple palette of colours 鈥� the blue is from synthetic ultramarine, for example. Yet, surprisingly, the white sections have a complex composition including oxides of zinc and titanium, barium sulphate, and a pigment called lead white. But the red pigment that Mondrian used to paint on some of the plastic tape remains a mystery, despite ICN鈥檚 database of more than 8000 pigments, and remains an unexplored clue that could influence future studies. Even if its identity remains unknown, this pigment could pop up in a future, unattributed work, and in doing so perhaps link it to Mondrian.
The presence of cadmium yellow could be bad news, though. Some cadmium yellow preparations are known to fade with time, oxidising in the air to form cadmium sulphate. What鈥檚 more, the lead white contains lead carbonate, which is likely to react with any acids that might be around. It also grabs trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide from the air, which turns it grey and ultimately black. This could be the reason that the copy downstairs is suffering more than the original; its painter may have been a little heavy-handed with the lead white.
There is good news at least about Mondrian鈥檚 coloured tapes and cardboard shapes. While the cellophane tape he appears to have used is coloured and self-adhesive, in addition 鈥� perhaps because of wartime shortages 鈥� he made his own coloured plastic squares by painting onto clear cellophane tape and then sticking it to the canvas with wax or resin. Despite cellophane鈥檚 known vulnerability, both types of tape seem in good shape. And although there鈥檚 no way to check the acidity of the cardboard without taking samples, from studies with their microscope the team reckons it is undamaged, too.
As much as everyone here hoped for a definitive picture of Mondrian鈥檚 working style and a chronology of the painting, one thing is clear: conservation-wise, Mondrian鈥檚 work gets a clean bill of health, which is more than can be said for the copy downstairs. What鈥檚 more, the mountains of data, preserved on several DVDs, will serve as a kind of 鈥渢ime zero鈥� for conservators, allowing them to compare the painting with similar results taken in 10 years, say, or 100. It鈥檚 an intimate and fundamental look at how a work of art is ageing, with hard numbers to compare against 鈥� something that art conservation has lacked until recently.
As the team finishes off and begins packing up, onlookers on the other side of glass screens are taking their own photos. This is the first time that the ICN has been involved in a project in front of the public instead of in its labs, and is a consequence of the Dutch government mandate that Victory Boogie Woogie should never be away from the public eye. Being under the microscope is nothing new for MOLAB, whose 50 or so missions to date have been mostly in galleries and cathedrals. Working with an audience isn鈥檛 always easy: Brunetti tells me that one tourist ogling Michelangelo鈥檚 David at the Galleria dell鈥橝ccademia in Florence complained loudly to museum staff that the MOLAB team was blocking her view of 顿补惫颈诲鈥檚 behind.
鈥淥ne tourist ogling Michelangelo鈥檚 David complained that they were blocking her view鈥�
So what鈥檚 next? Brunetti tells me that one of the spectators following the project with keen interest was the head of research at Amsterdam鈥檚 renowned Van Gogh Museum. In preparation for a massive exhibition in 2009, the institution wants to bring in the MOLAB team to study Van Gogh鈥檚 paintings, in the hope of shedding some light on the materials and, hopefully, his working style.
MOLAB tends to get little credit: it was conspicuously absent from the media event at London鈥檚 National Gallery in 2005 after it revealed details of two unknown drawings hidden beneath Leonardo Da Vinci鈥檚 Virgin of the Rocks, illustrations that later reappeared in The Last Supper. In a sense, it might seem like a thankless job. But I can see from Brunetti鈥檚 smile that his unfettered, after-hours access to some of the world鈥檚 finest art is the only payoff he needs.
