Paint conservation: time to synthesize

Art conservators have had several centuries to figure out the nature of oil paint. They know how weather, humidity and chemical changes can affect it over time. They know how it oxidizes, cracks and turns yellow and how to clean it. Modern paints, made over the last 70 years with an ever-expanding array of synthetic products, are much more perplexing.

Help is on the way in “Modern Paints,” a symposium at Tate Modern in London today through Thursday. About 250 art conservators and conservation scientists will attend sessions on chemical analysis, physical properties and cleaning treatments of the new materials. The program of scholarly presentations and round-table discussions is a collaborative venture of the British museum, the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Participants will grapple with paints made from hundreds of pigments to create every conceivable color and level of transparency. Instead of mixing the pigments with oil, as in the past, paint formulators often use synthetic binders -- such as acrylic, alkyd, polyvinyl acetate and nitrocellulose -- to increase flexibility and shelf life, decrease drying time and reduce yellowing.

Many of these products were not developed as art materials, but artists use what they will. The result is a huge body of contemporary art incorporating products that can be baffling for conservators who need to provide appropriate display and storage environments for the artworks and devise conservation protocols.

In the works since 2002, the symposium evolved from a feasibility study conducted by Thomas J.S. Learner, the Tate’s senior conservation scientist, when he was a guest scholar at the Getty. A chemist who has trained as a paintings conservator, he used various analytical methods to detect differences in acrylic paints before and after they had been cleaned. He made some progress, but thought teaming up with colleagues would be far more productive.

“A modern paint is quite a complicated thing,” Learner said. “Some acrylic emulsion paints have at least 15 components. You can’t figure out everything in a scientific study, but you can make generalizations and make inroads on the most pressing needs.”

He and his colleagues at the three institutions have compiled a lot of scientific information related to individual conservators’ work with collections. The symposium will take stock of their findings and launch additional studies.

“There are so many variables in modern paints that no one knew where to start,” Learner said. “I just felt that was always going to be the case. We would never get to the point where we could bring in enough people to do a massive project that would answer every question, but we could make a difference. New paints are coming out all the time. You just have to accept that and know that whatever you do will make a difference to some people and some objects, and hope other people will come on board and investigate other materials.

“For the past 10 years or so there have been endless discussions about art materials deteriorating,” he said. “There also has been press coverage saying modern art would fall apart. We hope to refute that. Some materials are very fragile, but we just need to figure out how to conserve them.”