Study of contemporary artworks and artists' materials by means of spectroscopic techniques

This thesis is divided into three sections. In Section I, the CoPAC Project and the problem of the preventive conservation of contemporary art will be introduced by briefly describing the new materials used by contemporary artists and the analytical techniques that have been applied in this research activity. In section II, the results of the researches carried out on some of the new synthetic materials used by contemporary artists will be reported. Particularly, a study on commercial alkyd paints and their photo-oxidative degradation will be described in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3 a comparative study of IR spectra acquired in the three instrumental configurations (Transmittance, ATR, and Total Reflectance) on a collection of polymeric reference samples will be presented, highlighting the potentials of in situ and non-invasive FT-IR analysis. Lastly, section III will deal with the diagnostic investigations carried out on some actual case studies. The selection of the works to be analysed was done in collaboration with curators and conservators focusing on degradation problems noticed during conservation survey. Non invasive and invasive analysis were performed on two polymateric works by Anselm Kiefer (Die Grosse Fracht and The Strip; Chapter 4), on the original palette by Fernando Melani and on two of his paintings (La Bandiera Italiana and N. Inv. 2625; Chapter 5), on the Keith Haring Tuttomondo mural (Chapter 6) and on some of the canvases constituting the Caverna dell’Antimateria by Pinot Gallizio (Chapter 7). The in situ investigations and the analysis of the samples taken from selected areas of the said case studies allowed the identification of the main paint constituents (especially pigments/dyes) of the artworks under examination.