Plastic Art – A Precarious Success Story

Plastic Art –

A Precarious Success Story

By Stefan Albus, Christian Bonten, Kathrin Keßler, Gabriela Rossi, and Thomas Wessel

The AXA Art Conservation Project

Preface

For the first time, AXA Art is issuing a publication dealing with the conservation of art made of plastic materials. The project is a practical part of the AXA Art Research Grant, which is given for research purposes to globally renowned art institutes, with which we share a vital interest in and sense of long-term responsibility for the preservation of cultural assets for coming generations.

Among the partners of the AXA Art Research Grant thus far are MOMA, Guggenheim, Jacquemart André, Triennale di Milano, Museo Vergogna, Vitra Design Museum, and from 2006 to 2008 Tate with the Tate AXA Art Modern Paints Project.

Our customers can obtain other AXA Art brochures devoted to the subjects of glass, porcelain, silver, photography, design, furniture, paintings, forgeries, and collectibles at www.axa-art.de.

The material qualities and life expectancy of plastic differ clearly from those of wood, stone, bronze, paper, and canvas. “Plastic lasts forever,” people claimed half a century ago, when plastic first became an object of mass consumption. Unfortunately, this assertion does not apply to plastic art. Although synthetic materials are “bred” every day in the labs of large chemical companies to have specific properties, they have a limited shelf life. Incidentally, we speak of the “design of plastic properties,” which have interested us art insurers just as much as the properties of the materials of an African clay-wood-bast-shell-nail-fetish-reliquiary sculpture, an oil-paint fresco, a shark in formaldehyde, or a plastic “Nana” created by Niki de Saint Phalle.

For collectors of art and design made of plastic, therefore, behind the material “plastic” is an issue that has been given little attention thus far. It is intriguing that this material can look so virginally fresh and exceed- ingly beautiful at first, but later...?

We have understood the signs of the times and with the AXA Art Research Grant have since 2002 pursued an aim that we share with collectors, artists, designers, museums of applied art, restorers, and restoration scholars: extending the life span of plastic art and design works and keeping them as damage-free as possible for posterity.

The history of plastics development, often driven forward by ingenious German chemists, reads like a suspense story with astonishing twists and turns. A wealth of technological ideas have undergone a synthe- sis with artistic imagination, giving rise to one of the most exciting chapters of art history. But art historians have only recently begun to explore this topic. Plastic art is still in its infancy. We are eager to see what plastic will have to offer in future art and design.

Only very few students at art academies receive in established courses a solid education in the difficult properties of plastic. The situation is similar at restoration colleges, which are now trying to get their net- works to efficiently exchange research results. Only a few international museums and scientific laboratories deal in depth with plastics. Yet there are 200 museums worldwide that store plastic artworks and design objects, and sometimes transport and exhibit them under adverse circumstances.

Perhaps our readers will feel the way we did when we began some 20 years ago to occupy ourselves intensely with the restorability of all of the objects entrusted to us for insurance. For you can only insure

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something if you understand how it can be protected from decay, spoilage, and loss, and, moreover, how it can be restored and its preservation ensured.

Objects made of plastic are no longer banal consumer goods but documents which in the context of their historic heritage are held in high esteem internationally and are enjoying increasing collector’s value. Who would have thought that objects created by Antoine Pevsner or his brother Naum Gabo, the first sculptors to use Plexiglas for Constructivist sculptures, would sell for 500,000 euros on the market, and that chairs and lamps designed by Panton, less than 40 years old, would go for more than 50,000 euros.

With regard to yellowing, patinas, and the gradual change of materials used, we are experiencing a paradigm shift in the aesthetic perception of plastic art and coming across new criteria for appraising them. While a patina on a traditional artwork means it is “antique,” a patina on a plastic object is considered more unpleasant and unsightly, as we expect plastic to have fresh, unadulterated surfaces. When it comes to old plastics, however, such inherent changes stand for “authenticity and originality.” And when artists buy plastic objects from hardware stores and supermarkets for their multimedia installations, the question arises as to what is authentic and original if, when one of these parts is lost, it can easily be replaced from the same store.

Although today’s experts have no patent answers to these questions, we can nonetheless afford our read- ers and collectors at least an introduction to this exciting chapter of recent art history.

This brochure is also directed to the colleagues of our former AXA Art conservator at the Vitra Design Museum, Kathrin Keßler. We would to thank her and her team at the Vitra Design Museum for a successful and fruitful three-year-long research partnership.

I would like to extend special thanks to Alexander von Vegesack, the director of the Vitra Design Museum, and my colleague Thomas Wessel. As a collector of design works composed of traditional materials, Alex- ander von Vegesack was aware of the scope of our project from the very beginning and gave the endeavor a direction by asking key questions. With visionary persistence, Thomas Wessel pushed the research work past the difficult initial phase and ultimately to fruition.

Roman Passarge, Managing Director of the Vitra Design Museum, and his assistant Alexa Tepen untiringly provided important impetus throughout the project and at six international symposia were able to get a true following of plastics specialists to rally around them, whose trust we enjoy. The authors Stefan Albus, Chris- tian Bonten, Kathrin Keßler, Gabriela Rossi, and Thomas Wessel have succeeded in providing a captivating introduction to a subject that has hardly been explored thus far. Their enthusiasm for the ongoing conserva- tion of plastic art will surely inspire readers to gain a better understanding of plastic in the future.

Cologne, August 2006 Dr. Ulrich Guntram Chairman of the Management Board of AXA Art Versicherung

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