Plastics Conservation in Art

Words by M Suhosky

Photo: Anna Laganà. © 2017 J. Paul Getty Trust

“Plastics? What’s that got to do with art?”

Scholarship and awareness regarding the collection and care of plastics materials for cultural heritage have grown significantly in the last thirty years. In spite of the reputation plastic has earned as a pollutant, it’s no secret to archivists and museum workers that these moldable polymers hold significant value for the human story. Still, as I process an extensive archival collection on plastics trade literature for the Getty Conservation Institute, I’m asked this question more often than you would guess. And the answer is: a great deal, as the treatment of plastics contends to be one of the most critical areas of conservation for our material culture. 

“Natural plastics,” molded from materials such as amber, horn, shellac, rubber, or tortoiseshell, have existed in material culture for centuries. Recorded history of plastics craftsmen like The Horners Company dates back to 1284. By the turn of the twenty-first century, more than fifty types of plastics were available on the market, with formulations, varieties, uses, and consumption rates growing exponentially through the following years. The majority of human activity today is so dependent upon and influenced by plastics that we can scarcely comprehend its ubiquity.

Plastics in Art

Applications of plastics for works of art are multi- and interdisciplinary, with significant impact in countless areas including painting, prints and printmaking, costume, fashion and textiles, furniture, sculpture, architectural design and built structures, as well as in visual and media arts such as animation, film, and photography. Examples of plastics applications in modern art are seemingly limitless. For the sake of brevity, I’d like to highlight two specific pieces from a recent Getty Research Institute exhibit, Fluxus Means Change: Jean Brown’s Avant-Garde Archive.

An edition of Oldenburg’s Pop multiples, "False Food Selection" is a curated “lunchbox” of plastic foods. The work consists of varying types of plastics– mainly synthetic rubber, rigid plastic, and paper petit-fours cups. Though the piece is almost entirely plastic, the various types of plastic present in the same work can multiply the challenges inherent to caring for this type of material. The ham and eggs, formed from isoprene rubber, can become yellow and tacky when degrading and can lose the mechanical properties that give them their flexible quality. The pear has deflated over time, as have its many cousins in the other False Food editions. If the lunchbox were made of  a “problem plastic” like PVC, it could experience discoloration, shrinking, deformation, or hardening, and would pose a threat to items in contact through migration and leaching of plasticizers and surface sticking.

"Hooked" by Benjamin Patterson presents the challenge of mixed materials. This piece is not only composed of a multitude of plastic types– from the tackle box, to the doll, to even the glove and tie–but also of metal hooks, wood, glass, and other materials (that can of sardines has a story to tell), which come into contact with the plastics. Works like these abound and require creative approaches to their storage, display, and maintenance, traditionally prioritizing materials on a risk-based hierarchy. 

Tony Cragg’s 1982 piece "One Space, Four Places" is another mixed material artwork. It was selected in the late nineties as one of ten pilot objects that were the focus of the project Modern Art, Who Cares?, initiated by the Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art, which set international standards for preservation and conservation approaches for complex modern objects. Through the various  pilot objects, the project investigated questions of intervention, custodianship, artistic intent, and the essence of the artworks themselves. 

Cragg’s piece is composed of found waste materials such as cans, various plastics, sponges, brick and earthenware, cork, and wood, which have been welded together into furniture-like shapes.  The artist approved the conservation proposals generated by the project, but had his own note to add: 

“By way of comparison, he points out that we accept a grandmother as an old person although she was once a beautiful young woman. Some grandmothers will age more beautifully than others, of course, and qualities of life will differ. The same goes for works of art, says Cragg. But the artist’s responsibility ends the moment the work leaves the studio. At that point it takes on a life of its own. This life, depending on the effort, love, and professionalism of its owners and guardians, is what Cragg calls ‘artificial respiration.’”

The Colin J. Williamson Collection

You don’t need to work on a plastics project to encounter plastics in your collections. I have found them in every project I have worked on, even in a collection I was told was completely paper-based. No matter your collection scope, it may be nearly impossible to avoid collecting plastics. Plastics in archives can be problematic– any moving-image archivist understands the woes of cellulose nitrate, for example. Plastics are complicated to care for, degrade quickly, can be “malignant” (i.e. causing damage to other materials), and their identification and preservation require specialized knowledge not offered in typical archives curriculum. Resources like the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency’s Plastic Identification Tool can be a helpful first step for anyone looking to narrow down what material they’re working with. Whether you’re conserving works of art or are simply curious about the plastics hiding in your collection items, there is more to discover in this humble yet temperamental material than what meets the eye.