The versatility of modern commercial house paints has ensured their use in a broad range of applications, including the protection and decoration of historic buildings, the coating of toys and furniture, and the creation of works of art. Historically, house paints were based on naturally occurring oils, gums, resins, and proteins, but in the early twentieth century, the introduction of synthetic resins revolutionized the industry. Good quality ready-mixed products became available and were used by artists worldwide. While the ubiquity of commercial paints means that conservators are increasingly called upon to preserve them, such paints pose unique challenges including establishing exactly which materials are present. This book traces the history of the household paint industry in the United States and United Kingdom over the first half of the twentieth century. It includes chapters on the artistic use of commercial paints and the development of ready-mixed paints and synthetic resins; oil paints, oleoresinous gloss and enamel paints, water paints, nitrocellulose lacquers, oil-modified alkyds, and emulsion paints; and the conservation implications of these materials. The book will be of interest to conservators and conservation scientists working on a broad range of painted surfaces, as well as curators, art historians, and historians of architectural paint.

Paint formulations and historyAnalysis and characterizationTreatmentsCleaning issuesBehavior and propertiesPosters.

Artists’ oil paints have become increasingly complex and diverse in the 20th Century, applied by artists in a variety of ways. This has led to a number of issues that pose increasing difficulties to conservators and collection keepers. A deeper knowledge of the artists’ intent as well as processes associated with material changes in paintings is important to conservation, which is almost always a compromise between material preservation and aesthetics. This volume represents 46 peer-reviewed papers presented at the Conference of Modern Oil Paints held in Amsterdam in 2018. The book contains a compilation of articles on oil paints and paintings in the 20th Century, partly presenting the outcome of the European JPI project ‘Cleaning of Modern Oil Paints’. It is also a follow-up on ‘Issues in Contemporary Oil Paint’ (Springer, 2014). The chapters cover a range of themes and topics such as: patents and paint manufacturing in the 20th Century; characterization of modern-contemporary oil paints and paint surfaces; artists’ materials and techniques; the artists’ voice and influence on perception of curators, conservators and scientists; model studies on paint degradation and long term stability; approaches to conservation of oil paintings; practical surface treatment and display. The book will help conservators and curators recognise problems and interpret visual changes on paintings, which in turn give a more solid basis for decisions on the treatment of these paintings.

This volume represents 27 peer-reviewed papers presented at the ICOP 2013 symposium which will help conservators and curators recognise problems and interpret visual changes on paintings, which in turn give a more solid basis for decisions on the treatment of these paintings. The subject matter ranges from developments of paint technology, working methods of individual artists, through characterisation of paints and paint surfaces, paint degradation vs. long time stability, to observations of issues in collections, cleaning and other treatment issues as well as new conservation approaches.

Outlines the techniques that are currently employed to analyze the synthetic resins used in modern painting materials, such as pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and direct temperature-resolved mass spectrometry. For each technique, results are given for standard samples of the principal classes of synthetic binding media, various pigments and extenders, tube paint formulations, and microscopic paint fragments taken from actual works of art.

Conservation of Easel Paintings, Second Edition provides a much-anticipated update to the previous edition, which has come to be known internationally as an invaluable and comprehensive text on the history, philosophy and methods of the treatment of easel paintings. Including 49 chapters written by more than 90 respected authors from around the world, this volume offers the necessary background knowledge in technical art history, artists’ materials and scientific methods of examination and documentation. Later sections of the book provide information about the varying approaches and methods for treatment and issues of preventive conservation, as well as valuable reflections on storage, shipping, and exhibition. Including exciting developments that have taken place since the last edition was published, the book also covers new techniques of examination, especially MacroXRF scanning and Reflectance Transmission Imagery. Drawing on research presented at recent professional conferences, information about innovative methods for cleaning modern and contemporary paintings and insights into modern oil paints is also included. Incorporating the latest regulations and understanding of health and safety practices and integrating theory with practice throughout, Conservation of Easel Paintings, Second Edition will continue to be an indispensable reference for practicing conservators. It will also be an essential resource for students taking conservation courses around the world.

In the years after World War II, artists in Argentina and Brazil experimented with geo-metric abstraction and engaged in lively debates about the role of the artwork in society. Some of these artists used novel synthetic materials, creating objects that offered an alternative to established traditions in painting—proposing that these objects become part of everyday, concrete reality. Combining art historical and scientific analysis, experts from the Getty Conservation Institute and Getty Research Institute are collaborating with the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, a world-renowned collection of Latin American art, to research the formal strategies and material decisions of these artists working in the concrete and neo-concrete vein. Making Art Concrete presents works by Lygia Clark, Willys de Castro, Judith Lauand, Raúl Lozza, Hélio Oiticica, and Rhod Rothfuss, among others, with spectacu-lar new photography. The photographs, along with information about the now-invisible processes that determine the appearance of these works, are key to interpreting the artists’ technical choices as well as the objects themselves. Indeed, this volume sheds further light on the social, political, and cultural underpinnings of the artists’ propositions, making a compelling addition to the field of postwar Latin American art.