Analytical Strategy 2018 Strategische Übung: Art 25. September 2018 Jens Stenger Swiss Institute for Art Research Mark Rothko's Harvard Murals In 1962, the American painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970) created a group of five paintings on canvas for a dining and reception room at Harvard University. These works on canvas are known as his Harvard Murals, and the word “murals” is used because of their size (height: 267 cm). Rothko wrote in a press release: “I have been preoccupied for a number of years with the idea of translating my pictorial concepts into murals which would serve as an image for a public place.” Interestingly, he talked about “murals” in plural and “an image” in singular. The paintings had not only the same height but also the same background color, crimson. The paintings were installed in 1963 on the 10 th floor at Holyoke Center on the campus of Harvard University.
Transcript
Analytical Strategy 2018 Strategische Übung: Art 25. September 2018 Jens Stenger Swiss Institute for Art Research
Mark Rothko's Harvard Murals
In 1962, the American painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970) created a group of five paintings on
canvas for a dining and reception room at Harvard University. These works on canvas are
known as his Harvard Murals, and the word “murals” is used because of their size (height: 267
cm). Rothko wrote in a press release: “I have been preoccupied for a number of years with the
idea of translating my pictorial concepts into murals which would serve as an image for a public
place.” Interestingly, he talked about “murals” in plural and “an image” in singular. The paintings
had not only the same height but also the same background color, crimson.
The paintings were installed in 1963 on the 10th floor at Holyoke Center on the campus of
Harvard University.
The first three paintings (Panels 1, 2, and 3) were installed as a triptych, the other two (Panel 4
and 5) on the opposite wall, left and right of two doors. To the north and south, there were floor-
to-ceiling windows.
Installation views, undated (1960s): top left: triptych; top right: Panel 4; bottom: Panel 5 next to
the southern window
In the mid-1970s, it became obvious that the paintings had dramatically faded. Their color has
changed in gradations and different paintings had changed to different degrees. They had lost
their unity as a single work of art. The works were removed from the reception room and sent to
dark storage. They have rarely been shown since.
Fifty years after Rothko painted these works, imagine you are an analytical chemist, and
curators, art historians, and conservators approach you with the following questions:
1. What happened? Why do the paintings look like that today?
2. Can you find out what the colors were before fading, in a scientific sense?
3. How can we restore these paintings?
To solve question 1: What analytical tools would you use to investigate the pigments and binding
media of the paint?
Betty Jones, an art conservator who helped to install the paintings in 1963, remembers that
Rothko had told her that he had used mostly oil paint and that when he ran out of paint, he
would go to a Woolworth store to buy more.
You take a sample from Panel 1 in the orange-red shape, mount it in resin, grind it, and do
microscopy (the example below is recorded as UV-induced visible fluorescence)
Judging from the homogeneity of the materials in the cross section, do you think this is
commercial paint?
Further, you measure Raman spectra of the orange-red in the top layer and dark red in the lower
layer. Although the two areas have different color, they have very similar Raman spectra. They
both match Pigment Red 49, also known as Lithol Red. How can that be?
You examine the surface of Panel 1 carefully, and notice that the orange-red foreground paint is
slightly glossy; the faded background is matte and looks like a stain soaked into the canvas. You
take more samples and both paints come out in the FTIR analysis as protein-based. Although
Rothko had talked about using oil paint and commercial paint you cannot find any trace of these
materials. How can that be? How can you further analyze the protein binding media to identify
the types of protein and explain the difference in the gloss?
Details of Panel 1
1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400
Ra
ma
n I
nte
nsi
ty
Wavenumber [cm-1]
Can you explain why on Panels 1, 3, and 4 there is a gradient of fading across the background?
(See images on the first page of this document.)
Why are Panels 2 and 5 faded so much more than the rest? Use the following information:
An infrared photograph (800nm -1000nm) of Panel 2 looks like this:
A cross section of Panel 2 (sample location above the lower black square in the left column-
shaped opening) looks like this:
A paper study (17.6 cm x 30.9 cm; right: detail) by Rothko looks like this:
Question 2: Can you find out what the color on these paintings used to be?
You find old Ektachrome slides in the archives of the university. They look like this:
Ektachrome slide of Panel 1, shot in 1964
Why does this slide look so magenta and yellow?
You find a sixth painting in the series at the storage locker of Mark Rothko’s children. It looks like
this:
What happened here? You perform X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and find titanium in the
pink foreground shape. What titanium compound could it be? Could this compound be relevant
in the fading process? Can this painting help you to restore the Ektachromes digitally?
Question 3: How can one restore the color of the paintings? If an art conservator added
conservation paint to the surface to bring back the color, one would repaint the works to a large
extent. The artist’s hand would be mostly removed. The treatment would be irreversible, but
reversibility is paramount in art conservation today.
Think about human color perception. It is an interaction between a surface, a viewer, and a light
source. If you cannot change the surface or the viewer, you are left with the light.
What instrument would you use to restore the color appearance of a painting?
You install the paintings in an exhibition and restore their color appearance with light. How can
you test the current light sensitivity of paintings and how can you make sure no further light
damage is occurring?
Restored panels
Unrestored panels
Jeffrey Weiss, curator at the Guggenheim Museum and Rothko expert, criticizes the installation:
“Substitution of projected light blocks the metaphorical light of the painting and violates the terms
of the work. This is a fundamental obstacle. Whole-cloth deceptive illusion is unnerving. The
restoration produces a simulacrum, and we are in danger of substituting it for the original, and
the original loses its authenticity.”
How do you respond to this criticism?
Suggested reading:
Lithol Red The History and Manufacture of Lithol Red, a Pigment Used by Mark Rothko in his Seagram and Harvard Murals of the 1950s and 1960s Harriet A. L. Standeven https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/10/history-and-manufacture-of-lithol-red-pigment-used-by-mark-rothko-in-seagram-and-harvard-murals-1950s-and-1960s A. Kennedy, H. Stewart, K. Eremin, and J. Stenger Lithol Red: A Systematic Structural Study on Salts of a Sulfonated Azo Pigment Chemistry - A European Journal 18 (10) 3064-3069 (2012) J. Stenger, N. Khandekar, A. Wilker, K. Kallsen, D. Kirby, and K. Eremin The Making of Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals Studies in Conservation 61 (6) 331-347 (2016) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/2047058415Y.0000000009 FTIR Michele R. Derrick, Dusan C. Stulik, and James M. Landry, Infrared Spectroscopy in Conservation Science, Getty Publication, 1999 Full text: http://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/0892364696.html Raman Spectroscopy Howell Edwards and John M. Chalmers, Raman Spectroscopy in Archaeology and Art History, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2005 XRF
Aaron N. Shugar and Jennifer L. Mass, Handheld XRF for Art and Archaeology, Leuven University Press, 2012
Mass spectrometry
Maria Perla Colombini und Francesca Modugno, Organic Mass Spectrometry in Art and Archaeology, Wiley 2009
Whitmore, P., Pan, X., & Bailie, C. 1999. Predicting the Fading of Objects: Identification of Fugitive Colorants Through Direct Nondestructive Lightfastness Measurements. Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, 38(3): 395–409.
https://www.microfading.com/
J. Stenger, N. Khandekar, R. Raskar, S. Cuellar, A. Mohan, and R. Gschwind Conservation of a Room: a Treatment Proposal for Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals Studies in Conservation 61 (6) 348-361 (2016) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/2047058415Y.0000000010 https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/watching-them-turn-off-the-rothkos Other resources
John Stuart Mills und Raymond White, The Organic Chemistry of Museum Objects, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999
Barbara H. Stuart, Analytical Techniques in Materials Conservation, Wiley 2007
Material-Archiv, http://www.materialarchiv.ch/
CAMEO: Conservation & Art Materials Encyclopedia Online, http://cameo.mfa.org
Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, Volume 1-4, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Archetype Publications, 1986-2007
Full text https://www.nga.gov/research/publications/pdf-library/artists-pigments-vol-1.html
