Glance at Culture - Dr. Jennnifer Mass, President of Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, On Cultural Heritage Science, Modigliani's Palette, Creating Scientific Literacy and More

Warfare of Art & Law Podcast

To learn more, please visit the website for Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, LLC.
Show Notes:
0:01 scientific methods in London/Berlin to understand/preserve cultural heritage since 19th Century

2:30 history of cultural heritage science

4:00 founding Scientific Analysis of Fine Art LLC (SAFA)

5:40 Yves Tanguy’s Fraud in the Garden

5:50 catalogue raisonné by art historians Charles Stuckey/Stephen Mack

6:10 fascist attack at screening of Luis Bunuel’s satiric “L’Age d’Oro”

7:00 use of multi-spectral imaging on Fraud in the Garden - ultraviolet light and infrared radiation, x-rays to view slash pattern on painting

7:45 restorations on Fraud in the Garden dated through pigments/paint binders

9:00 value of artwork as historical documents v. restoration

9:45 cultural heritage as historical documents example of Victoria & Albert Museum

10:45 display of Rothko Murals at Harvard

11:45 analysis for attribution questions varies between antiquities, paintings, decorative art objects

13:20 non-destructive drive for protocols for elemental and molecular analysis

14:00 changes to work by Van Gogh and Met’s Irises and Roses

14:30 geranium lake known as Eosin red

15:00 paints like cadmium/chromium yellows from Industrial Revolution are also very sensitive to light and relative humidity

15:15 changes in Matisse’s 4 versions of Joy of Life – yellows fading to ivory white

15:30 mechanism of degradation

16:20 Picasso's 1901 The Blue Room

17:30 Cezanne

18:15 analysis of over 900 paint tubes from Munch

19:30 paints standardized in 1920s

21:00 flaking of zinc white: reaction of zinc oxide with oil creates crystalized molecules - zinc soaps

21:25 titanium white

23:00 heavy metal pigment paints strongly absorb x-rays like lead white/vermillion (a mercury sulfide red) prevent seeing underpainting

24:45 head of scientific vetting committee for TEFAF New York

27:15 Court of Arbitration for Art

28:35 trusting science for due diligence

30:30 stigma attached to use of science

33:00 Bard Graduate Center

34:00 wooden polychrome sculpture analysis: dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating

36:00 dirty dozen paint list

36:45 mixing drying linseed with non-drying oil paint (sunflower)

37:50 Eosin red, emerald green, cadmium yellow, chromium yellow, vermillion, copper blues

38:50 favorite paintings

39:10 Modigliani at the Barnes

39:45 Modigliani’s palette

40:35 The Burlington Magazine

41:10 Klimt’s Faculty Paintings

42:30 computational technologies

43:00 justice

43:45 invention of photography enabled Jacob Riis to document New York slums

44:00 20th Century photographer and sociologist Lewis Hine

44:20 BLM

44:30 environmental justice

45:40 recommendations

46:55 legacy to create scientific literacy for art conservators and historians

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© Stephanie Drawdy [2024]