Abstract
Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942–1943) was examined using Macro X-Ray Fluorescence mapping (MA-XRF) to help characterize the artist’s materials and understand his creative process as well as the current condition issues of the painting. The presence and distribution of key chemical elements was used to identify the main pigments in the different paint layers and under-layers, namely titanium white/barium sulfate, zinc white, bone black, cadmium yellow and/or cadmium-zinc yellow, cadmium red and/or cadmium-barium red and ultramarine. The XRF data was also examined using a multivariate curve resolution-alternating least square (MCR-ALS) approach to virtually separate and help characterize the different paint layers. Results suggest that Broadway Boogie Woogie was originally conceived as an asymmetrical grid of interlacing red and yellow bars. Mondrian then reworked the composition extensively breaking the bars by painting small squares in red, blue and gray and repainting them over and over again changing their size, color or tonality, and by adding and reworking large colored shapes in the background. Mondrian scraped off the paint in some areas before making adjustments to the composition but did not do it consistently throughout the painting. The yellow paint on the surface is severely cracked. Wherever red paint has been covered with yellow paint, it has oozed through the cracks in the top layer. The results illustrate how the MA-XRF / MCR-ALS approach can complement the examination of a painting and contribute to the understanding of the artist’s process and choice of materials in a non-invasive way.
Highlights
Broadway Boogie Woogie (Fig. 1) is one of Mondrian’s most emblematic paintings and his last finished work
Analysis done in the past [3] on paint samples taken from the painting using Polarized Light Microscopy (PLM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (SEM–EDS) identified some of the pigments and fillers namely cadmium yellow, cadmium yellow lithopone, cadmium red, cadmium red lithopone, an organic red, titanium oxide/barium sulfate composite white, zinc white, synthetic ultramarine blue and small amounts of fillers such as barium sulfate, calcite and quartz
We propose the use multivariate curve resolution-alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) [19, 20], another popular spectral unmixing method that has been used in the interpretation of Raman, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis (FTIR), TOF–SIMS, LC–MS and EDXRF imaging data [21,22,23,24]
Summary
Broadway Boogie Woogie (Fig. 1) is one of Mondrian’s most emblematic paintings and his last finished work It was painted in New York between June 1942 and March 1943 and it entered The Museum of Modern Art collection shortly after it was exhibited for the first time at the Valentine Dudensing Gallery in March 1943 [1]. The technique is gaining widespread popularity in the field of cultural heritage since it was first presented in 2008 [6] and has been used with great success to reveal and visualize hidden compositions in paintings by Van Gogh and Magritte among others [6,7,8,9,10,11] It has provided meaningful insight into the technique of artists such as Rembrandt [12, 13] and Pollock [14]
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