14C dating and contemporary art: the case study of Concrete Art

VERONICA FANFANI; SERENA BARONE; MARIAELENA FEDI; LUCIA LICCIOLI; DAVID CHELAZZI; FLORENCIA CASTELLÁ; FERNANDO MARTE

Reggio Calabria

Conferencia; Convegno tematico AIAr 2019; 2019

Dating contemporary art by radiocarbon can be useful thanks to the so-called Bomb Peak, which can give us a high timing resolution for the period starting 1955.However, the materials used by artists of this period can be very different from the “traditional” ones; they are often very complex and may vary both in composition and provenance. Moreover, they may be mixed with synthetic resins and glues, that are difficult to remove with the usual sample pre-treatments, thus making data interpretation not so straightforward and even measurements useless.In this study, we collected six samples from the supports of different artworks belonging to Concrete Art, an artistic movement developed during the middle 20th century, mainly in Brazil and Argentina, based on abstract and geometric forms. Typical used materials were various e.g. plywood, hardboard and cardboard, derived from wood processing, either with or without any adhesive, but also new matters, such as cellotex.In order to apply an efficient treatment to remove the possible contaminations, microATR-imaging spectroscopy was used as diagnostic tool to characterise samples surface. Unfortunately, as we expected, this technique gave us only qualitative information since it cannot discriminate between components derived from possible contaminations and from the original matrix (for instance, the functional group C=O is present both in wood structure and in synthetic resins).As a first approach, ABA pre-treatment was applied and radiocarbon concentrations were measured by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS). Two of the measured samples (cellotex and one of the plywood fragments) resulted to be contaminated by old carbon, as the removal of synthetic substances was not complete. The others samples gave results which can be compatible with what expected even though, in case of post-1955 results, the association of the obtained data to the actual date is not unambiguous.