AIC's 43rd Annual Meeting

With twenty five drawings, watercolors, and paintings, the Museum of Modern Art holds the largest and most comprehensive collection of works by Dutch abstractionist Piet Mondrian in North America. Spanning from 1902 to 1943, sixteen of these works are oil paintings and include his last completed masterpiece Broadway Boogie Woogie. Mondrian painted Broadway Boogie Woogie in his mid-town studio at 15 East 59th Street in New York City between 1942 and 1943. MoMA acquired the painting in 1943. Early on conservators noted a number of condition issues and since its time in the museum’s collection has warranted several treatments to date - Mostly to address ongoing cracking and the oozing of red paint through cracks in overlying yellow paint. The support, preparation layer, composition of the paints, how they were applied, and previous treatments all play a role in the paintings condition. Over the last five years conservators and scientists have closely collaborated utilizing the latest technology to study the Mondrian collection through examination, documentation, technical analysis, re-treatment, and inter-museum collaboration. Technical examination has included imaging, X-radiography, and Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI). Most recently macro X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (MA-XRF) combined with Multivariate Image Analysis (MIA) was used to simultaneously identify and map the different pigments and paints used in Broadway Boogie Woogie. The spectral information collected over the whole painting revealed the presence of key elements representative of pigments, fillers, and in some cases their source or manufacturing process. MIA was used to further elucidate the composition of the paints by examining the correlation between the different elements present. Mapping the elements based on the MA-XRF analysis as well as mapping the pigments and paint components based on the MIA analysis on the other hand helped visualize the artist process including the extensive reworking and repainting of the surface. This cumulative research will elucidate the complexity of Mondrian’s studio practice during a time when he was making the most monumental and masterful paintings of his career.