Just this past year, several politicians have been charged with dying their hair gray to give them some greater gravitas.We tend to use the term “patina” to describe any wear or change in a material that gives it a sense of age… and the older it looks, the greater significance or importance we infer upon the work.
Even our clothes have been bleached out, made threadbare and torn, to give a greater sense of character to our style. Artists have been adding materials to paint to cause cracking or flaking as well as tinting varnishes or mediums to give a “gold tone” to the surface.
#Patina definition in art how to
An entire field of metallurgy has been created to investigate how to create unique surfaces on metal. Artisans have been distressing and beating up their furniture, even adding worm tracks to pieces. We have created within art, design and fashion entire industries in the production of instant age. Blotchy matte appearance the result of matte glassine paper packing against the paint surface. Typically we are just talking about no more than a couple of millimeters of the surface. It does not refer to other changes that are more internal to the work of art. But clearly its definition is limited to the very top visual surface of the object or painting. Most objects conservators, historians and artists worldwide use the term patina much more broadly to define a very wide range of changes in many objects and works of art. Patina does not refer to all changes in an art object. Fans of PBS’s ‘Antiques Roadshow’, have been thoroughly warned not to touch the original finish no matter how deteriorated or blemished rather than turn a priceless treasure into scrap. Some which are earned over a work’s historic record, and some that are created to give an object some instant age, character and/or unique aesthetic appearance. These signs of age are due to changes shaped by wear, exposure to the elements and internal changes of the materials themselves. Many of these changes we describe as the ‘patina’ of the object. Change can take multiple forms and in conflicting directions in the same material. Some develop encrustations, ruptures, pits, stains, wrinkles, and organic growth. Some may harden, soften, some stretch and ooze and others crack, some flake and others dust away some colors may fade to white and others darken to brown. Realistically, not even these materials are left unscathed by the passing of time. Through processes of both accelerated exposures and real life exposures, we can develop a picture of these changes of the various acrylic surfaces, mediums and colors.Īlthough at GOLDEN, our philosophy and personal metaphor around working in the acrylic media has been to achieve a material with the clarity of glass and the resistance of stone. A significant body of evidence is being accumulated by colleagues in the field of conservation science and by our own research to begin to predict what these changes might be over time. I have been imagining and conjecturing with others for some time now what these materials might look like one hundred, five hundred or a thousand years from now. The acrylic medium for artists has now passed its 60th year since the first artists experimented and created with Bocour’s Magna®. Accelerated exposures may anticipate the changes as the acrylic polymer ages.
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