Blue poles: a new perspective

SOPHIE TEDMANSON (ST): What has the past 12 months been like working on Blue poles, both while the Gallery was closed and when we reopened to the public?

DAVID WISE (DW): It has been interesting, and good to continue the project. People are interested in what we are doing.

ST: Will the new space affect the conservation project?

DW: The space is much more intimate in some ways, so it’s a benefit to the public as they’ll be closer to the painting.

ST: What are the main questions people have asked?

DW: There’s a similar range of questions: why are we doing this? What are we doing exactly? People share their memories. A lot of people remember the first time they saw Blue poles or when it was acquired and travelled around the country [Blue poles was acquired in 1973 and went on a national tour in 1974, before the National Gallery opened in 1982]. It was a big cultural event. That has been one of the pleasures of this project, talking to people and hearing their reactions, especially the younger generations for whom this work has a different meaning entirely because they’re taught about it in school, so it’s like studying a living piece of history.

ST: Talk us through what you’ve done over the past 12 months and anything interesting you’ve come across.

DW: As we’ve done this treatment, we’ve discovered more about what has happened over time and before the painting came to the Gallery. We can see evidence of several earlier treatments before Blue poles came to Australia, what differences these have made to the surface, in turn, the effects of this previous treatment on what we’re able to do. Essentially, the painting is still surviving incredibly well considering it turns 70 next year.

This has also been a unique opportunity to deal with modern materials and the transition period in the 1950s when artists were moving away from oil-based paints to more modern paints. We can’t apply what we know now about modern paints to this painting because there have been 70 years of development in paint technology since it was created. The treatment we’ve been carrying out has been defined by those materials.

There have been some challenges that we didn’t anticipate which defined the direction we’re taking. It is a slow process. We had to step back and think, OK, where are we going to take this? What’s possible, given what’s going on with the surface and what’s going on with the way the materials are interacting here?

Visually there are aspects that are much cleaner now, although that might not be so obvious to people coming to see it. Another aspect that has evolved was when I approached the treatment, I thought I would work across the surface in a grid, but it hasn’t been like that at all. I have instead worked with areas of colour and developed a different strategy as I progressed. For me, this has been a really fascinating study.

ST: Can you summarise the treatment you have done over the past 12 months?

DW: We looked at it with infrared and ultraviolet lights, then we took smaller cross-sections of paint and looked at the layers. We did pigment analysis to see what pigments there are, what the colours are, how stable they are. And then we’ve also done analysis on the paint binder itself, to get an idea of whether the paints are similar across the surface or there are differences in composition. And then we’ve done cleaning treatment on top of that, which has been informed by that analysis.

ST: You’ve found objects such as a staple, a piece of glass and cardboard in the canvas, and also a fingerprint. Have you discovered anything else?

DW: The public always ask that too! People want to see the glass and the staples. And there are always questions about a footprint. I have not found a footprint in there. I’m not saying it’s not there, just, for the life of me, I can’t see it.

ST: Maybe that’s your challenge for the next 12 months! So what is the end goal?

DW: We want to pursue the cleaning to its logical conclusion, wherever that ends. I can’t predict when we’re going to stop because as we deal with things we’re finding things react differently. In general it’s very stable so the cleaning is really what I’m looking at as the scope of the treatment.

ST: You’ve been looking at Blue poles intimately for 12 months now. How do you feel about the painting now?

DW: I’m still enjoying it. It’s fun even though it’s a slow process. Sometimes I’ll spend a whole day on just a centimetre and at think, This whole painting is going to take a long time. But then I’ll come back and do a whole section quite quickly. It’s just the nature of the paint changes in the work.

I’ve looked at lots of Pollocks in other collections, but what I’d like to do now, after looking at this one so intimately, is go back and look at all those others when we are allowed to travel again, and really look at them and think with the knowledge I’ve gained from working so closely on Blue poles

This article is from the Winter 2021 issue of Artonview, the National Gallery’s magazine for Members. Become a Member today.