Impermanent art

Does it matter? Most of these objects weren’t meant to last; their designers participated knowingly in the rapid obsolescence of modernity. Despite the recent development of more durable kinds of plastic, the word itself connotes provisionality. What we call plastic was not intended for use in the plastic arts. No modern Ozymandias would commission monumental sculpture made from it. If he did, nothing would remain; the desert sands hold no vast and trunkless legs of Styrofoam.

Not all designers are worried by the prospect of change and decay. Sir Terence Conran, long-time champion of the inclusion of modern industrial design in British museums, has said that distressed objects should just be allowed to “fall off the edge”. An increasing number of artists, moreover, are actively embracing impermanence, converting an art of materials into performance art, where the only fixed record of a sculptural moment is its pictorial documentation. Hence the Christos’ wrapped buildings, or Andy Goldsworthy’s ice and leaf sculptures, or Walter de Maria’s land art, all of which exist in the long term only in two dimensions, as photographs.

There is a pleasing economy to the work of these land artists: it side-steps the fetishistic impulse that haunts the museum, where aesthetic value is held to inhere in the object, and acknowledges a more complex transaction that involves the skills of the maker, the imagination of the viewer, the genius of place and the spirit of the age.

Good news for dolphins

In spending their time worrying how to preserve plastic, curators are, globally-speaking, in a minority. For most of the world the problem is how to get rid of the stuff. The same week that MOMA went public with their conservation problems the chemical company Dupont announced a biodegradeable polymer called Biomax, a substitute for existing plastics which is designed to be slowly dissolved by water. Plastic bags and bottles, cups and plates and fishing lines and nets made from this new material will all rot away in a few months.

If Biomax-type materials prevail in the marketplace this will doubtless create further difficulties for museums, at least for those that locate sublimity in kitchen utensils or soda bottles. Artefacts made from these materials will have to be kept in anhydrous vitrines, where no molecule of water can penetrate. In the real world, though, there will be less landfill, less unsightly litter and less nylon twine to choke and strangle sea mammals. It may be bad news for museum curators, but it’s good news for dolphins. If I have to choose between them, I know whose side I’m on. ★