Permanence is an issue for me in that archival is a term often used to imply that something may last a long time. Nothing last forever and the things you don't expect to last may be the ones that last the longest. I spend my time working on objects that I can make permanent because most of the things I have made in the past have been destroyed with a slight exposure to the elements over long periods of time. Par example, a print I made of my wife, before she was my wife, on canvas of her body, painted of course, as she rolled around on canvas has not survived well in our basement and when I attempted to stretch it out some 20 years later it was stinky with mildew and fell apart in chunks. Not so good from an archival standpoint.
My respect for work that has lasted for extended periods of time comes simply from the point that it may have outlived the other works from those same periods, regardless of the artistic quality of the works themselves. This implies that the better engineer is the better artist. Now that I am comfortable with my basic materials that I am working with as being "permanent", as compared to the other materials in common use for decorative pieces these days, I am forced to think of something that is relevant that I should make.
Nothing is permanent and especially if nobody keeps an objet d' art around for other generations to see and enjoy. There are several ways to gain permanence with a crafted thing. One way is to make an item so popular that everyone has one of the "things" during an era that it becomes ubiquitous for the period of time and therefore collectible and synonomous with the times, such as vintage lunchboxes or popular slogans. The second way is that create something so unique and special, like a giant ball of twine or piece of toast with the image of Jesus on it that it is preserved by the elite and documented as a special object to the culture itself. The third way an object can be made permanent is by the luck of the enviroment it is left in; some things are "found" as remnants once a society has been gone for a long time and then the object is analyzed by future generations as having been representative of the times that it was made in, without being judged on it's unknown artistic values. This third archeological method is my method of choice in that the oldest art we can find is cave drawings.
A cave wall is but a wall, a or was it a part of a home/gallery/meeting place that was displaying the imagery of the times, that was forced upon the inhabitants to view. Was it communication or historical documentation? Was it art or publication? Did it remind people there of the past or of the artist him/herself that made the drawings? I don't know that we really car one way or the other as historical viewers of archeological art, we just feel lucky to have found the work itself. The only thing that is important to me about cave drawings is that they are still there to be seen today. With the right materials and the proper environmnet the perfect "archival" environment can be created on a wall, as proven, inside a cave, with nothing more than colored dirt. Why then is "archival" such a big deal when it comes to modern art and the materials that are made to make art?
Personally I understand the problems that are associated with the harsh realities of "archival" and this is why I cannot put a lot of stock into a single piece of work to survive. The materials and the methods must be cohesive and compliment each other, as well as, represent the time of their creation. My data suggest against the probability of a single piece surviving, or being admired enough to be "kept" by the museums of the world, if only because of the simple fact that warehousing and storage is a problem even for the most well-intending collectors. My opinion is that you just can't count on one thing being special enough to last. Sad but true.
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