Conservation-restauration d'une installation composite d'art contemporain : le grand serpent de Bernard Bazile. Etude des matériaux constitutifs : matières plastiques, textile peint, lichen, crin

Le Grand Serpent, made by the French contemporary artist Bernard Brazile at the end of the 1970s, is an unusual environmental artwork that challenges traditions and gravity, now housed at the modern and contemporary Art Museum of Toulouse. The work is constructed from lengths of different kinds of plastic tubing linked together to form a continuous almost 200-meter long substrate around which is wrapped and glued different coloured painted strings, monofilaments, lichen and horsehair. As a preliminary step, the history of the work was reconstructed, also with the help of meetings with the artist and other individuals involved with its original installation. In this way it was possible to gain a deeper sense of the work and the original intention of the artist. The preliminary study was enriched by the characterization of the various materials that make up the piece (cotton, fiber glass, silicon, rubber, polyvinyl chloride, polyurethane) and investigations into their state of conservation and processes of deterioration (detachment, breaks and losses to the wrapped elements; flaking, darkening, and loss of paint). It was concluded that the intervention could only slow down the degradation processes inherent to the materials, and that over time the work will become more and more fragile. While the restoration is not definitive, it will allow for the renewed exhibition of the work, at least for the time being. For this reason, the restoration conducted followed a methodology of minimal intervention and is completely reversible. Conservation measures related to the work’s exhibition and storage are also explored.