A theoretical reflection on the documentation of contemporary art: A proposal for a chronological protocol

Abstract

Contemporary artwork is a complex entity made up of several superimposed planes: the material plane, the conceptual plane and the biographical plane. The need to apprehend the entity, determining where its substantial attributes lie, those that determine its consistency and constitute both, its essence and its specificity, is the objective of the documentation. This article proposes a documentation protocol that collects, from an empirical and useful perspective, the order in which the different actions of the contemporary art conservator should be documented. This protocol must analyse the different planes of which the artworks consist; it must apply an updated decision-making model and prioritise the relative importance of the material and immaterial constituents of the artworks. It must also include the documentation of the intervention process itself. The order and the tools to achieve it are analyzed in this article.