The goat, the tire, and the lead: When art defies time

Mixed media have always been a gamble. A gamble against academism, against the permanence of noble materials, against the very idea that art must endure. When Picasso glued a piece of oilcloth onto a still life in 1912, he hardly cared whether the work would survive the century. Yet today, MoMA’s conservators scrutinize those same collages under X-rays, tracking the slightest signs of degradation. For these works, born from radical freedom, pose a unique challenge: how do you preserve what was conceived to defy the rules of conservation?

01The alchemy of scraps: when art is born from accident

There is something deeply poetic in the way mixed media transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Take Rauschenberg’s Combines: these assemblages where umbrellas, pillows, newspaper clippings, and paint cans coexist. The New York artist wasn’t trying to create lasting objects, but to capture the chaotic energy of modern life. In his Fulton Street studio, materials piled up like urban sediment—a tire here, a taxidermied goat there, bought for fifteen dollars from a military surplus store. "I worked in the gap between art and life," he said. And it is precisely in that gap that all the magic—and all the fragility—resides.

Yet this apparent improvisation hides a surprising technical mastery. Rauschenberg didn’t just stack objects at random. Each element was chosen for its texture, its color, its history. The tire in Monogram isn’t there by chance: its black rubber contrasts with the goat’s whiteness, while its circular shape evokes both movement and confinement. Even the paint splatters, tossed with nonchalance, follow a precise chromatic logic. The work seems born of chance, but it is in fact the result of a learned alchemy between accident and intention.

02Lead and straw: when materials become metaphors

While Rauschenberg played with everyday objects, Anselm Kiefer turned materials into a true philosophy. In Margarethe (1981), the straw isn’t just a decorative element: it embodies the hair of the young woman in Paul Celan’s poem Todesfuge, those hairs "golden as straw" that, under Kiefer’s brush, become the symbol of a memory impossible to erase. The lead, meanwhile, weighs like a curse—heavy, toxic metal, associated with death and oblivion.

Kiefer pushes the experiment further than anyone. In his studio in Barjac, Ardèche, he literally transforms matter. He burns his canvases with a blowtorch, covers them with ashes, drenches them in tar. His works aren’t painted: they are suffered. "I work with materials that have a memory," he explains. And that memory, precisely, poses a major problem. How do you preserve a work conceived to degrade? How do you save the traces of burns, cracks, accidents that give it its power?

The restorers at the Centre Pompidou faced a colossal challenge with Margarethe. The straw, fragile, threatened to crumble. The lead, slightly radioactive, required special precautions. As for the layers of paint, they risked flaking off. Yet it is precisely this vulnerability that gives the work its strength. Kiefer doesn’t seek to create eternal objects, but testimonies—scars of history.

03The curse of modern materials: when plastic betrays the artist

While the works of Rauschenberg and Kiefer defy time through conceptual audacity, other artists have seen their creations turn against them. Take Eva Hesse, whose sculptures in latex and fiberglass literally disintegrate before our eyes. Her Untitled (Rope Piece) (1970), now kept in darkness to slow its degradation, has become a poignant metaphor for the ephemeral. The latex, chosen for its flexibility and organic appearance, cracks, yellows, loses its suppleness. The work, designed to be touched and handled, is now off-limits to the public.

This material tragedy raises a fundamental question: should an artist care about the durability of their work? For some, like Damien Hirst, the answer is clearly no. His shark preserved in formaldehyde (The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991) had to be replaced in 2006, the first specimen having decomposed. Hirst embraces this programmed obsolescence: "The work is the idea, not the object," he says. Yet for museums and collectors, this philosophy is a nightmare. How do you exhibit a work that destroys itself? How do you estimate its value when it’s nothing more than a ghost of what it once was?

Conservators have had to invent new strategies. Some, like those at Tate Modern, use UV-protective glass to shield sensitive works. Others rely on 3D digitization, creating virtual replicas of the most fragile pieces. But these solutions raise another problem: can you truly preserve the soul of a work by turning it into digital data? Can a sculpture by Hesse, designed to be touched, survive as a computer file?

04The studio as laboratory: when the artist becomes a chemist

Faced with these challenges, some artists have taken matters into their own hands. Anselm Kiefer, for example, collaborates closely with scientists to stabilize his materials. In his Barjac studio, transformed into a veritable dream factory, he experiments with resins, synthetic pigments, and innovative conservation techniques. "I don’t want my works to disappear," he admits. "I want them to endure, but without losing their power."

Others, like contemporary artist El Anatsui, have found ingenious solutions. His vast tapestries made from recycled aluminum caps (Dusasa II, 2007) appear fragile, but their modular structure allows damaged elements to be easily replaced. Anatsui plays with the idea of the ephemeral while offering a pragmatic response: his works can evolve, be repaired, adapt.

This approach recalls that of old master artisans, who knew their materials intimately. Renaissance painters prepared their own pigments, mixing lapis lazuli and cinnabar with near-scientific precision. Today, mixed-media artists are rediscovering this alchemy. They become both creators and conservators, devising protocols to ensure their works outlive their own mortality.

05The market of impermanence: when value defies logic

For collectors, mixed-media works represent a risky bet. How do you estimate the value of a piece that might disintegrate in twenty years? How do you justify a multi-million-dollar investment in an assemblage of unstable materials? Yet paradoxically, it is precisely this fragility that attracts some buyers. "These works have an aura that traditional paintings no longer possess," explains a Parisian gallery owner. "They carry within them time, memory, the artist’s trace."

Take Rauschenberg’s Monogram. Estimated between 50 and 100 million dollars, it isn’t for sale. Yet if it ever came to market, bids would soar. Why? Because this work embodies a pivotal moment in art history. It is both a manifesto and a cult object. Its value lies not just in its materials, but in what it represents: the end of boundaries between art and life, the rebellion against academic canons, the audacity to turn scraps into treasures.

Museums, too, have had to adapt. The Moderna Museet in Stockholm, which houses Monogram, has invested in ultra-high-performance climate control systems to protect the stuffed goat and the tire. The Centre Pompidou, meanwhile, has created a department dedicated to the conservation of contemporary works, where chemists and art historians work hand in hand. For preserving these pieces is also about preserving a part of our collective memory.

06The future of mixed media: toward sustainable art?

In the age of climate crisis, mixed-media artists face a new challenge: how to create without destroying? How to reconcile material audacity with environmental ethics? Some, like Olafur Eliasson, are turning to natural and recyclable materials. Others, like the Studio Drift collective, are exploring bioplastics and algae. Even digital artists, like Refik Anadol, are trying to reduce the carbon footprint of their installations.

Yet the real change may come from a deeper questioning. What if impermanence wasn’t a flaw, but a quality? What if mixed-media works reminded us that everything is ephemeral—including art? This idea, already explored by artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres (whose piles of candy to be consumed gradually disappear), may well become central in the years to come.

Imagine a museum where works were designed to degrade slowly, like living organisms. Where each visitor became an actor in their preservation—or their disappearance. Where the value of a piece lay not in its durability, but in its ability to make us reflect on time, memory, the fragility of our world.

07Epilogue: art as a mirror of our time

At its core, mixed-media works are far more than assemblages of disparate materials. They are a reflection of our era—an era where boundaries blur, where the disposable rubs shoulders with the sacred, where technology mingles with the organic. They remind us that art is not a fixed object, but a process, a conversation between past and present.

The next time you encounter a mixed-media work—whether it’s a Rauschenberg collage, a Kiefer scorched canvas, or a digital installation—take the time to observe it. Look at the paint splatters, the cracks, the crumbling materials. These imperfections aren’t flaws: they are the scars of a story, proof that art, like life, is a fragile and precious adventure.

And remember: behind every stuffed goat, every used tire, every piece of oxidized lead, lies an essential question. A question that mixed-media artists have been asking for over a century, and to which we still haven’t finished answering: what truly deserves to last?