Aerosol art: a preliminary survey of the spray paints

The advent of Contemporary Art has changed the concept of art, opening it to new expressions and concepts linked to popular culture. An important example for this is the aerosol art or paint art, considered for many years as vandalism. Due to the increasing interest raised by this art movement, many questions have been pointed out by the scientific community regarding the characterisation of the materials used, their interaction with the environmental agents and their future conservation. The development of a systematic approach for selecting meaningful parameters for the characterisation of the pictorial films and the potential degradation processes affecting them is crucial at this point, due to the little information available regarding this issue. The present study shows a first attempt to identify the chemical composition of two commercially available spray paints and to establish their interaction with concrete, a common substrate used for this kind of paintings. For this latter purpose, changes in the water vapour permeability of the concrete surfaces were monitored before and after application of the paints.