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This paper presents a survey of the issues conservators encounter when surface-cleaning paintings by Asger Jorn, with the aim of contributing to the formulation of best practices for cleaning Jorn’s and similar paintings.Nine interviews were conducted with experienced conservators working throughout Europe. In addition, the conservation reports of 95 of Jorn’s paintings were studied and 34 works were visually assessed.Conservators are conservative in their approach when surface-cleaning Jorn’s paintings, which are described as suffering from cracked, brittle and powdery paint, soft paint with imbibed dirt and water and solvent sensitivity/solubility. They feel that Jorn’s unstable materials and paint modifications strongly limit the range of safe cleaning treatments. Conservators fear removing original material and unwanted optical or chemical changes. Time-consuming preliminary examinations and extensive testing followed by careful treatments that utilise different cleaning methods per colour, appears to be the approach favoured most commonly by the conservators interviewed.

Edvard Munch’s (1863–1944) unvarnished oil paintings (1909–16) in the Aula of the University of Oslo have a long conservation history, including issues associated with soiling and cleaning. Despite the high frequency of previous cleaning campaigns, the removal of dirt and soot from these surfaces continues to be a challenge. This paper relates to ongoing research into novel methods for surface dirt removal (soft-particle blasting CO2-snow, and Nanorestore Gel® Peggy and Dry series). The paper discusses the first steps of this research, focussing on the preparation of mock-up painting samples that will be used to evaluate the effects and to optimise these methods, hence the rationale and limitations of using simplified samples to represent real paintings are discussed. The aim of the wider study is to devise appropriate cleaning strategies for the Aula paintings.