A Project of Titanic Proportions; Conserving a Reverse on Glass Painting

this video is brought to you by squarespace from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business [Music] as a paintings conservator the majority of work i receive are paintings in oil acrylic gouache on canvas board wood but every now and again i get a truly unique piece a reverse on glass painting and that's exactly what it sounds like a painting where the paint has been applied to the back of a piece of glass and this piece depicting the sinking of the titanic is kind of a hybrid because while all of the color blocking has been applied by hand all of the delicate detail work all of the black outlining has been applied by print likely silk screen before the color was added and as you can see this piece is about to share the same fate as the titanic it is in really bad condition it is actively deteriorating and falling apart and so it needs intervention but before i can do anything i have to take it apart and the first part of that is to remove this backing board this newspaper and this masking tape but i'm being extra careful here because this newspaper is from the kansas city star june 2nd 1915 just three years after the titanic sunk and that's important because it is a piece of provenance for this painting it places this painting not only physically but in time and that adds validity to this piece and makes it important and so we want to make sure that it doesn't get damaged now i'm not a painting i'm not now i'm not a paper conservator so i called in the conservator with whom i work often to consult and after she took a look at this her conclusion was that it may not be possible to conserve this at the moment that this paper is so deteriorated and that masking tape is so well bonded to the paper that any attempts to remove this paper from the board or the masking tape from the paper may result in the paper just disintegrating and so her advice was to not do anything well actually her advice was to put in a box and put it under the bed and leave it until the future when maybe a better technology or approach could come along and so that's precisely what we're gonna do i procured an archival box and once i have this piece removed from the painting and again i'm being extra careful here because this paper is so delicate and there's a sheet of glass right underneath it we can take this piece of paper and we can place it in that box and that way it can remain safe and stable for as long as my client wants now my client is historian and was able to contact the kansas city historical society and learn that there is an actual copy of this newspaper in their archives and while i wasn't able to travel down to kansas city my client is going to and they're going to make a copy of that newspaper and then that copy is going to get attached to the back of the painting while the original stays in the box as a historian my client knew a lot about the sinking of the titanic and this piece in general but i really didn't i mean yes there is that movie ps i actually never saw it but i didn't know that much about the sinking of the titanic so i went online to learn a little bit about it and holy cow was i blown away not only is there a ton of information about this ship in particular there is a whole subculture of people who are fascinated with the titanic and on top of that there are websites full of commemorative merchandise printed and made throughout the years to commemorate this ship and it got me thinking while i was perusing some of those collections that without websites i wouldn't have been able to find any of this and those people who were so passionate about the titanic wouldn't have been able to share it and that kind of seems sad without a website your passion goes unnoticed but with squarespace that doesn't have to be the case with a few simple clicks you can launch a gorgeous modern mobile-friendly website that can be viewed anywhere and you don't have to worry about learning code squarespace takes care of all of this stuff under the hood you don't have to worry about graphic design because squarespace has hundreds of thousands of beautiful templates that you can change with the click of a button so whether you want to share your own creations or what you collect it couldn't be easier with squarespace so head over to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com baumgartner to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain so you're ready to get that website of all your beanie babies or troll dolls up good i mean somebody's going to appreciate it anyhow back to the titanic i have to remove this additional piece of paper and this is where it gets a little tricky because a lot of the paint has simply stuck to this paper now i thought about soaking this paper but then i would run the risk of the paint just disintegrating along with this paper not to mention i don't want to put this whole thing in water and i don't want to get it wet because it's dirty and if i get it wet all of that dirt and grime will mix with the water and spread all over the place so as carefully as can be i'm peeling this paper back and some of the paint is going to come off actually it's more well bonded to the paper than it is to the glass and once i have this fully removed i'm going to save it of course i'm not going to throw it away because it has valuable pieces of paint and though they are very small and very delicate i'm going to try to save and reuse all of them [Applause] now you can see it's not a lot of paint but it's enough that i want to save it so with all of that paper and backing removed we can see how much loss there is but more importantly we can see that massive areas of this paint are bubbling up that they have effectively detached from the glass and that's problematic in a couple of ways first it's extremely unstable and all of this will eventually fall apart and turn into dust but on top of that wherever the paint has lifted off of the glass when viewed from the front there is a white air bubble in between the glass and the paint and it makes seeing the actual paint really really difficult so we need to find some way to address that now before i can do any stabilization i have to remove all of these little paint chips that have fallen off and that's just a time-consuming delicate process and unfortunately these are not where they should be so i actually don't know where some of these paint chips belong they've slid out of their original position and they've broken into lots of little pieces and so some of those ultra tiny pieces may not be salvageable they are literally needles in a haystack or needles in a needle stack but where the pieces are large enough to save and where i can identify their original location i certainly will try to reuse them and there really isn't any rhyme or reason as to why some areas of this piece are flaking and other areas aren't but that just is what it is and i have to take it as it comes now once all of these little pieces of paint are stabilized now once all of these little pieces of paint are removed i can move on to the stabilization process and this is going to do two things first it's going to stabilize all of the loose paint so it doesn't get lost and second it's going to fill in all of those voids where the paint is lifted up and create a solid clear material so that we don't have that white kind of haze now the resin that i'm using is soluble in polar solvents which means that i can use water and this is important because after my initial tests i discovered that any solvent-based any chemical solvent-based resins would be too harsh for this delicate paint film and could cause it to disintegrate now i want to take this piece of glass out of the frame because i don't want the frame to get damaged or dirty and i need the piece of glass to be a little bit more accessible and i've created a little frame into which i can place this glass so that it's secure it's not resting on the table the edges are protected so it won't get chipped and it gives me a little bit more handling ability with this delicate piece of glass and this frame will come in handy later on and you'll see why i chose to put it in this frame so once it's in this little frame i can start getting the resin ready for injection and i'm using a series of hypodermic needles some very small some large i'm going to fill up this syringe i'm going to apply the needle which is a bent needle which will give me access underneath some of the lifted paint areas and then i can start injecting this resin underneath now it's not possible for me to use any of the heat activated resins because i don't want to subject this old glass to heat on top of which this paint is so thin that i really don't want to take any chance with heat damaging it it's not a flexible material this old paint and so i can't really reconform it to the surface of the glass so by injecting this resin underneath i can fill in those voids and at least hope that once this resin dries we won't see any of that white or gray gap and that all of the paint film that's lifted up is not secure you can see just how fragile it is that using a silicone spatula just to just to press it down a little bit it's breaking in some spots and unfortunately there's nothing i can really do about that i need to make sure that the paint layer has good contact with the resin that the resin has filled in all those voids and i can't just hope and pray that that happens without a little bit of physical manipulation and so that's a risk that i'm willing to take and ultimately there isn't any other way to do it so i'm not concerned now it's a slow process there are lots of areas of loss and there's really no quick way to do this i can't just flood the entire surface with this resin because once it dries if there are air pockets i won't be able to access them because this resin does dry hard and so just using that small hypodermic needle and a silicone spatula i'm going to work my way across the entire painting injecting the adhesive underneath pressing the lifting paint layer down and trying to work it in and around all of the areas of lifting and i may have to repeat this procedure several times because this being a waterborne adhesive does have a tendency to shrink and resist sticking to smooth surfaces now the use of this resin in dealing with reverse on glass paintings isn't something that i've invented i've used it before but it's not my own creation i actually read about it in a journal of conservation where some other conservators built on the work of other conservators who built on the work of yet other conservators and that's just a testament to the ever-changing and ever-evolving nature of conservation one conservator comes up with an interesting technique and then another one perfects it with a different material and then another one perfects it yet again with a new tool and so we build on each other's knowledge we share knowledge and eventually we come up with really clever very successful solutions and so this is a well-vetted time-tested mother-approved approach for dealing with flaking reverse on glass pieces now what isn't easy is actually putting it into play and as you can see here i'm having quite a bit of difficulty manipulating these pieces of paint film into their correct orientation this is like putting together the world's worst and most delicate jigsaw puzzle it would certainly be easier if i just left things where they were and said to heck with it or even just brushed off all of the loose paint and said i'm just going to retouch it but that's not the right way to do it and so as long as it takes as difficult and frustrating as it is and i'm looking at you little piece right there this is the only way to do it so i'll try to take my time try to be as patient as possible and move all of these pieces back into place so that we can reunify the image and this is definitely the type of procedure that requires lots of breaks so i'll work a little bit and then i'll walk away and then i'll work a little more and then i'll put it away for the day and i'll come back on the next day fresh and ready to tackle it because there's nothing worse than developing a bad habit out of frustration or becoming sloppy with your work because your attention is fading and that's just a good life lesson if you're feeling frustrated step away take a break catch your breath come back when you're focused and you can give some fresh energy to the problem and who knows you may come up with a better solution or a better approach that makes the work that much easier now once i finally do get all of these pieces oriented and back in their place it is a great feeling because it means that i've done a good job and there's less work for me to do in the retouching end now i don't mind this kind of tedious work it's nice to break up other aspects of the the job with detailed work but definitely this is something that you can't do too much at a time now once i've secured a lot of that loose paint i can start to deal with the paint that's attached to this paper and i'm using a magnifier so that i can get a really good look at it and i'm going to cut this paper apart around the paint and try to get as close as i can without disturbing that paint and the reason i want to do that is because i want these small areas to be separate from the larger piece of paper i have no use for the larger piece of paper and it's just in the way so i'm going to cut away all the extra paper at least as much as i can and then i'm going to try to remove the paper from the paint removing the paint from the paper may not actually be possible because it's so delicate but i do have a trick up my sleeve that may make it easier we'll have to see i'm not totally sure that it'll work well actually i am i filmed this but you know for suspense sake and it all starts with water plain old water and this water is going to be used to soften up this old paper and when this whole paper is softened the fibers are going to start to come apart and i may be able to pull this paper off of the paint now again this is incredibly delicate and so i have to be very very careful and there isn't any guarantee of success but if i can start to break apart this paper and remove it from the paint then maybe i actually don't need to remove all of the paper from the back but just from the edges so that when i lay it back down onto the glass we don't see that paper so this is again an incredibly tedious time-consuming process and there's no way to rush this i have to go slowly i have to be very attentive to what i'm doing and i can't get ahead of myself i just have to let the process take however much time it needs now the use of dental tools here is critical because they are very fine they come in all different shapes and sizes and they allow me to get in and around everywhere i need and so with the majority of the paper removed you can see where it's going to fit i decided not to chance it and try to remove all the paper from the back because i just didn't think that it was going to be possible without losing much of the paint now in the highlights of this piece there were pieces of shell and those got dirty over time and so i'm using an enzyme cleaner to remove any of that grime from these pieces of shell because they are effectively the highlights in this painting and they need to appear as such bright vibrant and full of life and these highlights are in the moon i think some in the clouds and some on the windows of the ship and while they're not terribly terribly dirty you can see that on the cotton swab there's enough dirt coming off that cleaning them makes a lot of sense now luckily it's pretty evident where these pieces fit and so i can apply some of that resin and then i can lay this little piece of shell down and it will eventually when the resin dries be held into place and it will look as it's as if it's always been there just have to make sure it's in the right place and then i'm going to flood the area with resin to make sure that there are no air pockets because again i won't be able to inject any more resin once this this dries and that just about does it that piece of shell is going to be in place and permanent it's not going anywhere all right with all of the loose paint now secured and stabilized with that resin i can move on to the retouching process and first i have to make sure that this piece of glass is stable and secure in this frame so i'm using some silicone release film a little piece of felt and then some s-clips to hold this piece of glass into this frame and this is now where you will see why making this frame was so important i'm just going to make sure that i get enough points of [Music] i'm going to add on to the sides two legs and these legs are going to be screwed in and they're going to allow me to stand this piece up so that i can see it and not work on it on the table and this is helpful because now i can see the light passing through the piece and i can see just how much i have to retouch but the real reason that i need it standing up is so that i can see what i'm doing on the other side and by taking a mirror and placing it on the front of the piece i'll be able to see at the same time what i'm retouching on the back and what i'm putting on the front now for this piece i've decided to use a watercolor instead of the traditional resin based retouching paints that i use because i don't want to use any solvent-based mediums on this paint because it's really delicate and because the resin that i used was a water-based resin these watercolors are going to bond really well and they're not going to come off for deform now the hard thing about working on a reverse on glass is that you actually can't see what you're doing in the previous shot i was working on a dark gray area but as you can see when looking at the front it's actually a light blue area and so that's where having the mirror makes all the difference because i can actually see what i'm doing when i can't see what i'm doing does that make any sense i don't know keep watching i think it makes sense if you watch now one of the other real problems with doing a reverse on glass is that once you apply a color you really can't do much to it so trying to mimic some of these blending effects is almost impossible once the paint is applied it dries really quickly and i can't go back in and add to it so i have to kind of do it on the first shot which is so incredibly difficult and a totally different method of thinking about how paint is used and about how paint is applied than what i normally do when i retouch an oil painting suffice it to say this is hard and there's no easy way to do it back and forth checking what the final result is going to be checking my colors checking where i'm applying it back to the final result more color rinse and repeat and really in this area i'm working on a piece that's maybe a centimeter square it is a tiny piece and it's going to take quite a bit of time to get it completed but if i'm focused and i'm attentive i will be able to camouflage this damage in a way that it's not so disruptive in a way that it doesn't appear to take apart the entire image when you see it and that's really what we're going for now i'm lucky in that this piece is fairly loosely painted it's not somebody's face or something incredibly detailed the brush work on this piece is very loose and the colors are pretty easy to manage so it's not as difficult as it could be if it were something like i said a portrait nonetheless this is still pretty difficult and it's taking me at least twice as long if not three times as long to retouch this small area with watercolors reverse than if i were using the standard retouching paints on an oil painting so every little bit here is going to take extra time and for that i'm not exactly excited but it could always be worse so i'm thankful for the little losses that this piece has now one of the benefits of using a water-soluble paint and a water-soluble resin is that if i come back and decide that an area that i had previously retouched just wasn't quite perfect like in this area well i can remove it and i can take another crack at it and removing it is done simply with a q-tip and some water and it softens up the paint and the resin and then i can start to lift it off and then once that's lifted off i can come back in with more paint and try again and there's no shame in not getting it right on the first try this is incredibly difficult and that's why we use reversible paints because sometimes what you think looks good well upon second glance not so great or maybe the next day you come back and you look at the previous work and think what was i thinking or maybe the light shifts and the color that you had matched perfectly the day before well it doesn't look as good and you want to take it off and if a conservator wasn't using reversible paints that may not be possible and so that's one reason why using specific mediums designed for conservation is so important and so for this little spot i'm just going to see if i can better integrate this area now you can see that there are some little pieces of paint that have moved or distorted and i could try to pick those off but they would get damaged and so i'm just going to try to blend them in and create enough of a well integrated area that your eye doesn't jump to it and that you can pass over it and just assume that it's part of the whole painting again i'm really really lucky that this is a really loosely painted area that it's just kind of a lot of brushwork and a bunch of different blues and greens and whites because i can pretty easily blend in and mimic what's existing and if i do everything right or right enough well when you step back you won't see this you'll just see the entire piece as a whole and then this retouching can be viewed as successful so much better on the second go-round and i'm glad that i took the time to redo it now i mentioned how difficult it was to do this when you can't see the front of the piece well here this split screen will kind of give you an idea of what i'm actually looking at when i'm doing this retouching because i'm looking at the left and where i'm applying the paint but i'm also looking at the right to make sure that the color i'm applying syncs up with what's there in the original and so i have to use this mirror technique and bounce back and forth between the two so that i can get a better idea of what i'm actually doing because otherwise i'd be flying blind so take a minute enjoy this little bit and i'll be back in a sec [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] now i think altogether that little section of retouching took about 20 minutes but i sped it up of course because nobody wants to watch that for 20 minutes trust me you don't it's really boring and if you were at all curious how this section is filmed well this is it a couple of cameras checking out if everything is making sense and then actually doing the work and to be honest filming this was a huge pain in the well you can guess the cameras got in the way trying to make sure i didn't bump them trying to make sure that i could see what i was doing while the cameras could see what i was doing suffice it to say that this is probably the last time i attempt to do that well at least until the next video i mean let's be honest that's kind of a cool shot and so with some of that retouching done you can still see through there are still gaps in fact all of those areas where the lights shining through i've applied paint but this paint isn't completely opaque and that's a problem but luckily i have a solution for it i'm going to take a piece of black matte board and this is archival acid-free eight-ply mat board that's used in framing and other art projects and i'm going to loosely sketch out the shapes based on the front of the piece just so that i can get some light idea of blocking this does not need to be highly accurate or really accurate at all i just need a loose idea of the shapes and then i'm going to take some acrylic paint and i'm going to start blocking out colors on this board and again this does not have to be accurate in fact i don't want to spend an inordinate amount of time doing this i just want to create some color areas that loosely match up with what's on the original and the reason i'm going to do this is because this board is going to get placed behind the painting to prevent any see through that is any area where the paint is still a little translucent or frankly any area that i missed because there is so much retouching once i place this board on the back well it should disappear and you can see it kind of does now before i can put this piece back into the frame i need to do a little work on the frame and most importantly i need to line it with felt because this is a piece of glass and i don't want it resting against that edge of the rabbit and potentially cracking so i'm going to take some archival conservation glue and i'm going to simply glue this piece of felt down along the rabbet and that's just going to make sure that a the wood doesn't scratch the glass and b it holds it in place and see there's a little bit of a cushion just in case there's any movement and that'll protect the glass so with that felt in place i can place the glass back into the frame very carefully really don't want this thing to break now i'm taking a piece of siliconized pet film and i'm placing it on the back of the painting before i place the painted acrylic board down because remember that old piece of paper that was directly on the back of the paint well it stuck to it and this siliconized piece of pet film will make sure that this board cannot stick to the original painting it's a small detail but if i don't do it the next time that this board is removed it may peel up all of that paint and that would be a catastrophic failure on my part so here we have it all retouched it's all stable none of this paint is going to flake off anymore and while i wasn't able to eliminate all of those little white spots i've eliminated almost all of them and that makes a big difference in being able to see this piece as a whole and not just see the damage because all of that damage the loss the flaking and the white spots really flattened the image and so you can see as it came in there was a lot of loss it's really hard to capture the white spots on a piece of glass but now with it all retouched image comes together a little bit more full and we can see it as a complete painting so thanks for watching this was definitely a unique project not as comprehensive as some of the others i've had but fun nonetheless

Channel: Baumgartner Restoration

Views: 960,108

Keywords: Baumgartner, Julian, restoration, ASMR, paintings, cleaning, scraping, repair, Art, fine art, conservation, painting restoration, old art, painting, painting conservation, oil painting, new again, restore, classical, titanic, glass painting

Id: eXZLMzWj31g

Length: 36min 20sec (2180 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020