Becoming Whole

this video is brought to you by surfshark secure your digital life and gain private access to the open internet when we love an object a piece of art a painting perhaps it can become an extension of ourselves of who we are and for said painting there can be no better result for it confirms the object's validity and affirms its worth to the owner yet that precious bond can also be quite perilous because as an extension of ourselves any damage that happens to the painting will be felt by us and anyone seeking to inflict harm upon us merely needs to exact an act of violence on the object and such was the case with this painting a beautiful portrait that received a horrible act slashed to inflict the maximum pain on the object and the owner conserving it will be a challenge hopefully with care and precision i can aid in not only the object but the owner as well in becoming whole [Music] time and time again i have seen just how vulnerable paintings can be to malevolent acts and simple 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mean you're basically stealing it from them conserving this painting begins with a fairly simple act but one that will have a profound effect on my ability to achieve a successful result this canvas is fairly brittle and the canvas has shrunk over time because this slash is quite old so i need to introduce a little bit of humidity not only to make the canvas more pliable but to expand it for when canvas absorbs ambient humidity it expands and thus will make it easier to realign the canvas when i press it so into the greenhouse it goes for a day and once the humidity has reached the appropriate setting i can remove the canvas and begin removing it from the stretcher by laying the painting face down on some acid-free foam core i can ensure that the canvas doesn't distort as i remove the tacks from the stretcher i can generally remove the tacks with the painting upright and handle the painting fairly briskly but because this canvas has such a large tear and because there's so much paint loss as it is i'll take a little bit of extra precaution to make sure that this canvas doesn't stress anymore and result in any further paint loss removing the tacks isn't particularly difficult until it is but with a little bit of muscle they come out and once they're all out i can remove the stretcher from the canvas being very careful to not stress that canvas now there is a small accumulation of dust and dirt and other particulate at the bottom of the canvas behind the stretcher bar and using a bristle brush i can remove it now this blue tape was added by the owner before shipping the painting to me and it has done an admirable job of holding the canvas together but of course blue painters tape is not conservation grade and so it has to go i'll be very careful here because i don't want to catch the canvas and cause any further paint loss now i have to get the painting face up but simply flipping it over would be catastrophic to this delicate painting so i will sandwich it in between two sheets of acid free foam core and one two three i will flip it over and keep my fingers crossed that the painting didn't spontaneously explode lucky for me i've done this a few times and i know that paintings don't generally spontaneously explode over to the hot table i can slide the painting onto a new acid-free cotton blotter paper now if we remember this painting has been subject to a fairly high humidity environment and so it has absorbed quite a bit of that ambient moisture and this blotter paper will pull that moisture out of the canvas during this hot table treatment i'm going to take care to align the painting as best i can because this is the first shot i get and the closer it is after this treatment the less work i'll have to do later on so underneath the film it goes the film gets taped down to the table and taped around the border to create an airtight envelope i'll turn the heat and the vacuum pump on the hot table but i'm going to extract the air very slowly oftentimes i'll try to do this as quickly as possible so to not distort the painting but here because the canvas is well very distorted i want to remove the air very slowly giving enough time for me to manually flatten out and smooth out those bumps if i go too quick i run the risk that a wrinkle or a ripple could be embedded into that canvas and once the pressure is set i will take a piece of balsa wood and slowly work around these tears just to make sure that the canvas is really getting all of the pressure from the vacuum pump after any painting goes on the hot table it goes underneath weights for a few days and that includes some felt to protect the paint layer and some new blotter paper to absorb any ambient moisture and this ensures that as the painting acclimatizes with the relative humidity of my studio it doesn't distort now back onto another sheet of acid free foam core so that i can transfer the painting to the front half of the studio where i can continue working on it just like last time i'm going to flip this painting over because the next step takes place on the back of the painting so one two three here we go and well you know the result the painting slipped over no spontaneous combustion i'm going to slide it off of the acid-free foam core very carefully and onto a sheet of siliconized mylar and this is going to ensure that for the next step where i'm using an adhesive i don't inadvertently glue the painting to the table ask me how i know about this actually don't it's kind of embarrassing okay i've glued a painting to the table before there with the painting successfully flipped i'll head over to my bin of washi kozo scraps and generally i use this beautiful japanese mulberry paper in a destructive manner to face paintings and protect them during various procedures but here it takes a starring role in the actual conservation of the piece i'm tearing thin strips of this paper and making sure that i have a frazzled or deckled edge because i don't want any crisp lines and i'm going to be using this washi cozo and adhering it across these tears now yes this painting is going to get an interleaved lining and that is going to do a lot to make sure that the tears stay in place but before that happens there are a couple of more treatments that this painting needs including a lot of handling and so this washi coza will not only keep this canvas in its proper place keep it registered so to speak but it will also make sure that if for some reason that inter-leaf lining does start to move a bit this canvas won't it won't start to pull apart and crack the fill in and start to flake off the retouching so once the paper is glued down i'll put some release film some felt and some weights and let it sit for a day or two until the glue is dry and set it is amazing that a single act that takes place over a mere instant seconds in fact can require so many steps so much work to reverse and to undo with the adhesive dry i can lift the painting off the table and lo and behold it is not glued to the table so good job julian in remembering that critical step so on to the next step which takes place in the back half of the studio i'm going to lay the painting down on some release paper where i will start to prepare it for the interleaved lining now because my studio is open and because i spray varnish and paints and use some fairly noxious adhesives i decided to create a collapsible spray room using these partitions on tracks i've also created a ventilation system that will extract those fumes and exhaust them outside to keep myself safe now with the adhesive heated up i can begin rolling it onto the canvas but first i'm going to lay down a flat spun nylon gossamer and this is going to add yet more support for the canvas and make sure that any deviations any waves or bumps or anything on the canvas doesn't manifest itself on the front this little interleaf makes a big difference and it's something that i've come to learn and observe firsthand i'm going to roll the adhesive on starting in the center and working my way out so that i can isolate any wrinkles and remove them for if i do create any wrinkles in here those could transfer to the front of the painting and well i would have to reverse all of this work the adhesive will also get rolled on this sheet of pet film front and back for the inter leaf now it is always easier to start with more material and trim it to fit than the other way around that is trimming it and then trying to align it is a recipe for a very big headache so i will trim off the excess nylon gossamer with a sharp scalpel and then i will start to iron on the adhesive film onto the new lining canvas the ironing is mostly just to tack it in place so that it doesn't flop around and the real setting of this adhesive will happen on the hot table the trimmed interleaf is then laid down on the canvas and aligned precisely so it'll be tacked down in the corners but just so to ensure that its registration doesn't go awry and then i can begin transferring the painting the interleaf onto the adhesive film that's bonded to the new lining canvas now we are ready to bring the painting back to the hot table and well put it all together now at this point most of the work becomes passive i've done all i can to actively stabilize the tear to prepare it for the lining and now i have to transfer over to the hot table and let it do its work using some cotton webbing i can create an extraction path for the air that will be sealed in once i tape the mylar down to the hot table surface i'll also cut in some holes for the vacuum ports and then i'll attach them and begin extracting the air to apply the downward pressure onto the canvas itself in any pursuit where one is tasked with bringing something back from the edge there exists the temptation to do too much and with respect to heat and pressure those are the inflection points on this painting the wrong temperature and the adhesive won't set the wrong pressure and the painting could either be crushed or there won't be enough bond between the painting and the lining materials and the whole procedure will fail so ensuring that i have a calibrated table and that i'm achieving the exact temperature and that my vacuum pump is also set precisely where i want will ensure that the results are exactly how i envision them once i've extracted all of that air i can use a piece of felt and a roller to make sure that the entire sandwich is good adhesion after letting the table cool for a few hours i can remove the vacuum ports release the pressure and peel off the film and take the painting out using several layers of release film here is absolutely critical to make sure that any adhesive that has seeped out through the sides doesn't cause the painting to get bonded to any of the other materials again lessons learned from the past now with all of the structural work complete i can move on to the cleaning now this painting isn't profoundly dirty there is not a lot of surface grime on it it came from a fairly clean and stable home there is a thin layer of old varnish and given the fact that this painting was painted in 1950 it is fair to assume and we can see that that varnish has discolored and even though it is a thin layer and the discoloration is not profound it makes a big difference we see a purple lilac color hiding beneath that salmon color and when that old varnish is removed we get a truer more clean version of what the artist wanted us to see even removing a thinly or varnish can have pretty dramatic effects and we can see as i'm starting to dissolve this varnish and as it is pooling up on the edge that even though it's thin there is a physical layer on this painting and it needs to come off now here on the hand we can get an even clearer representation of just how yellow it is the skin tones are not jaundice they are healthy and pink in addition on the face which arguably is the most important part of the painting that varnish needs to come off in between the heavy duty structural work and the light touch cosmetic work there exists another type of work that is liminal but very important here i'm applying a ground medium to the areas of the painting where the canvas was missing and i'm doing this because the fill in medium that i will use later does not bond very well to the adhesive and so this ground is an interface that does bond to the adhesive and will allow this fill-in medium to bond well without this there runs the risk that at some point in the future this fill-in medium could detach and pop off and of course that's not the end of the world but if we can avoid it certainly we should now here i am using a piece of canvas to create some texture in this fill and medium because this is a thinly painted painting on a fairly heavy weight canvas there is a lot of texture at least canvas texture and if i leave my fill in medium smooth well it's going to catch the light and you're going to be able to see where i've added this medium and that's not something i want after allowing the fill-in medium to dry for a day i can come back and start to remove the excess again it's much easier to overfill and remove the excess than it is to try and avoid any excess in the first place this is a water-based medium and so a little bit of water can easily lift it up now there are spots where the fill-in is too proud of the surface and in those cases i can use a scalpel to shave it down unfortunately this will take some of that texture that i created with it and i want that texture so i will use a piece of sandpaper and a print making tool to embed that texture back into the now soft fill in medium really any way i can get that texture it's fair game and now it's time to stretch the painting that is the painting so after cleaning the stretcher i can square it up and this is actually pretty important because well if it's not square it won't fit back in the frame and well it won't be square and that's what a square is supposed to be square so using a couple of nails hammered into the corners i can ensure that it doesn't distort as i'm stretching the canvas and fitting the canvas to the stretcher is fairly easy particularly with an interleaf because there is a rigid substrate that is precisely cut to fit i don't really have to maneuver it all that much but once i get it set where i want it i'll start the tacking process and just like applying the adhesive to the nylon gossamer i'll start in the middle and work my way to the edges here there isn't any slack that i need to be worried about but it is practice and it works for me so i continue to do it that way while putting this painting back together is mostly a pursuit that will be judged by the final appearance of the image that's not to say that the back isn't also critically important for we're spending a ton of labor time and energy on the front we should also respect the back so i'm trimming off the excess canvas and folding it under and then using smaller tacks i'm going to tack this excess to the back of the stretcher this doesn't necessarily provide any structural support but it is an indication that care and precision went into every aspect of this conservation and of course my name is on this painting and so i want that to be the takeaway that every aspect was cared for even that one right there with the painting all secured i can put the keys into place now again because this painting has an interleave it's not going to move so keeping tension on the canvas isn't critical but putting these keys into place does help keep the stretcher together because those joints are free-floating there's no glue or mechanical fasteners in there so with the keys in place i will bind them with some fishing line and another tack i've tried many different materials from string to wire even kevlar and honestly the fishing line works best it has for over 20 years so why change and now on to varnishing or well at least the first step before i do retouching and then varnishing i'm going to apply an isolation layer and i've talked about the two reasons why i would apply an isolation layer to a painting one to protect it from other materials and two to saturate the colors so that i have a better chance at retouching them correctly but there's also a third and when a painting has really bad damage like this applying an isolation layer can help fill in some of those really really tiny areas that maybe i missed with the fill-in medium or other areas that may manifest themselves later on if i don't do this step so this transparent ultraviolet stable resin will fill in those little chunks or divots and level them out of it making a smoother surface so now onto retouching and i mentioned the surface is an issue here at least the texture and i tried really hard to embed some texture in this fill-in medium and then smooth out some of the errant texture with the transparent isolation layer but i'm also going to take action with my retouching paints i'm going to be using an additive that allows me to build up texture with the paint itself this additive is thick and it will allow me to take this otherwise very thin free-flowing retouching paint and give it some body some weight and the reason that i do that is so that as i add this paint to the canvas it has a little bit of texture that each one of these little dots stands somewhat proud of the surface of the canvas so i'm in effect creating texture that will help blend this area that might otherwise be smooth in with the surrounding canvas texture i know it doesn't sound like a big deal but trust me it is a huge huge deal and you'll see why when i'm done now i've often talked about when embarking upon a large retouching project notching an early victory so that one feels good about the more challenging parts of the process believe it or not retouching of this face is not the hardest part by far not the hardest part the background those flat smooth colors those are the hard parts the retouching of the face is the most dramatic part which of course is why i'm sharing it with you but at least for me these colors come naturally mixing flesh tones is fairly easy for me and the nature of the damage here yes it is extreme but it is all lines or little chunks there aren't massive sections missing that i have to invent i'm really just bridging the difference between one half and the other half crossing that white divide and even though an area like the eye looks pretty bad well i know what's on the left i know what's on the right and i just have to marry them and that's not that difficult at least if you've retouched thousands upon thousands of paintings it's not that difficult certainly for the novice retoucher this would seem like a herculean task one that may be too much but the challenge is what makes it fun and putting together faces watching an expression an emotion start to manifest out of what was well static is really exciting i can start to see what the artist saw in this sitter i can start to see the expression of this sitter and what they were thinking and feeling and i get to make that happen or at least i get to ensure that it happens for the next viewer for i'm not creating anything here i'm just helping the artist with their creation and so through the meticulous application of thousands and thousands of tiny little dots of color each varying from the next i can slowly bring this face into focus and allow everyone to see what he should look like [Music] [Music] [Music] and so just like that over the course of about an hour and a half the face has come together and we can finally see this young man exactly how the artist did so after several more hours and several more days of retouching doing some of those more difficult yet less exciting areas i am finally finished and very excited to get the final varnish on and see just how well i did at least i hope so we're back to the spray room and i'm going to turn on the exhaust fan and start varnishing this painting and i'm going to start with my large 4 inch gesso brush i like this brush because it holds a ton of varnish and the hairs which inevitably will come out no matter how good of a brush you use are easy to pick up because they are thick bristle brush so fairly simply back and forth up and down side to side get a layer of varnish on this painting and get it evenly distributed that's all it takes nothing fancy but it's not that simple while the varnish is starting to dry and tack up i've filled my spray gun and i'm going to start applying another layer of varnish i do this now while the varnish is tacky not while it's wet or not while it's dry because i'm going for a very specific effect i'm going to spray this varnish from high up higher than you normally would when you are applying a varnish layer and i do this so that during the atomization process when the varnish is very thin and airborne it starts to dry in the air and by the time it hits the surface it's hardened little crystals of gloss varnish that will create a beautiful velvet texture to see any work of art regardless of its value so violently damaged irrespective of the reasons why knowing that the owner felt that act internally well that's crushing but to be given the responsibility the privilege to try to affect positive change where perhaps some might not have seen an opportunity is humbling and one that i take very seriously and through the careful employ of materials and techniques relying on years of experience pulling out all of the tricks while the damage can't be undone perhaps the scars can be made invisible so that the first impression is not one of pain but one of pleasure while i is the conservator i'm satisfied with this work seeing the painting put back together for the artist for the sitter it is mostly for the owner and knowing that the trauma of this violent act inflicted upon the painting upon themselves has been reversed well that's as good of a restoration as i've ever seen thanks for watching and if you're a patreon subscriber stay tuned for the epilogue video where i'll answer all of your questions about this project and i'll be joined by a special guest the owner of this painting who'll spend some time talking about the history of the work and how it got the way it got including sharing their final reactions to my work

Channel: Baumgartner Restoration

Views: 182,558

Rating: 4.9722509 out of 5

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

Id: m-IHxM5Mrwk

Length: 33min 40sec (2020 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 23 2021