Out of the Darkness

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 a painting so dark has to be almost impossible to view a figure peeking out from the Shadows painted by the hungarian-born artist Victor erdy he was a man who was said to have no charm of color no Charming temperament but even more aloofness abstinence to the point of coldness in addition he was said to be a soul Seeker who tenderly evoked the mirror flashes of this shameful soul from the Shadows this painting could not be more fitting there's a figure with eyes closed peeking out from the darkness but in its current condition it's almost impossible to see any of the detail it's so dark the surface is ravaged with several holes and distortions drawing our attention further superficially the painting is barely hanging on to the stretcher with attacking Edge almost completely gone and where it is attached the tacks have rusted and are no longer providing adequate support to say nothing of the fact that the stretcher bar was unevenly cut down on the right side there's some tape on the back and an inscription which complicates the process of conservation pieces of a canvas are missing and the canvas itself is so open and loose of weave that I wonder if it can even support the paint layer certainly it's done so thus far but I'm not sure about the future so there's work ahead of us to see if we can bring this painting out of the darkness [Music] and while I worked to bring the painting out of the darkness maybe you too should do the same with your old janky website and turn to Squarespace Squarespace has tens of thousands of beautifully designed templates that work anywhere from tablet to phone and everywhere in between thus ensuring that anybody who visits your site gets the same Dynamic and wonderful experience regardless of how they land and one of the great things about all of squarespace's templates is that they are flexible if you want to change something like the layout it's easy you can just click and add something like an email contact form or if you want to change the colors of fonts or backgrounds again click and change you can even change the layout altogether with the click of a button 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 what's first for this haunting painting well it's removing these scary tacks from the tacking Edge and releasing it from this comically inadequate stretcher now these tacks are barely holding the painting on where they are they are rusted and in other places well there are no attacks and even where there are sometimes there isn't any canvas so just like that the stretcher comes off and I can take care of it later there's a layer of accumulated Grime dust and dirt behind the canvas and I start by brushing it off but then I decide to take a different approach and use my new vacuum if only because it's a new toy and I want to play with it it does a great job of sucking up all of that dirt and dust and keeping it in a HEPA filtered container so that it doesn't permeate the studio ask any conservator and pressure sensitive tape is certainly scary it's not an adequate solution and the adhesive used often deteriorates the canvas beneath I'm using scalpel here to remove this try because I don't want to subject this canvas to any moisture for fear that it distorts in addition this tape is so deteriorated that it just comes right off it's fairly easy and it reveals a very small little puncture we can deal with this better so with all of the grime removed I can transfer the painting back to the back half of the studio where the Hot Table is and I can begin the first treatment and this is going to be subjecting the painting to moisture heat and pressure to alleviate any of these planar distortions and to try to get the canvas flat flat this is done on a large heated aluminum hot table with heating elements underneath once the painting is exposed to a little bit of moisture if necessary in this case because the relative humidity of the studio is a bit high today I don't need to add any moisture the ambient moisture that the canvas has absorbed will be sufficient the table is then heated up the air is sucked out and it's let to sit for a few hours and then when it's done and cool I can remove it and put it under weights for a few days to let it acclimate to the studio even though most of the moisture has been drawn out by the acid-free cotton blotter paper beneath the painting we still want to let it have a slow acclimatization to the studio for fear that any ambient moisture that's in the canvas will cause Distortion and that's the work that we just tried to undo a piece of felt protects the surface of the painting even though there's no impasto on this there is a heavy canvas texture and I don't want that to get altered by the weights so underneath a few sheets of sheetrock which will absorb and draw out any moisture and one cinder block to add some passive weight after a few days under weights I can come and remove the painting and hope and pray that everything has gone well actually I don't need to open prey because I've done this a few times and I know that the results will be exactly what I want you can see that there are no distortions the next step is going to be addressing some of these structural flaws I want to take care of these holes before I clean the painting some of these are pretty big and I can't just Bridge them so I'm going to use an inlay now I checked in my canvas stock and I don't have canvas that matches this painting so I'm taking a small piece of the edge this is beyond the tacking Edge I guess you would call this the Selvage and I'm going to use it for the inlay think of it as an organ donor this piece of canvas is not essential to the painting it doesn't add any value whatsoever and in this way it can help fulfill the painting it can help in the conservation process so after tracing the outline of the Gap I can cut the fill in to fit and there's nothing terribly complicated about this I just have to trim the canvas to make sure that it fits into the void yes I have investigated using CNC machines and plotters to do this but the time and effort it would take just to avoid having to spend three minutes cutting a piece of canvas seems a bit well silly sometimes the analog approach really is the best and just like that the canvas is in place and I can start thinking about the bridging process bridging unlike a patch is a lightweight way of securing a tear or a hole that doesn't cause telegraphing in the front in the past large patches would be adhered to the canvas and that would then eventually migrate to the front of the painting and we would see the ghost of the patch here with bridging we avoid that by using little strands of Belgian linen laid perpendicularly across the tear or the hole and secured in place with a conservation adhesive we can make sure that this inlay stays put that the tear or hole doesn't move or lift in the future and that we don't get a ghost migrating to the front it's a very elegant solution if one that takes quite a bit of time one thing that you may notice is that I'm trying to stagger the ends of the little canvas strands I don't want a crisp line because that might Telegraph to the front in addition I'm trying to lay these fibers in the Valley of the warp or weft of the canvas to make sure that it's at the lowest point and bonding to both the warp and the weft and once I've done that I can make sure that all of the areas are covered and then I'll take a little piece of silicone release film some felt and a weight and let it sit after a few hours I can come back and check to see how it looks I'll remove the silicone and transfer just the felt to draw out any residual moisture from the adhesive and then this will sit for a day or so the bridging having rested for a couple of days I can now make a final assessment on its efficacy and we can see that it's very nice well bonded and holding that inlay in place so it's time for the structural enhancements to continue and here we're going to do a strip lining even though this canvas is brittle lining it is kind of off the table because there is an inscription on the back yes there are ways to keep that inscription but the lining would be excessive and unnecessary you saw just a minute ago how I was able to successfully deal with the tears and holes locally without executing a lining and so in the same manner I'm going to deal with the loss and delicacy of the tacking Edge locally without doing aligning and here I'm taking strips of Belgian linen frayed at the ends and using a thermoset adhesive film to bond them to the canvas The Frayed edges will continue into the field of the canvas oh about a quarter of an inch to give it more purchase and the phrase makes sure that there's no crisp Edge while also extending the amount of surface area for the adhesive to make contact with thus ensuring a very strong bond and because I'm adding heat I'm using a weight with an oak Clapper attached to it and the oak will absorb any ambient moisture that is free to migrate because of the heat exposure this is a common technique that tailors used and one that I've adopted so with the strip lining all complete and all of the structural work done we can finally turn our attention to cleaning the painting I've made some tests on this painting and determined that there is no varnish there is just an incredibly thick layer of surface Grime and this is probably soot cigarette smoke dust dirt 50 100 Years of ambient particulate that has just settled on the surface and so I'm using a neutral organic soap to break it up this soap is pH neutral you can get it neutral it is organic and contains no petroleum solvents other than water there are no liquids in it whatsoever but what it does is break up the surface Grime and allows me to remove it while it's suspended in the thick solution so I can paint it on agitate it for a little bit and then use a cotton swab to remove it now at first it doesn't really seem like it's having any effect and this is where maybe another conservator or somebody with less experience would say well there's no point in cleaning the background because it's just black let's just focus on cleaning the face this I learned long ago from my father was colloquially called a cuff and collar cleaning where the cuffs and the collars of the sitter were cleaned because they were white and would show the greatest difference but of course that's not what I'm going to do here I'm going to remove all of the surface Grime partially because I do believe that there will be a difference in colors but also because I can't accept a dirty painting because the additional procedures that I intend to do the retouching and of course the varnishing require a clean painting I'm not going to retouch on top of a dirty painting and I'm certainly not going to apply a varnish on top of surface crime that would make it much more difficult for the next conservator to remove that varnish and also be an unforced error so I'm going to continue cleaning the entire painting and one thing that you may notice is that I put down a section of the neutral organic soap and then I move on to another section I let the first section sit then I remove it and then I come to the other section this allows me to continue working without having to wait for the first section to do its job it's just a matter of being a little bit more efficient even though this time lapse is sped up this cleaning did take oh about an hour and a half an hour and 45 minutes and if I had waited for each section to do its work before moving on it would have taken roughly three hours and while that's neither here nor there a painting takes however long it takes to be cleaned if I can find ways of working more efficiently well that's obviously better because it means that the cost is less for my client they do pay me for my time and that's part of being a responsible conservator and also a responsible business person and you know a good human trying to find ways of limiting the expense to my clients can only be understood as a net positive for everyone so as I continue to work the rest of the painting I'm removing all of that surface Grime and I can start to see some colors coming through it may be hard to see them on camera but well trust me on this one in addition I noticed that there is an inscription in the upper left corner something that was completely invisible beforehand now when it comes to cleaning the face I expect a much greater transformation at least I hope let's start with cleaning the hair and again I'm working in an amorphous organic shape I worked in a grid-like fashion before and that was because there was nothing to follow but now that I have Contours that I can work on I'm going to stick to them and this ensures that there is no overlap and no hard Edge which I have learned over time is just something that's good to avoid it's not necessarily a bad thing if there is a hard Edge but it's not necessarily a good thing and so right off the bat what a radical difference the neck to the face is like night and day and the painting is starting to come out of the darkness although I'm not sure if that's yet a good thing or not because this painting looks kind of haunted and is kind of giving me the heebie-jeebies and I leave the eyes to the last because well that's just how I like to do it also they seem to be very important in portrait painting you know and making sure that I do them last after I've gathered as much data about how the paint reacts and the painting exists is always a good thing but here these eyes well they are just oof now early on I mentioned in another terrifying thing that was done to this painting and the stretcher bar was cut down and it was cut down irregularly with a handsaw and it is not straight and there's also no lip to protect the canvas from the stretcher bar creepy I know so what I'm going to do is Rectify that and it begins by ripping down the stretcher bar on the table saw I have the guard lifted so that you can see what I'm doing I'm just removing that rough saw an edge because I'm going to replace it and to do so I need to rip down a piece of Poplar this is about a quarter of an inch and this is going to allow me to create a nice flat Edge but also a lip to lift the canvas off of that stretcher bar now this little piece of wood is going to get glued down there's nothing fancy about this and it does not need to be reversible because this is just the stretcher and I want to make sure that this stretcher can adequately support this painting now I have upgraded my glue game and instead of using my technologically advanced finger I'm using this technologically advanced silicone glue spreader which is only nominally more effective than my finger and exponentially more expensive an upgrade I don't know so with the glue spread and the wood adhered to the stretcher bar I can put some clamps on and then I'm just going to let it sit for a day and dry I'll come back when it's done and I'll continue working it but for now this is done or almost I'm going to remove some of this glue because it's squeezing out now that's one thing that's actually good glue squeeze out means that there is no starved glue joint which is what you want when you're using glue to bond two pieces of wood together so damp Rag and I can clean up all of the mess so after a day the glue has dried and I can remove this piece from the clamps now this little strip of wood that I added to the edge has a 90 degree angle and that's fine but it's a little too sharp so I'm going to take my hand plane and I'm going to just add a little bit of a bevel just to soften that edge I don't need it to be 45 degrees in fact I don't really need it to be anything in particular I just want to knock down that crisp sharp edge that was created on the table saw I don't want anything cutting into or putting unnecessary pressure on the canvas throw a couple of passes with the hand plane and it's well pretty good I can fit it to the existing support make sure that it lines up and then well I can take the painting and begin the stretching process the stretching process is very straightforward and something that I've done so many times it's almost automatic that said I still Square the stretcher up and use some Nails in the corners to make sure that it doesn't move as I'm handling it I then align the painting where I want it on the stretcher sometimes it needs to be cheated a little left or a little right and that's okay because this painting will be framed and the quarter inch around the painting will be concealed by the rabbit then I take some steel blue upholstery tacks and I begin by setting the canvas in the center of each Edge and what this does is create effectively a diamond in the center of the canvas that is already taut and this means that if there is any slack that needs to be dealt with any planar distortions I can move them to the corners and pull them tighter ultimately when I do key the stretcher out the keying effect will be most dramatic at the corners and so if there is any slack that's where I want it to end up now here I'm just using my hands to add tension to this canvas using the canvas pliers isn't really necessary and because this canvas is pretty old and brittle I don't want to put any unnecessary pressure on it and potentially tear it so I've skipped through all of the tacking because we've seen it all before and I'm on to the finishing where I will cut the canvas I will fold the corners in and use a lighter weight tack to adhere the excess strip lining to the back of the canvas some conservators prefer to cut this off some conservators do the ghostly ghoulish thing of gluing it down I prefer to use tax because it's efficient it's easily reversed and I think it looks nice and you know it's my studio and I get to make those decisions lucky me so once I've gotten all of the tacking edges down and the corners folded I can add the keys and I had to cut new keys because there were no keys that came with this painting now keys are interesting they allow us to add tension to the canvas but we're not looking to make it tight as a drum we're just looking to add a little bit you can see I barely tap it out maybe a 16th or even a 30 second of an inch but that's enough because I've added most of the tension during the stretching process the keys just take up any slack that I couldn't deal with and of course these Keys get tied into place with a little bit of fishing line and another Tack and this ensures that not only are they not lost but if they become loose through movement over time they don't fall down in between the canvas and the stretcher bar creating a distortion on the front and now I can turn my attention to the front and start filling in the gaps even though I cut an inlay there are still areas where there was paint loss and I'm going along with a water-based fill in medium and just kind of filling in the entire area making sure that all of the divots and voids are filled in I can use a silicone spatula to sculpt some of those divots to match the canvas texture which will be necessary because this canvas is very textured and the retouching even if the color is matching the texture needs to match too once all of that filling is dry I can come back with a little cotton swab and remove the excess nothing fancy here I'm just pulling off all of that extra fill in that I put on but this is important because I'm only allowed to retouch where the paint is missing I don't want to blend in or glaze in over this whole area that would be a witchcraft Voodoo type of retouching if we take a look at the back of the painting we can see the fill in medium has oozed through and wrapped around some of those bridging fibers this is much like an old plaster and lath wall where the gaps in between the lath allow the plaster to squeeze out and key itself in thus making a tighter Bond I'm using the same technique here a good conservator will always steal techniques where they can benefit the painting now even though this painting does not have a ton of retouching we just can't leave it like that that would be well haunting so I'm going to retouch the painting and I'm using specific conservation paints they're made of ultra fine high quality powdered pigments suspended in a synthetic resin that is soluble with a deliberate solvent this means that in the future if it ever needs to be removed unlike oil paint which oxidizes polymerizes cross-links and becomes well permanent this paint can be removed it is reversible this is not a terribly complicated area of retouching this zombie green if you will is relatively straightforward but it still takes a little bit of effort to blend the color and then work it so that there are enough color variations so that it doesn't feel or look like one blob of color even in a field of one color there are subtle differences and those are what help your eye pass over the retouching instead of pause on it now the retouching dries a slightly different color than when it's wet and it looks wrong but when we varnish it it will transform back into its wet look State and it will blend in this is one of the difficulties of using this paint is that it looks fine and then it dries and it doesn't and so you're tempted to keep working it over and over again and it takes a little while to adjust to that but once you get it it makes sense and then you can move fairly fluidly having confidence in the work that you've just done now spending time retouching a painting is always fun unless the painting is this one and looking back at you from the Netherworld so luckily there wasn't a ton of retouching and I can move on to the varnishing process and I'm excited to see what happens to this painting when I get the varnish on it dark paintings generally respond to Varnish really well the colors get rich and Inky and dense and they become full and vibrant alive even on a death-like painting the varnish that I use is a synthetic resin varnish developed by and for conservators unlike a natural resin this isn't going to yellow or darken or become brittle or difficult to remove in the future and it has an UltraViolet stabilizer in it which will protect not only the paint from ultraviolet light but also the varnish now varnishing is one of those things that confounds most artists but there's nothing to it saturate a brush apply it One Direction apply it the other direction and then work it back and forth now sometimes on a painting I will brush out the varnish as it dries but I gotta wait till it dries so a little time on my phone and then I start to brush out the varnish and as the solvent is evaporating from the varnish the varnish becomes sticky and tacky and I can start to add a micro texture to that finish which will create a really beautiful effect so here it is hauntingly beautiful painting by a man who had no Charming temperament was aloof and was a soul Seeker from the Shadows fitting if I do say so myself the Terrors and holes have been mended so that they are invisible from the front the painting has been cleaned so that we can actually see this image all of the distortions have been removed and the retouching executed to a level where it is completely invisible which is of course what we want attacking edges have been repaired and replaced so to provide better structural support and the entire back of the canvas has been preserved keeping the signature and the date visible for the future something critically important for the provenance and the repaired stretcher bar well it looks just like it should completely invisible but what is visible is a signature that was completely obscured before and so here as we take a look at this ghostly haunting painting with its zombie-like greens and morose image it's compelling but in the sort of train wreck Can't Take My Eyes away from it kind of way I'm not sure if I'd like it but I can't stop looking at it and so while we have brought the painting out of the darkness now that we can see it maybe we've put a little Darkness into it

Channel: Baumgartner Restoration

Views: 714,693

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: EVtmEKR7iPE

Length: 27min 52sec (1672 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 31 2022