The Cleaning Process or Time Travel in 100 swabs

support for this video comes from skillshare which offers thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people on topics including illustration design photography video freelancing and more [Music] time is a curious beast regardless of who we are and what we desire time passes and takes no quarter and while we know this and are acutely aware of the passing of time as those grains of sand accumulate our ability to grasp them slips through our fingers like well grains of sand sometimes the only marker of time passed by is change for change is the evidence of time and much like we don't see ourselves going gray in the mirror daily we're shocked to see an old friend who is now salt and pepper for it seems so sudden we look around our homes and can't see the curtains bleached from the sun the carpet less fluffy than the day we rolled around on it after installation even the plants in our gardens appear suddenly taller and more full for as fast as time passes change can be glacially slow but change is certain and though we may not see it as it happens when we look back at photos of our garden or move the couch to reveal an untrampled spot of carpet we may be shocked at the transformation and feel betrayed by our inability to recognize or remember this change and for the most part those changes are now part of the story nothing and no one is immune to change the artist john nolf was a curious fellow born on july 23 1871 in allentown pennsylvania he worked as a paperboy in his youth the ink forever staining his hands and heart after his family moved to oregon he apprenticed in the local print shop and eventually earned a union card and moved to seattle where he found work in the local papers as a printer traveling around the coast quickly firing off sketches for publication in those early days much of the west coast was still quite wild and the lure of adventure saw nolf riding boxcars where others wouldn't and even to towns where no trains ran he hitched aboard a wood-fired freighter tending to the furnace as fair down to a muddy former fur trading outpost built on stilts called astoria when other printers shared tall tales norths were taller earning him the nickname astoria bill my training started in mourning newspaper offices of the west in the days of hand composition out in pendleton oregon being a print in those days enabled a young fellow to easily satisfy his feelings for the wunderlust so i wandered about in astoria oregon i got my first real artistic pick trying to sketch boats and whalers and sea fishers who were outfitting for the north seas from there on to spokane butte salt lake denver etc too numerous to mention at last in chicago where i pitched my tent on the steps of the art institute and waited for the goddess of art to grab me and drag me in she did i left the painting trade and worked at commercial art for years at last i gratified the cravings of my soul and went into painting and so though he was born into a family of minors designed or doomed to chase cole from mind to mind he resisted that path and changed his trajectory he found good work and satisfaction in the papers as a printer yet he longed for more so he changed again and again and again until he landed in chicago where he would change once again into a talented and renowned painter and that type of change shouldn't be limited to people like nolf i mean there are probably plenty of you out there right now watching this video who would love to change into painters who have the inspiration the excitement but just don't know where to begin so head on over to skillshare the online community full of millions of people just like you indulging in creativity learning new skills and changing the trajectory of their lives and if you were curious about portrait painting i might suggest drawing and painting portraits a guide for artists by gabrielle bricky so go ahead and change a bit and then change some more and then do it again i mean if an old-time print like john nolf can do it while hitchhiking and boxcars on the pacific northwest surely you can do it i mean he didn't even have skillshare the first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get a two-month free trial of premium membership so you can explore your creativity so what are you waiting for jump to it there's no time like the present well actually maybe do it after the video ends as conservators of paintings one of our most formidable foes behind recklessly wielded crayons and errant box cutters is of course time and the change that it brings no artist can predict the life that their artworks will experience regardless of the best intentions of any artist collector gallery or dealer artworks have lives of their own and it's during those lives that they are subject to the same trickling of sand that sees wrinkles develop around our eyes and our gate become a bit heavier even the best materials of the day can be fallible and such is the case for the majority of natural resin varnishes in this case the demar that was applied in the mid-1950s has succumbed to that change demar is a resin extracted from the dipterro carpacce family of trees found in the tropical lowland rainforests of east asia and india specifically the genus of shore commonly known as luan the same luan that's found in plywood around the world this sap is extracted dried converted to a crystal or powder and then mixed with spirits to create a liquid varnish that can be applied to the surface of the painting from the moment that sap leaves the tree and is introduced to oxygen a series of chemical changes eventually see the once clear resin mixture marking the passage of time by turning yellow or even brown this change can present rather quickly in a few months from application on the painting surface yet will often continue for years and become more amplified with exposure to the same uv rays that allow one to mark the time spent on the beach by the degree of sunburn on one's body and while like that sunburn it's painfully obvious in comparison and after the change has occurred over the duration of the change it's almost imperceptible such that we come to recognize the amber tinted landscape as an evening scene or the portrait reflecting the dark and brooding nature of the sitter we come to see the changes as having always been there they become the baseline yet as conservators we know this not to be true we have come to know our most relentless of foes in time and how she exerts change slowly and subtly before we are aware and while that patina of age may be attractive and lend an air of antiquity to an object perhaps even desirable on furniture or artifact on paintings we understand that change as a bug not a feature and so as the varnish is removed we can reveal a whole different painting not only in the palette that was used but in the composition as well we'll start to see pinks and blues lavenders whites and yellows that just all looked muddy before and the light will land on her face travel down her neck her forearm and come to rest on her hand and it will carry us through the composition and the way that we will come to see and understand this painting will forever change it will become almost impossible to imagine this painting prior to cleaning so with that said there's really nothing more to say and perhaps it's best to let the work and the painting have the last word [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] and so while nolf chose change and pursued it relentlessly like a fox chasing a hair the same surely cannot be said of his paintings for they were and are moments in time forever oxidized in oil paint on canvas they were never meant to change yet not even the hair can outrun time a fellow once said that time may change me but i can't change time and while we can't go back in time to a day without gray hairs we may just be able to turn back the clock on this painting and perhaps go back to a time before change

Channel: Baumgartner Restoration

Views: 606,792

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

Id: aX1RP537o6Q

Length: 20min 46sec (1246 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dracovich]

I generally enjoy his videos, but my god that whole speech was too pretentious for me

[u/InfiniteThugnificent]

What a fucking painting, hot daaamn.

That pseudo-intellectual prosaic voiceover tho...yikes

[u/Torkin]

I kind of wanted him to leave the Zorro mask at the end.

[u/dreadful05]

The video is way more enjoyable after ~8:55 when he stops talking.

[u/[deleted]]

I swear nothing makes people happy these days. he always uploads one without commentary. and if you don’t like his commentary, mute always works.

[u/[deleted]]

Good god this guy is pretentious. Just shut up and tell us what you're doing.