The Contrarian

this video is brought to you by magellan tv a new documentary streaming service founded by filmmakers whose mission is to tell great stories that have defined the human experience it should come as no surprise that the conservator's mind would be obsessed with solutions fixing things taking a damaged painting and through the employ of methods and materials affecting a positive change well that's what it's all about and there's usually very little disagreement on that final destination between the painting the conservator and the client except when there is and every so often a client arrives with a set of wants and needs that are seemingly incongruous with those of the object and the conservator and the burden to marry those seemingly disparate desires into one unified vision fall squarely on the shoulders of the conservator but with every challenge comes an opportunity the opportunity to use a material that's never been used before to try out a new technique to design and fabricate the perfect tool and if ego can be cast aside for humility and convenience for curiosity well then the opportunity to fundamentally rethink conservation and what defines a solution exists and that can be truly exciting can a painting with this much damage be considered fine art or is it now artifact a recording of the passage of time complete with wounds and trauma etched onto its surface and trauma this painting experienced with a massive tear right to the sitter's forehead extreme water damage resulting in the entire right side of the painting being lost and the paint layer that exists is so precariously bonded to the canvas that one false move and it could all be lost and so we have to wonder what happened to this painting that resulted in this state but more importantly what do we do with it how do we find a solution to fix these problems that will make the painting the conservator and client happy particularly when the painting will defy expectation when the work won't follow the normal course of action when the project itself is the contrarian [Music] unconventional stories that defy expectation contrarians are inherently interesting they can capture transport and touch us in ways that we may have not thought possible and there's no better place to experience those stories than on magellan tv magellan tv is a new type of streaming service created by filmmakers to showcase some of the most interesting documentaries around with a catalog of over 3000 titles from which to choose there is surely something that will capture your imagination from history to science outer space the natural world and even the arts magellan has something for you and one show that i couldn't get enough of was brush strokes every picture tells a story over the course of four episodes we take a deep dive into works from gogan van gogh cezanne and dobson each episode focuses on one painting and takes us into the world of the artist who created it including popular influences events in the artist's life and hidden meanings within the works you know the full story you can watch on just about any device your phone tablet computer or even stream to your tv and the best part it's completely ad free head over to try.magellantv.com baumgartner restoration or click the link in the description below to take advantage of this offer and defy your expectations while affectionately nicknamed the contrarian much of the early work will follow well-worn paths things like removing the painting from the frame don't require much reinvention particularly when the painting is held in with rusty old tacks and i'm gonna pull these tacks out and hang on to them because i have a feeling that they might come in handy later i'm not 100 certain but if i throw them away well their fate has been sealed and they can't come in handy later i'm also going to be very careful when i'm handling this painting because any bump or impact could jostle loose any of that paint that's just precariously attached to the canvas and that's something that i certainly don't want normally i can remove these tacks pretty quickly and i can handle the painting with the plum but here because the paint layer is so delicate i have to do this with the paint layer up and i have to be really careful about where i place my hands unfortunately many of these tacks are rusted in so it takes a great deal of force to pry them loose now once i have removed all the tacks from one edge i'm going to disassemble that stretcher and remove it from the remaining three members and i'm doing this because i need to clean the back of the painting but i can't simply remove all of the supports and then flip the painting over and clean it off like i would normally because of course this paint layer is so fragile so as i peel out this stretcher bar being extra careful that it doesn't catch on any canvas or bump or impact the original paint layer i can see just how much dirt has accumulated underneath that painting now i'm going to lift it up again very carefully and i'm going to take a bristle brush and just jostle loose some of that loose particulate and this is just dust and dirt and grime that's settled in the back i can't use a vacuum here because the suction will be way too strong and so doing it this way allows me to get rid of most of this grime because that's absolutely critical for some of the next steps that i'm going to take to stabilize this painting now once i've removed all the tacks from the tacking edge and cleaned off as much of the grime as safely possible i can move the canvas over to the side and take a look at the stretcher bars they of course need to be cleaned too but they are pretty old and i want to make sure that there's no damage to them so going over them once with this brush and taking a close look is critical to examining them to make sure that they are strong enough to support this painting and as i disassemble them i notice that there is some writing on the back it seems to say ak 1871 an interesting data point now handling a painting like this that is so fragile requires extra care so i'm sliding it onto a piece of acid-free foam core which will be the transport as i move it into the other room where i'm going to start the first of many treatments to stabilize the painting that this painting is relatively small is something i am quite grateful for moving a gigantic painting in this state would be incredibly difficult and now with my materials prepared i can start the first treatment and this is going to relax and flatten the canvas but in addition because this canvas was properly prepared with a rapid skin glue size i can reactivate that adhesive by using moisture heat and pressure i can soften that rabbit skin glue that's embedded in the fibers of the canvas that is holding on the ground layer to the canvas and i can cause it to reattach now that adhesive is not going to be the only thing i rely on to stabilize this painting but it is going to be the first line of defense so heat on vacuum pump on and i will let the painting sit for a couple of hours until it is completely cooled i'm using a balsa wood brayer here to press down the paint layer i'm using balsa wood because it's soft and it will deform when it encounters any impasto or texture rather than causing any damage to the paint layer letting the painting rest under weights for a few days as any residual moisture dissipates and it acclimatizes to the relative humidity of my studio is absolutely critical to making sure that the painting doesn't distort and as i roll back this felt we can see that none of that paint has attached to it no paint is loose it's all flat and bonded back down to the canvas but i'm not comfortable trusting that old rabbit skin glue size to stabilize this painting so i'm going to be doing an adhesive impregnation and that all starts with a thermoplastic conservation grade adhesive now this is removable with heat or solvent and i've thinned it down to almost the consistency of water so that when it's heated up and flows freely it can penetrate into and through all of the canvas fibers up into all of the nooks and crannies and voids where the paint has been lost or is not fully attached back to the canvas the roller makes quick work of this and it gives me a nice even distribution it's certainly possible to use a brush but it's less effective and spraying this adhesive is incredibly messy and incredibly dangerous because of the solvents that become airborne when this adhesive is atomized now the goal here is for the entire canvas and paint layer to become completely engulfed with this adhesive it doesn't help if the adhesive sits on the back of the canvas it really does need to penetrate into and through every area it can and that's why thinning it is absolutely critical even though this adhesive is thinned it still retains a high degree of adhesion that's one of the great benefits of this conservation adhesive that unlike some others when it's thinned it doesn't become less strong with the adhesive allowed to cool and dry i can then transfer the painting to the hot table where the second part of the adhesive impregnation will take place sandwiching the painting between several layers of siliconized pet film is necessary to make sure that the painting doesn't get stuck to either the table or the top layer of film once that sandwich has been created i can lay down the top layer tape it down and create an airtight envelope the cotton webbing surrounding the painting runs to an evacuation port in the corner of the table that's hooked up to the vacuum pump i'll turn the table on heat it up extract all of the air and then use my balsa brayer to run over the painting the heat will reactivate the adhesive the pressure will force it into all of those voids and then once the painting has been allowed to cool i can peel back the tape open up the envelope and start to remove the siliconized pet film and you can see that the release film is absolutely critical it has made sure that none of that paint layer has been bonded to anything but the canvas this is going to provide an exponentially stronger bond than the rabbit skin glue size that i reactivated earlier now because that adhesive was really thin and because it was a lot of raw canvas naturally much of it penetrated through the canvas and rested on the surface of the painting and i need to remove that because it's unsightly and it doesn't need to be there so using the appropriate solvent i can run over the surface of the painting and in a matter of seconds the adhesive will start to swell that solvent and release itself from the surface of the painting it's incredibly easy as you can see this is one of the great benefits of using conservation specific materials they're predictable and we know how to work with them now at this point perhaps midway through the project the work executed thus far may seem familiar or even rote and that might lead one to believe that would hold true for the work to come but of course that's where this project gets interesting now this being the contrarian it is natural to expect that the work must also defy convention and when i met with my client to discuss the work on this painting i was surprised to hear that they had no interest in a comprehensive conservation and restoration in fact they wanted to preserve the object as is now of course they had concerns with stability and making sure that it didn't further deteriorate but they felt that to undo all of this damage to fill in the losses to mend the tear to retouch the image well that would defy the painting's history it would erase its life and that all of this damage was part and parcel of this painting now it's character it's patina it's charm and so the question really is how to take the tools and materials the ethos of the conservator to merge them together and apply them to preserving and stabilizing this object for the next hundred or so years while not erasing or defying any of its lived history and if we shift our thinking just a little bit employ a little creativity and perhaps a large dose of humility well i don't see why that's impossible at all now before any work gets way too unconventional or contrarian there are still a few basic steps that need to be taken to make sure that this painting can go back onto the stretcher eventually this tacking edge was pretty worn and pretty thin and i didn't have confidence that it would be able to support the painting once it goes back on the stretcher so i'm going to reinforce it with some silk organza and i'm going to use the pre-cut strips i have in my scrap bin and i'm going to apply the adhesive film to the canvas this is the same adhesive that i use to do the impregnation so not only is the adhesive reversible but it's going to give an extra good bond because this canvas is already saturated with this adhesive using a basic iron without any steam and a relatively low heat i can tack on this adhesive film and then peel back the release layer and then lay down the silk organza onto the film this silk organza will just make sure that the fidelity of the original canvas is enhanced it's not as strong as a strip lining but in this case because there is attacking edge i don't need to add material and in addition if i added material well it would be visible everyone would see that i was there precisely what my client doesn't want so the choice of using a concealed material that is going to add structural integrity was absolutely critical now as i move along i'm using my handled weight with a piece of oak on it to make sure that this canvas doesn't distort because if it does well i've created a problem while trying to solve another one now this silk organza was larger than the tacking edge and normally it wouldn't be a problem to leave this but again i don't want any of this to be visible my client doesn't want any of this to be visible that would indicate that work has been done that it has been to a conservator studio so using a very very new and very sharp scalpel blade i'm just going to slice off this silk organza right to the edge to make sure that it's completely invisible nobody will ever know that i did any treatments to stabilize the structure of this canvas now in addition to stabilizing the tacking edge there is a big tear here now normally i would bridge this tear use belgian linen strands and lay those down with an adhesive and then press them and they would hold the canvas stable and they would look great and everyone would be happy except my client because of course they don't want me to quote unquote fix this tear but of course i can't just leave the tear because that will wreak havoc on the canvas over time with humidity changes it might shrink and open up and that would be really problematic so i'm using a conservation adhesive that's reversible and i'm just painting it onto this tear just a little bit i want to make sure that i get as much in there as possible so it's a fairly thin adhesive i want to try to bond as many of those fibers to each other as possible but in addition i'm also going to take a very small piece of washi cozo and lay it down over that tear think of it as a strip of mending this is going to add a little bit more support so that the fibers themselves don't have to hold that tear closed this is a little bit of a crutch and i'll paint on a little bit more adhesive to make sure that that washi cozo is really well bonded and once i've done all of the areas of the tear i will put a layer of release film down i'll cover that with some felt and then i will put some weight on this so that it can dry without distorting and also it can stay flat after a few days it's time to remove the weight and the felt and check to make sure that the bond was secure and that i don't have to redo it then i can flip the painting over and start working on the tear now normally i don't want any tears to be visible but my client does that's what they want out of this so i'm going to peel back some of those canvas fibers that got depressed down so that they stand proud and still look like a tear this will allow the painting to have its tear while still being stabilized i have often talked about the wants and needs of the client the painting and the conservator to be in harmony for any project to be successful and on the cleaning of this painting well that's one point at which i asserted my wants and needs as a conservator initially my client did not want this painting cleaned but i insisted that it was to be cleaned we discussed it a little bit and my client shared their concerns that the painting would look too new and that it wouldn't be in balance with the existing damage i reassured them that was not going to be the case and that if for some reason they felt it was too bright or too new looking i could take corrective action a tinted varnish per se to return it to a darker or more dirty state it is that delicate balance between conservator client and painting that if brought into unison will determine the success of the project it may be difficult at times but if everybody can give a little bit take a little bit and come to an understanding well then success is much more within reach and everything will generally work out for the better i was confident that cleaning this painting would yield a beautiful range of tones that would enhance the way that the painting appeared even with all of the damage being preserved now i know my client was really insistent upon this being an artifact and keeping all of the wear and tear and i had to inform them that keeping all of this grime would severely limit the next steps i could take such as varnishing the painting and that the existing painting just wouldn't look as good now they trusted me because well they came to me for my expertise and i take that very seriously i assured them that if they didn't like the way the painting looked if it was too bright too new too vibrant that i could tone it down with a tinted varnish we could make it dirty again we could add a false patina that seemed to allay their concerns and they allowed me to go ahead and clean this painting i am confident that once they see it cleaned they will think that they have made the right decision the painting was not filthy but even a simple thin layer of accumulated surface grime has a big impact on the range of colors that the artist used the gamut is just so limited when it is singing under a grey film we can see the forehead compared to the temple area well it's just a completely different painting and the success and strength of that adhesive impregnation can be seen here where using a rolled cotton ball i am going over all of these areas of paint that were so precariously attached to the canvas that sneezing on them would cause them to lift and they're all stable [Music] with the cleaning of the painting complete i can turn my attention to the stretcher support and prepare for the return of the canvas now i am planning on using the original holes in the canvas and the stretcher support for the tacks but rather than hoping that the new tacks hold in the existing holes i'm going to make sure that they do by taking some toothpicks a little bit of wood glue and inserting them into those old holes and breaking them off these will bond into these holes and make sure that when the tacks go in they don't pull out this is an old carpenter's trick one that i learned many many years ago once that glue has been allowed to dry i can start assembling the stretcher and this stretcher is of dubious quality three of the sides are big and fine but one of them is very small i wanted to replace it but of course i knew that my client would not be happy with that so i'm gonna have to make a concession there luckily i think it will hold i just have to be careful when i'm handling it and when i'm tacking it once it's all put together it will be fine it will not be subject to any undue forces but you can see just how thin that top bar is i am going to square it up because i want to make sure that it doesn't flex or become a parallelogram while i'm working on it so after i have squared up the edges i will tap the stretcher into place and then i'll use some old nails to secure it so that it doesn't move i've been using these nails for probably 15 years and so they're all bent out of shape but they are trusty and they seem to do the job so i don't really see the need to replace them with the stretcher ready for the canvas i will transfer the canvas onto the stretcher and start aligning it making sure that all the corners all of the sides are precisely where they need to be now because i'm using the original holes i can use them as a registration system so to speak and i've saved the tax that i pulled out rusty bent and questionable but this is what my client wanted so i'm going to use them aligning the canvas with the original hole and then making sure that the tack goes into that original hole well it's not difficult but it takes a little bit more care and precision than if i were just to tack them where i saw fit now the tacking edge is really small which makes stretching the canvas really difficult but again i didn't want to add any material to show that i had been there and using silk organza and the original tacks it kind of looks like the painting has always just been like this which is precisely the goal of this job now good thing for me i am up to date on my tetanus shots because handling rusty tacks is not a great idea and i generally wouldn't do this in fact i never do this well except when my client demands it so i will work from the center out just like i normally do and limit myself to only using the existing holes for the tacks now the painting had three of its four original keys and so i'm turning to my bin of old keys to find some that match again i would normally just cut a new key out of new wood but here i don't want to add any new material so i'm looking through all of these old keys for something that's the same size same grain same basic appearance as the original that then i can cut down once i found it i'll go over to my bench and i'll start trimming it down this is a little bit too small to use a band saw i like to keep my fingertips so i'm going to be using a japanese pull saw which will allow me to have a precision cut without running the risk of taking off well another one of my fingertips i'm just kidding it's fine i just cut myself doing something at home so i've trimmed down one side i'm going to trim down the edge and then this key will be ready for the stretcher and even though this stretcher only has four keys they are designed in a way that they will actually expand all four joints pretty efficiently this is not a better system than those stretchers with eight keys but it is okay you'll notice i'm not using any fishing line or tacks to hold these in place again because that would well show that i had been there that is new material and we don't want that well my client doesn't want that and now the painting well it's all done well almost all done there is a little bit of retouching to do but instead of retouching on the front well i'm going to retouch the back generally i leave the back as is i'm proud of my old work and i want my clients to see that it's been executed but again here my client doesn't want to see this old work so i'm using a watercolor medium to tint the washi cozo that i laid down and this is just like regular retouching except well on the back and here the goal is just to disguise this enough so that it's not distracting so that when one looks at the back of the canvas they don't see these bright white areas it's really really difficult to retouch a medium onto a canvas to make it look like a dry canvas so we're not going for absolute perfection here we're just looking to disguise and minimize and so adding some paint and doing a little bit of retouching and just making sure that it kind of blends in and doesn't catch your eye well that is the ultimate goal here and i think that has been achieved now no varnish for this painting because of course raw canvas can't accept varnish it becomes almost impossible to fully remove so this painting will live dangerously as if it hasn't already now instead of using z clips and screws to hold this painting in place i'm using some really old really large tacks that i pulled from another project and again i'm going to use the old holes that existed from those other nails and i'm going to hammer these in and they are going to provide enough support to hold this painting in place well that's it all the work is complete painting is ready to go home and you know some of the ironies about this project were that the work itself wasn't fundamentally easier yes not having to do all of that retouching certainly made it a shorter project and maybe a little less stressful but it still took a lot of effort a lot of patience and a lot of focus and the final product the outcome is not a radical transformation the painting kind of looks well the same and that might lead one to think that this wasn't a successful project that the outcome was less than stellar but that's where one would be mistaken because all along the goal was never to return this painting to a state pre-damage it was merely to preserve it to conserve it in its current state to pay homage to the artifacts to its life its scars and yes my fingerprints are all over this painting front and back but the fact that they're invisible and that nobody knows that i was there well for this project i think that's a true marker of success [Music] you

Channel: Baumgartner Restoration

Views: 772,654

Rating: 4.9367514 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: 4UnlPJbnaZU

Length: 37min 24sec (2244 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021