Beauty and Brawn Part 1

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. That's one heck of a painting. Yeah, it's really stunning. And we see a lot of paintings. This one's good. This one's really good. Yeah. It's really, really pretty. It's gonna be really pretty when it's done. I love the brushwork in this. Right? It just moves your eye. Yeah, I mean, you start right here with this heavy impasto, and it just catches the light, and the brushwork carries you right down this line. And then right across to this one. And then you're stuck here wondering, like, yeah, where do I go? Kind of swirling. Yeah, right, right. And it just opens up. Yeah. And the bottom pulls you in there. And even the background, which is, you know, it's the background. Up here, there's a ton of impasto. But it's such a cool style of impasto, though. It's so just flat. I really don't see it built like that. Obviously, this painter knew what they were doing, because, like you said, if you look at the background, blues, purples, greens, browns, pinks. There's some red. Yeah, there's some red. This background wasn't one color. There's so much depth into it. And that's gonna be exciting to see. But, I mean, yeah, like, even in here, you can see yellows and kind of cool whites right next to pinks and purples. And some greens in the skin that, like, intellectually don't make sense, right? It has green skin. But when you look at it in its entirety, it just works. Yeah, it's really lovely. That's a really lovely painting. Mm-hmm. Wow. Oh, sorry. The success of this painting, from its colors to construction and even composition, is due to a delicate balance of beauty and brawn. But it's not perfect. No. I mean, I don't know what's happening with that shoulder over there. Yeah, and her neck is way too long. I mean, she's probably breaking it. And her arms are not quite. The shadow's not quite correct on that forearm. Yeah. I mean, her hands are a little bit off. They're a little stiff, a little clunky. She's a dancer, though. Yeah, she's a dancer. And it's just very, like. Yeah, yeah. I can't make that pose, but dancers can. But I think that those kind of things that are slightly off, that's what makes it so compelling. You were saying the other day, like, how a perfume. It has a little bit of, like, a, not acrid, but like. Yeah, there's something that's not like a sweet, good smell. Stinky smell. Yeah, something to keep you present. And so to some degree, kind of the awkwardness of this, of either her pose or the way that the painter captured her, it keeps you engaged. Yeah. I think his style of painting her, you know, the blues next to the yellows, like, it's not perfectly blended. It's a little bit patchworky. I think that parallels really nicely with kind of how he presented her physical form. It's just, it's a little bit off. Yeah, yeah. No, I see that, right. There's a synchronicity in how she is, maybe who she is, and how he's reflecting her. And you know what? That's, I mean, we're supposing that he painted it. Yeah. Like, this is like the whole male gaze thing, right? Like, oh, obviously a man painted this woman. Yeah, because no woman could possibly appreciate this jacked woman who probably can bench press more than you and I combined. And is, I mean, look at her neck muscles. Yeah. I mean, I just can't, I keep finding myself falling back in and moving around and saying, that's not right, but it's so beautiful. But that's not right, but it's so perfect. Yeah, it's very compelling. Right. Like, her arms are so strong, and then her hands are so loose. And like, that's not right. But that's the whole idea of being a ballerina is the immense strength, but the grace of it, the lightness of it. Well, and that's the whole idea of making a painting is trapping you in it. Yeah. I think the front of the painting looks really good. I want to see what the back looks like. Okay. Yes. Ready? Yep. Oh, goody. I mean, I can't stop looking at the back, but for a completely different reason. Yeah. That's a lot of stitching and patches. And how many pieces of canvas is that? I don't even know what's going on here. I mean, this is like old pieces of old paintings. Yeah. And primed canvas and unprimed canvas. I mean, yeah, you can see in the corners and stuff. It's like they just ran out of canvas and just patchworked it. And the stretcher is too big. Oh, my gosh. It's been enlarged. Yeah. I don't know what is going on. Down here to the wood, that one. And they've got a metal one over there. They got a metal key, but just a chunk of wood. Yeah. Some structural tape, of course. I think that they sewed extra canvas on to enlarge it. That this is a seam. On the front, there are two pieces of canvas. And this looks like maybe it was just added to give it more strength. This was glued on as like a... Afterthought? Yeah, to buttress it or something. Do you think that the original portrait was this size originally? And then they're like, no, let's make it bigger. Let's see more of her skirt. Because this... 34 by 28. I don't know. Man, that... I have no idea. Why can't we ever just have nice things? This is nice. This is exciting. It's exciting. Yeah. I was like, we're just going to clean it. It'll be fine. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is what makes it fun. This is what makes a project like this really engaging. That there's now a technical problem that we have to solve. And we have to come up with a solution. You know, there's all these seams. And of course, we want to get rid of... Get the cracks down and flatten it. But we cannot leave these seams. This is not going to be... This is not okay. What kind of canvas is this? Is this just a primed... Yeah, this is like a primed canvas. And it looks like... Look, you can see where it was tacked before. Yeah. Like, this artist used this canvas multiple times. Good for them. And then recycled it and recycled it. There's probably multiple paintings underneath this one. That would be kind of cool to see. It looks like all of this has been used up. Yeah. I mean, this is like... For such a beautiful and meticulous painting, it's kind of surprising how haphazard all of this is. Well, I think that, you know, that just goes to show it's not the materials that you buy. It's the quality of the artist. You're right. It's not the pan, it's the chef. But it never ceases to amaze me the profoundly ridiculous things that artists do. It's their creative genius. Oh, is that what we're calling it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the branding. That's the marketing we're going with. All right. Well, let's put our creative genius to work and figure out what to do. Awesome. Seeing the seams on the back of this painting are really cool, but only in the context that they don't disrupt the front of the painting and interfere with arguably what's the most important thing, the image. Important for paintings, but also websites. Look, we know that Squarespace has thousands upon thousands of gorgeous, beautifully designed templates that with a simple click, you can use to launch your website. And they work everywhere. Desktop, tablet, and phone. So you can be sure that everyone is seeing the same thing. But behind those beautiful templates is a whole bunch of really impressive technology that makes the website work. And Squarespace has tons of tools to help you tell your story, to help you sell your product, to help you reach out and connect with other people. I mean, that's the point of a website. But the really cool thing is you'll never see those seams. Squarespace has worked really hard to make sure that all of their super awesome tech is just invisible. It just works. But let's be honest. Just because it works doesn't mean that you will know how to make it work. Squarespace has built up an entire army of resources to help you if and when you run into questions. Online tutorials, video walkthroughs, and if you need real help, there's a forum of people just like you who will jump to help you. So head over to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash Baumgartner to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So where to begin? Well, first things first, the painting needs to be removed from this frame. And while I generally prefer paintings to be installed in frames using offset clips or other brackets as they're easier to remove, in this case, it's just a bunch of nails. And the reason I prefer offset clips or proper hardware is because they don't rust. These nails rust, and so pulling them out is a little bit more difficult. Now, I'm not going to be reusing this stretcher support, so I don't really have to worry about marring it up. But, you know, easier is better. With all of those nails removed, I can start to remove the painting from the frame rabbet. And you can see, as I'm handling this, just how flimsy this support is. It's flexing quite a bit. And aside from, well, you'll see later, that's something that we don't want. Now, with the painting removed, I can begin removing the canvas from this support. And here, the artist used tacks. A lot of tacks. And you can see that how the canvas has all sorts of linings and patches and a lot of dust and dirt, and a lot of tacks. I know I profess to love tacks, but sometimes more tacks is not more better, like in this case. In any event, I will begin removing them one at a time, slowly working my way around the entire painting. And I will try to see if I can get all of them out in one pass, but inevitably I will miss one or two, and I'll have to be conscious of this later on. Because when I remove the painting, I don't want to simply assume all of the tacks have been removed, and go yank the painting off, and have one or two tacks remain, and cause a problem. This is a lesson that I learned long, long ago, and I would like to not relearn it. So all of the tacks have now been removed, and you can see there were a lot. It's kind of funny that this artist, who was so thrifty with canvas, was not with tacks. Maybe there was a sale on tacks. Who knows. And now I'm going to flip the painting over, so I can keep it face down when I remove the support. This is a heavy painting. It actually weighs quite a bit, and that's mostly due to built-up paint. And so if I can avoid stressing this paint layer any more than it has been already during its lifetime, I can reduce the amount of cracks, and the amount of deflections that happen. So simply removing the support is a lot easier. And now, with the support removed, I can start to see the full extent of the creativity of the artist in fabricating this canvas. There are tons of different types of canvas. Different weights, different weaves, different colors, all sorts. They're all stitched together, and in some spots, there are pieces just glued directly on. And those need to come off for several reasons. First and foremost, they're not really well adhered, so they're not providing much support. You can see I'm peeling it back with relative ease here. That indicates that either there wasn't enough adhesive, or whatever adhesive was there has since failed, rendering this patch or reinforcement, well, useless. Now in some spots it is a little tougher, but I still need to remove this. I want to get down to the actual canvas that the artist painted on, so that I can see if I need to do any further reinforcements. And if so, well, figure out what I'm going to need to do about that. So just peeling it back is the name of the game. There is no fancy tool that can do this. There's no quick procedure. It's just a lot of handiwork, and peeling back this canvas from the original. And this looks like a rabbit skin glue, but it's a little shiny, and so I think it might be something else. Generally the rabbit skin glue of this age deteriorates, and it becomes kind of chalky and dusty. Really brittle. This is brittle, but it's not really dusty, so it doesn't appear to have decomposed the same way that a natural glue usually does. So maybe this is a synthetic. I don't know at this point. We'll have to investigate and see how I'm going to remove it, because of course, I do need to remove all of that old adhesive. I had thought about using a solvent or water or something to soften the adhesive through the canvas, but I generally try to avoid that unless I absolutely need to employ that approach, because then I'm exposing the canvas to either moisture or solvent, and I'd like to reduce that as much as possible. In some areas, I do need to employ a scalpel to remove some of the canvas. It's really old and brittle, and when I pull it, it just kind of disintegrates. So using a scalpel to encourage it off is not out of the question. And now, with all of that canvas removed, I can start exploring how to remove that excess adhesive. I've made some tests, and I've determined that, unfortunately, it's not a rabbit skin glue. It's a contact cement. So using water or laponite or methylcellulose or any other of the rote solutions for softening and removing rabbit skin glue just won't be an option here. I have to use a gelled solvent to break down this synthetic contact cement. So the solvent is applied. It's allowed to sit anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes, depending on the efficacy of the solution and the tenacity of the adhesive I'm trying to remove. And then, once the appropriate amount of time has passed, I can come back with my scalpel and start scraping it off. Now, you'll notice here that I'm just scraping in the flat areas. Because in the areas where there are seams, stitching, that hold the painting together, I'm going to use a nylon bristle brush. Now, even though the paint is largely holding the painting together, it's kind of acting as a glue on those canvas joints, the stitching is really important, and I don't want to remove it if I don't have to. So using the nylon bristle brush is totally, totally acceptable, and it actually gets the job done. Now, in the large areas here, I can use the scalpel. But again, look, if I were to use the scalpel here, yes, I would get all of the adhesive off, but I'd also shave down all of that stitching. All those threads would be gone. And then, I would have a structurally compromised canvas. It would be weaker, and I would then need to take an intervention to strengthen it, which seems to be an unforced error. Yes, the strengthening would be totally appropriate, but I wouldn't need to do it if I hadn't done something that I could have avoided. And you can see, all of the stitching remains, all of the contact cement is gone, and now I can evaluate how best to treat these seams and reinforce them while still maintaining the integrity of the original structure and the original stitching, which was done by the artist. Unfortunately, this is one of those processes in conservation that just requires a lot of time. And sometimes, this work can be handed off to an assistant. Speaking of which, where is Kit? And why isn't she doing this? Well, Kit's busy doing other things, and this is something that's a little bit more complicated, which is why I'm handling it. Certainly, over time, Kit will learn how to handle some of these areas that are a little less than predictable, but for now, it's something that I need to take care of myself. And once I'm done scraping all of that adhesive off, I can clean off the back of this painting and just remove the dust and debris, because the next step takes place at the hot table, and I need to have this painting clean. Now, to transfer this painting, I could simply lift it up, but because it is so heavy, there is so much paint on it, I don't want to run the risk of cracking the paint layer any more than it's already cracked or having any of the canvas tear from the weight of the painting. So I'm sliding a piece of acid-free foam core underneath the painting, which will give it a little bit of rigidity as I lift it up and transfer it into the back of the studio. I still have to be careful how I handle it, but just that added rigidity from the foam core makes moving it really easy. And I'm going to transfer it over to two pieces of acid-free blotter paper that have been taped together, and I'm going to mark the size of the painting because I need to cut these blotter papers down. They're a little too big right now, and I don't need all of that excess material. I want them to fit the painting just. I don't want them too big, but I don't want them too small. So once I've cut them, I can now remove them from the painting. I'll leave the painting there for a minute, and I'll transfer these blotter papers over to the side table, where I'm going to do something that seems odd. I'm going to wet them. A lot. In fact, I'm going to saturate these blotters. I want them to be almost like a sponge. Using my sprayer and water, I'm going to cover these blotter papers with water. The blotter papers are designed to absorb water, so this is nothing that will compromise their structural integrity or my ability to use them. In fact, it is key to the next step. You see, this painting has a ton of impasto on the front, and I would love to do a treatment on the hot table with the paint layer up, but we have those seams. And so if I do the treatment with the paint layer up, the seams will transfer to the face of the painting, and that will be a disaster. But if I do the treatment paint layer down, well, all of that impasto is going to get crushed and be pressed backwards, which will also be a disaster. So when left with certain doom, find a new solution. And here, with the blotter paper all wet and swollen and soft, I've placed a piece of PET film on the surface to protect the painting and the blotter paper from each other. I'll smooth it out, lay it down on the hot table, and then, once I'm confident that it's all smooth, I will transfer the painting face down onto that blotter paper that's covered with film. What this is going to allow me to do is do the hot table treatment on the painting while keeping those seams from telegraphing to the front, but also protecting that delicate impasto. You see, the impasto is going to press into that blotter paper, which is now swollen and soft. That blotter paper is going to conform to it and provide a cushion or padding against the surface of the table. Here, I'm adding a couple sheets of release film, but this is different. It's not mylar. It's a synthetic fabric. And this allows air and moisture to pass through while preventing anything from sticking. Any of that old contact cement could certainly reactivate or become tacky with exposure to heat and moisture and then stick to this second layer of blotter paper that I have put on top. The second layer of blotter paper is dry, and that's going to absorb any ambient moisture that comes through the first blotter paper or that's held by the canvas from being in my studio and absorbing the relative humidity. The webbing goes around the whole assembly. It gets covered with another sheet of PET film. The through-bag connectors go under so that I can extract the air. I tape it down in multiple spots. Then I tape it down again to create an airtight envelope. And once that's all done, all of the sides taped down, and I'm confident that I have a good seal, I'll put the through-bag connectors in, attach the hoses, and then I will turn on the vacuum pump and extract all of that air. The vacuum pump will suck out all of that air and allow it to be a nice, tight, compact compression on the entire painting, which is absolutely critical. Now, sometimes a little hole will appear, and I need to check it and put a little bit more tape on to seal it up, but that's not a big deal. So once I have extracted all of the air, the heat can go on and the treatment can begin. The treatment takes a few hours, and once it's done, I'll remove all of that material, and again, I'll employ the acid-free foam core underneath the painting surface and slide the painting onto it. The PET film comes with, which is not a problem, and I'll transfer it over to the table where I will put it under weight. And you can see the blotter paper. The texture of the paint was impressed into it. After allowing the painting to rest under weights and felt for a couple of days, I'll remove all of that material, again, slide the painting onto the acid-free foam core, and transfer it over to the front half of the studio. Now, all of the hot table treatments for this painting have been done, and I have removed as much of that cracking and as many of those planar distortions as possible. This canvas was primed on the back, at least the majority of it, and so some of those cracks won't come down without some really invasive procedures that I'm not going to do. But any reduction is important, and that's why I did this treatment. Now, the next thing I want to do is address the instability of these seams. The canvas is lifting up in places, and even though it's been stitched three, four times, that canvas is brittle, and so too are those threads. And I want to make sure that the fidelity is there. And so I'm using some heat-activated adhesive, and I'm painting it on both sides of the seams where it's lifted up, or where there is extra canvas so that I can create a nice, good bond. I want to bond any of the canvas that's lifting to the canvas that's not. Now, this is just the first step. This all needs to dry and the solvent evaporate, and then later on, I will be able to come back and apply the heat and then bond it together. This may seem unnecessary, but it's one of those things that conservators often do as a precaution. Sometimes we just deal with the issues at hand, but sometimes we want to think ahead so that no more issues present, and this is one of those cases. While the painting is in my studio, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that it has a long life and that no issues manifest. To that end, I'm going to be cutting several pieces of silk organza to reinforce those seams. Now, I debated whether or not I was going to do a lining on this canvas. I could have certainly put a new, beautiful piece of Belgian linen on the back and addressed all of those seams in one fell swoop. The problem is that that would have covered up all of the construction of this canvas, which was really cool, and it tells a story about the artist. I don't know what that story is, but covering it up deprives any viewers of that history, and where possible, I want to preserve as much of that history as I can. And so, covering up all of those seams, all of that stitching, that patchwork of old canvases, seemed unnecessary, particularly when I had another solution in silk organza. Now, there are some edges on the painting, the tacking edges, that are way too weak, and in those cases, I will do a strip lining with Belgian linen. Now, for these seams, I have cut several strips of heat-activated film adhesive, and I'm going to lay them down and use a very small tacking iron, smaller than my regular iron, because I need to really conform this film to the surface, and this iron allows me to do that because there's a little bit more maneuverability. It's also a smaller area of heat applied to the canvas, which is always good. On a strip lining, because the majority of the heat is on the new canvas, and just a little bit on the original canvas, it's okay to use the iron, but here, where I'm working in the center of the canvas, using a small tacking iron is a safer approach. And I'll work to make sure that all of that adhesive is bonded, I'll take off the release layer, and now, I can lay down the silk organza across it, and start tacking that to the canvas. As I start, the adhesive melts, and it bonds this silk organza down to the original canvas, and this is now a structurally stable repair. The silk organza is incredibly strong, and it will add fidelity to the original seam. I'm using a piece of felt here, instead of my regular piece of wood on the weight, so that it conforms to the shape of that canvas. Remember, we have those seams that we need to deal with, and if I just used the flat weight with the wood on the back, we wouldn't get good pressure, and that could compromise this repair. And you can see, it really does conform, and all of those seams are now strong. There are some areas on the canvas where the texture and the irregularity didn't allow for the tacking iron to create a good bond, and in that case, I'm going to turn to my heat pen. And this allows me to blow superheated air onto the surface of the painting, and reactivate that adhesive. And then, using a silicone spatula, I can press it down into those little corners and nooks and crannies, and make sure there's really good contact, because contact is what is going to establish the structural support that's necessary to preserve these seams. Now, I did mention that in some spots, I was going to use a strip lining, and that's just to give the canvas some more fidelity on the edge. And so, all of this has been done to not only stabilize the painting, but to preserve the artist's handiwork. Not only on the front, but also on the back, because, well, I can, and because it's cool, and it's part of the story of this painting, and I want to preserve it for the future. Now, speaking of the future, next time, all the attention will be focused on the front of the painting, cleaning and retouching.