The Brawler - Round 3 of 3

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. Of all of the tens of thousands of paintings I have seen and worked on, from landscapes to still lifes, abstraction to narrative, there is one that keeps bringing me back, one that speaks to me on a deep visceral level, and that is portraiture. Though she is an unknown sitter, an untitled painting, and an artist lost to time, and even though the painting is very discolored, has surface issues, and has been poorly conserved in the past, one glance tells us that there is something here worth fighting for. From the delicacy of the lace and her ribbons, the precision of her earring, and of course, her gaze out at the artist and the viewer, this is a special painting. Certainly, it will need attention to remove the old surface grime and varnish, to undo the ill-fated attempts at conservation from the past, to address the surface so that we don't see the defects, and to correct all of what we know to be hidden that we will have to discover during the conservation process. These are the types of paintings that draw us in, make us wonder who she was, why her portrait was painted, what the dynamic between her and the artist was. These are the questions that we ask when we look at a portrait. These are the questions that prompt us to tell stories about paintings, about the artist, about the sitter, about their relationship, and about who she was, and why this portrait was created. And as we take a look, and we gaze into her eyes, she begs, come hither. Creating something that captures and holds somebody's attention is what it's all about for an artist. But if nobody ever sees it, does the magic really exist? With Squarespace, an artist can take control of exposing the world to their artwork. Through a simple, easy, and fast process, you can create and launch a website in minutes. And not just a simple one, one that is fully featured, that is mobile-friendly and works everywhere, one that can expand as your needs change. Whether it's a gallery, a contact form, an e-commerce solution, you name it, Squarespace has it built in. And if building and maintaining a website seems scary, well, Squarespace has that covered too, with tutorials, videos, online forums, and real-life tech support to help you if and when you need. 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. Because this painting has been lined in the past, and because we will have to remove that lining to address the surface cracking and other deflections that were not corrected by the lining, we need to face the painting. The facing with Washi Kozo, or Kozo Washi, they're both the same thing, is essential to not only protect the painting from handling, but in case there is any deflection or deformation during the removal process that would otherwise stress the paint layer and cause it to detach from the canvas. If that were to happen, the facing will hold it in place until it can be repaired. Using a fish gelatin glue, this paper is bonded to the surface of the painting and allowed to dry. Though this paper is thin, the mulberry is an incredibly strong fiber and gives it tons of fidelity, making this an ideal material for the facing. It is thin, it is pliable, yet very strong. The fish gelatin penetrates through the thin paper, adheres it to the surface of the painting, and then, as it dries and we say goodbye to our lovely lady, we have a protected and faced painting. After allowing the facing to dry for several days, the painting can be removed from the stretcher. First, I'll trim off the excess paper because it is going to get in the way, and it is easier to handle the painting and work on it with all of this excess removed. And then, while I have my knife out, I'm going to simply cut this painting from the support. Now, I know this seems crazy, but this painting has no tacking edges. They were removed during the last conservation, and so I am merely cutting through the lining canvas, which will be removed and replaced. And so, instead of spending the time now pulling out all of these rusted tacks, I can do that later while the painting is receiving a passive treatment, thus making my time more efficiently used. There is tons of grime, dust, and dirt behind the stretcher bar, and I'm going to brush off all of the stuff that is really stuck, and then I'll come back with a vacuum and clean up not only the stretcher bar, the canvas, but myself as well. And now I can start thinking about removing this canvas. I'll start in one corner and peel it up just a little bit to see how well bonded it is to the original. And in this case, it looks like, though it is bonded, I can remove it dry. Removing a canvas dry is always better than removing it wet, because it limits the amount of moisture that the painting is subject to. And anytime we introduce moisture to a canvas, we get expansion, and then contraction as it dries. And those forces can conspire to do damage not only to the canvas, but to the paint layer as well, as it is not flexible, and during those expansions and contractions, it can crack and become detached from the canvas. In this case, I'm able to peel back the canvas from the glue layer in relative ease. But with the glue layer now exposed, I have to remove it. This must be done wet. This lining adhesive was rabbit skin glue, which is a hygroscopic material, meaning that it will absorb moisture when exposed. And so by using a gelled water, I can allow this glue to saturate, swell, and become soft. Once it's done so, I can come back with a scalpel blade that I have dulled before the process, so to ensure that it does not cut or slice the canvas, and just scrape this glue away. This rabbit skin glue lining was very popular in historic conservation, but is very rarely used today, because we have better materials. That said, this lining was at one point a good lining, but over time it has failed. It has become brittle, and when it's become brittle, it has cracked. And that's why we have those surface deflections. Once I have removed one square of the rabbit skin glue, I will paint on another square. But because this glue is so thick, I have to paint on that gelled water onto the first square, and allow it to sit for a few more minutes, and come back and remove more of the glue. I've changed the way that I'm holding the scalpel blade, because I'm now down to the canvas, and so gliding across it perpendicularly to the weave allows me to lift off all of that remaining rabbit skin glue, without running the risk of gouging or damaging the underlying canvas. By adding a little bit more water, and using a stiff bristle brush that's been trimmed down, I can come back and really clean up this canvas, and remove all of the residues. Once all those residues have been removed, I'll place a acid-free cotton blotter paper down, and apply a weight, to make sure that as it dries, the canvas doesn't deform. And then, I move on to the next square. And I'll do this across the entire painting, until all of the rabbit skin glue has been removed. After all of the glue has been removed, and the canvas pressed, I can then begin removing the facing. Sometimes I will leave the facing on the painting until a later step, but in this case, I'm going to remove it now, because I have confidence that the paint layer did not distort, or detach from the canvas. By applying a little bit of warm water to the surface, and allowing it to penetrate through the paper, and to the fish gelatin, the fish gelatin will swell and become soft, and then I can begin peeling back this paper. You can see, even though this paper is wet, it is still very strong. And this is why we use it. Occasionally, some bits of One of the side benefits of using this facing technique, is that some of the surface grime is removed. Now, once I have removed this facing, I can begin removing some of that paper tape that was applied to the edges. Sometimes framers, or dealers, or conservators in the past would wrap the tacking edges in a paper tape, and this needs to come off, because no part of the painting should be covered by tape. This is water-based, and so the application of a little bit more gelled water, and the use of a scalpel, will allow me to remove all of this residue. The next step of the structural treatments for this painting takes place on the hot table. With the canvas slightly dampened, and resting atop a release layer, and atop a cotton blotter paper, covered by a sheet of mylar, and wrapped with cotton webbing, that will allow me to extract the air, I can create an envelope. I can turn on the hot table, warm it up to the set temperature, extract the air, and allow the work to happen passively. This will allow me to relax the canvas, and remove distortions, as well as bring that cracking and lifting paint layer down. Though this painting wasn't exhibiting any signs of significant flaking or other structural instability, once we removed the lining, we found that the canvas weave had become loosened over time, as often is the case with the application of a water-based glue. And so, in this case, we're doing an adhesive impregnation and a lining. It is a two-for-one. This adhesive will penetrate through the canvas, up through any voids, and then, when it's heated up and lined to a new piece of canvas, it will make sure not only that the painting has more structural stability by way of the new canvas, but that any areas of flaking, or any areas that might become detached in the future but haven't yet, are bonded back down via the adhesive. To prepare the canvas for lining, I will use the stretcher as a template, cut out a piece that is big enough with some excess, and do the same with the adhesive film, though this time I'm cutting it out a little bit tighter, because I don't want a lot of excess. I'm going to inspect the canvas for any slubs or defects, and if I find any, I'm going to cut them off, because these could impress on the painting during the lining process on the hot table, because of the heat and pressure. Once the canvas is ready, I can then prepare it for the lining. And this involves removing the adhesive film from its release layer, laying it down on the canvas, centered, of course, and then ironing it down. The ironing is mostly just to keep it from moving, and as I apply the heat, I follow the iron with a cool weight to make sure that there is no distortion. Once it's all down, I can remove the other layer of release film, I can place the canvas onto this adhesive film, and then I can transfer this canvas over to the hot table to allow it to do the work. Once at the hot table, I will lay the canvas down. I will cover it with a release film so that none of the adhesive sticks to the plastic mylar. I will, once again, wrap the perimeter with the cotton webbing to allow me to extract the air. I will place my through-bag connectors, which allow me to extract that air through the mylar envelope. I'll tape it down. I will add the hoses. I'll turn on the heat. And I will turn on the vacuum and allow the pump to draw out the air and create even pressure across the entire plane of the painting. The lining process takes a few hours to bring the table up to temperature and then to bring it down to room temperature. And once it's down to room temperature, I can turn off the heat and I can pull the painting from this envelope. This film will be discarded. The release film will be saved for future use. But now the painting is ready to go back into the front half of the studio. With all of the structural work complete, our attention can now be focused on the image itself, cleaning and removing the old varnish. Now, this is always a truly exciting part of any conservation process because what we see, well, this is not the painting. But before I go ahead and clean it, I'm going to tape off the edges because they're clean and I'd like to keep them clean. And the cleaning process can often be messy. I'm going to roll a cotton swab on a little stick and this just allows me to have a little bit more precision and to see what I'm doing instead of using a cotton ball where my hand would be in the way. Using a solvent mixture that I tested for efficacy and safety on this painting earlier when it came into the studio and I examined it, I can start to remove that mold varnish. Natural resin varnishes discolor over time with exposure to air and UV light by way of ambient light or sunlight. They turn yellow, they turn gray, they become milky or cracked. And in this case, removing them with solvent is not only safe and effective, but really quite dramatic. Using the swab, I will work in small controlled areas, applying the solvent to the painting, allowing the varnish to swell and then lifting it off with that swab. And just with that first couple of passes, we can see that this painting is going to be quite different. It was already a great painting, but seeing some of these colors that have been hidden for so long by this yellow varnish, well, it's really, really exciting. So now that the painting has been fully cleaned, I can remove all of this tape and revel in the fact that the canvas is clean, just how I wanted it. It's now time to return this painting to its stretcher. And while the painting was being aligned, I took that time to clean up the stretcher, to remove all of those rusted tacks, to wipe off all the glue and the paper tape, and generally just check it to make sure that it was sound. Now, stretching a painting can be a very intimidating process if you haven't done it tens of thousands of times, but it is relatively simple. And for this painting, I will start by tacking each side in the center and making sure it's taut so that we have the center of the painting tight. Then I can go from the center out to the edges and add tension as I need to make sure that there is no distortion or slack. Once I've done this, I will trim off all of this excess canvas and I will tidy up the back. And this doesn't necessarily add any structural fidelity, though maybe one could argue that keeping this extra canvas and adding some tacks does help. It's mostly to make the painting look clean and nice and to demonstrate that a lot of care went into this conservation. To that end, I will fold and tuck these corners tightly and neatly so that they don't fray. A couple more tacks and they will be all set. The original keys were mostly present. I did have to cut one or two new ones. And in order to keep them present, I'm going to drill a hole in all of them. And this will allow me to bind these keys to the stretcher with a little fishing line. But first I have to put them into the mortises to which they go and key the stretcher out. This allows me to add a little bit of tension post-stretching in an even manner so that I don't have to over-tension the painting when I'm stretching it. The fishing line goes through each hole. I will then grab it and spin it around the tack that I put into the back of the stretcher. And once it's secure, I'll nail that tack down, trim off the excess, and ride off into the sunset. There were a couple of areas of paint loss on this painting. Nothing major. This painting was in relatively good condition. But where there is loss, we need to fill it in with something. Because we simply cannot retouch on raw canvas. And even if we could, the textural difference, the divot, would be visible once we varnish the painting, and that wouldn't be good. Once the fill-in medium has dried, I can come back with my fingers and sand it lightly, or a swab with a little bit of water and remove the excess. I want to make sure that only the area where the paint has been lost is filled in with this putty. Nothing less, nothing more. Before the retouching, this painting is going to receive an initial coating of synthetic resin. And this will saturate the colors and make it easier for me to do the retouching. It also enables the final varnish to have a surface onto which to rest, and so that it doesn't get absorbed by the painting and fall in or become flat or blotchy or just uneven. This is just a way I can make sure that the work that I'm going to do from this point out has the best chance of looking the best and staying the best for the future. For the retouching, I'm going to be using conservation-specific paints that instead of using oil as a binder, use a synthetic resin that can be reconstituted in the future. It also doesn't deteriorate or yellow or change colors like oil. Another benefit is that my somewhat chaotic and messy-looking palette can also be reconstituted, and I can use these colors so that I don't have to start from scratch. It's a nice shortcut that speeds up the work. Now, of course, the areas of damage on this painting need to be retouched. Some of these little areas where paint was lost, these all need to be blended away. And I'm using this very, very small brush and just adding lots of little dots. I can't really paint this area in. That's not how retouching works. What I can do is add just enough paint to cover and camouflage this damage so that your eye doesn't see it, so that when you look at this painting, you just see the painting. Now, another thing that I have decided to do after talking to my client is retouch most of these cracks, at least in the skin. They are disruptive and distracting, and they flatten the image. You start to see just the cracks instead of the skin. And so I've decided to retouch them. Now, retouching cracks is difficult and time-consuming and tricky, and it makes me want to take a one-inch brush and glaze in the whole painting, but that is not how it's done. Each individual crack has to be retouched, delicately and precisely, filling in only the crack and nothing more. But when done correctly, even these small changes add up to really big impacts on the painting. As I go ahead and start retouching her face, take notice of how you can start to see her come through the painting as the cracks disappear. When these little lines that flatten the space and draw your attention away from her face start to disappear, what we can start to see is her, and we can start to wonder who she was. And of course, we can simply enjoy her gaze. With the retouching complete, it is now time to apply the final varnish. Again, a synthetic resin layer, this time ultraviolet stabilized and plasticized so that it doesn't deteriorate with exposure to light, and it will always remain flexible so that it doesn't crack and become brittle like natural resin varnishes. Applied with the brush evenly and then allowed to dry, this will give a unified and beautiful sheen to this painting that really doesn't need any more help at all. And there she is. After all of the work that was done, well, she just looks like herself. With that very heavy layer of yellowed varnish and grime removed, we can now finally see her and the delicacy with which she was painted, the beauty of her, and of course, the mastery of the artist, which is the whole point of a portrait. The relationship between the sitter and the artist, the sitter and the viewer, the artist and the viewer. These are things that make portraiture so compelling. These are the reasons why I keep coming back to portraits, even though I've seen thousands of them and often don't have the slightest clue who the sitter was. That almost doesn't matter. The beauty, the delicacy, and of course, the gaze, the personality of the sitter draw me in and allow a story to unfold. As she arrived in the studio, we knew she was beautiful. We knew that there was something here. But it wasn't until we started to clean her and see what she was going to look like that the painting really took on a life of its own. And cleaned and conserved, boy is she gorgeous. All of the work that I did under UV light, well, you can see how extensive and yet how controlled and precise the retouching was. Only those cracks were retouched. I didn't get to use that one-inch brush. And now, coming a little bit closer, allowing her to draw us in and to develop a relationship, an intimate moment of exploration. It really makes sense why maybe this painting should be titled, Come Hither.