The Fourth Miracle Part 2 of 4 - Taking Drastic Action

Well, this project turned from a big one to a BIG one, and that can feel overwhelming. But if you're armed with the right tools, success is within reach. And yeah, I'm talking about that massive website that you still need to build. With Squarespace, of course. But Squarespace makes it as easy as 1, 2, 3. First, go ahead to the website, and select the area in which you want to create a website. Then you can select the features that you'd like to have. Then you can choose from one of their pre-built, beautiful, mobile-friendly templates. And then you can start customizing. Change the colors, change the fonts, and make it feel your own. You can start filling it with your content, and expanding it if you need. By adding search engine optimization to find your customers, an e-commerce solution to sell to them, mailing list campaigns to reach them in their inbox, even online scheduling so they can meet you where you are, and online shipping to get them what they bought. Head over to squarespace.com slash Baumgartner for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code Baumgartner to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. After removing the facing, the challenge before me is cleaning this painting. And the reason it needs to be cleaned is because I need to re-face this painting. And right now, if I were to put the facing back on, or just leave the original facing, it would be bonded to the surface grime and the old varnish. And while that would be a good bond, those are just sitting on the surface of the paint layer. And I want the facing on the paint layer. Because if I am removing this canvas from this painting, the only thing that is going to be holding it together is the new facing. So that bond has to be perfect. To that end, I am starting to remove all of the grime and the varnish and the overpaint. And I'm using a solvent gel here to cut through the layers of varnish and overpaint. And you can see just how grimy, just how sloppy and muddy all of that is. And you can also see just how much damage is underneath. This painting went through the wringer. Not only was it heavily damaged, it was abused through probably multiple rounds of poor, ill-fated conservation attempts. And I say attempts because this is not how conservation is practiced. Large swaths of the painting are not simply overpainted with oil just because it is easy or efficient. So I will choose an area, like the hand here, I will paint on the solvent gel, which I have mixed to a strength that is appropriate for this painting. Sometimes we like it stronger, sometimes we like it weaker. And each time we use a solvent gel or a solvent mixture, it's tailored to the painting after multiple rounds of tests and examination. It is not a one-size-fits-all. We don't run out to the conservation store and buy varnish remover. We mix it in the studio per painting. And once that solvent gel has had some time to sit, I can come back with a rolled swab and start lifting off that gel, the old varnish, and the old overpainting. And while I am revealing more damage, this is one of those cases where it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. But trust me, it will get better. Trust me. It has to get better. Right? Even with all of the damage that's being revealed, it looks so much better, at least to my eyes. I would much rather have a damaged painting that I can put back together in a more sensitive, more accurate way than this, which is just bleh. That's the technical term for it, actually. So I will continue to remove all of this overpaint. And look, I've been doing this for a very, very, very long time, and I have seen just about everything there is to see. And I am never not surprised and shocked at how bad somebody can do when it comes to repairing a painting. And this is one of those cases. I feel bad for the person who thought that this was a good job. I feel bad for the person who paid for this job. But I feel good that John has trusted me to do the right job for this painting. And again, while it looks really bad now, and yeah, it looks really, really bad, we'll put it back together. That's what we do. We'll put our big boy pants on, and we'll get to work. So continuing cleaning. And actually, this is the part that's kind of exciting because I'm revealing that there are some really beautiful colors underneath here. There's some really beautiful brushwork, and there's some artistry that still remains, even though it's heavily damaged. I can work with what remains. And that's the goal, to take what remains, to honor the artist, to honor the image, and to honor the viewer. Because if the viewer isn't seeing what the artist wanted, they're not seeing the real art. They're seeing something else. A collaboration between a conservator and the artist. And that's really not what we want. We want the artist's vision to shine. So in an area like this, where the artist worked really hard to paint this ornamentation really beautifully, you can see the bottom section is just so grimy and dirty and sloppy and heavy-handed that some of the delicacy is missing. And they read completely differently. One reads clunky. The other reads delicate and beautiful. And this is one of those cases where, yeah, there's a big tear through the middle, but it's not so big that it would require repainting and glazing in the entire area. I mean, that's crazy. But I get it. If you are not a trained conservator who has worked hard over many years to have a restrained, controlled modality of working, it can be really easy to let something get away from you, to get ahead of your skis. And with retouching, it's really, really easy to add a little bit more. And then just a little bit more. And you know what? A little bit more here because it looks better. And then, yeah, let's make this area look better. And then all of a sudden, you're repainting the entire painting, glazing it all in where just a little bit of retouching could suffice. It happens. Even in the beginning of my career, I was vulnerable and susceptible to that way of working. But I trained myself to avoid it. And it took years and practice. But that's the difference between conservation and, well, not conservation. And in this case, whoever did this work was not a conservator. Maybe they had done some conservation or seen some conservation, but the materials used and the way they approached this painting was just not in accord with conservation. Not the standards that we have today, but also not the standards that have ever existed. Yes, materials have changed. But restraint, discipline, and control has always been the name of the game. And those we're missing from this work. But enough about what was. We need to start thinking about what is and what will be. And there is a lot of damage, no doubt. The tears, the holes, the punctures, the paint loss. But also areas where the paint has been skinned. Where during previous cleanings, they were too aggressive. Either with their solvents or their tools. And the topmost layer of the paint has been removed. And that will require some approach of retouching. Now the area that is most important, at least as John has identified it, is the vial of blood. But unfortunately, this whole area is a construction. Everything that we saw was added during the last repair attempt. And when we remove all of that overpainting, well yes, we see parts of the hand that are much nicer, much more beautifully executed. But you can see that a lot of it's missing. And not just in paint loss, but in actual canvas. It looks like this painting was trimmed down at some point. And that's another curveball that I'm gonna have to reckon with. Now once I have gotten all of the varnish and overpainting removed from the painting, I'm coming back with one of my neutral organic soaps. Because the painting still feels dirty, grimy. Like there's something on the paint layer that's not soluble with solvent. And this is all too common. That before retouching, before varnishing, the painting just wasn't cleaned adequately enough. And so what's sitting on the surface is dust, dirt, grime, just all sorts of stuff that settles on paintings. And to retouch on top of that, and then varnish on top of that, is just... that's just wrong. And you can see how dirty my swab is, just removing the grime that was trapped underneath the varnish and the overpainting. And I'm not mad at this because I can remove it. I'm actually quite happy because I'm getting an even brighter, even better version of what remains. So that means that when I go to put it back together, it's going to look even better. But you can see from before to after, the change is pretty remarkable. There was so much grime still on this painting, that just cleaning it off, kind of a basic approach of conservation, yields something that's so much brighter, so much cleaner, and actually more true to the artist's original intent. After I have cleaned the painting, removed all of the old varnish, and all of the overpainting, I can come back with a scalpel and I can start, I guess, excavating all of this fill-in material. And you can see that there is a lot. And a lot of it is on top of the original painting. This was a crude application, sloppy. Whenever we apply fill-in, we're just looking to fill in the areas of loss, not cover any of the original. And because the original was covered, I have to come back in and remove the old varnish and old grime that was covered by the fill-in material. And ultimately, when I remove all of this, it's not as bad as it seemed. You know, all of this fill-in material makes the loss look really, really large. But when we remove it and we clean it off, it shrinks. Surprise! If you overfill and make a larger area to retouch than is necessary, well, it is larger to retouch than necessary. So I'll continue on doing this, removing all of that old fill-in. And I am just so surprised at how much fill-in is on this painting. Yes, some of it is necessary, but some of it was just way over the top. And you can see just how much fill-in I'm removing from this painting. That's a ton! With the painting now cleaned and free of all that fill-in, I can face it again. And this is going to be critical because after I do the facing, well, I'm going to take off the canvas. And so this facing will be holding everything together. So once again, after heating up my adhesive, I will roll it directly on the painting this time. I really, really want to make sure there's a lot of adhesive and good contact between the face of the painting and this first layer of washi. Then I'll roll on another layer of adhesive on top of the washi, making sure it penetrates through. And again, there's enough adhesive. Once that's done, I will add a piece of canvas. And then I will put it on the hot table face down, turn on the hot table, heat it up, and turn the vacuum pressure on, effectively lining the face of the painting to the washi and the canvas. I really need to make sure that this paint layer is going to be held stable. So the washi plus the canvas will do that. Much like a regular lining would hold a painting together. But in this case, there's no original canvas left. So once the painting has come up to temperature, I can then turn it off, let it cool. Once it's cool, I can start to remove the painting from the hot table, taking off all this tape and this mylar. And then we can go to the front of the studio and do the most crazy, radical, extreme procedure that we can. Because we have to. Here, we can see the results of the facing and the inverse lining, so to speak. The painting is adhered to that washi and to that new piece of canvas. And all of the problems are laid bare. You can see all of the threadbare spots. You can see all of the areas of missing canvas. And you can see how the weave was just really deteriorated. And on the front, you can see the beautiful canvas that's just holding everything together. Now, removing this canvas from the paint layer is not as simple as it may sound. Yes, there are many ways we could do this. Just by scraping it off, by using a belt sander, by using a disc sander or something like that. But those are all way too aggressive. And instead of just destroying all of this canvas, I want to preserve some of it. I want to see if I can remove this canvas from the paint layer and keep it for posterity. And not just as a souvenir, but in case it ever needs to be analyzed in the future. We are effectively going to be losing most of this canvas. So if I can save a swatch that will allow researchers to see the weave, count the threads, even test the materials, well, then all is not lost. So I've applied some laponite to the canvas. And I'm hoping that it's going to soften up the sizing that's in this canvas and allow me to use a scalpel to peel it back. Now, of course, once that sizing is soft and has absorbed some of the moisture, it is not holding on to the ground layer as well as the paint is and the facing and the adhesives. Now, this is very slow going. You can see I'm moving a millimeter at a time. This is not a case where speed is necessary or even efficient. Here, it's about precision. So little by little, I'm just using a relatively dull scalpel blade here to kind of shovel or bulldoze the bond between the sizing in the canvas and the ground layer. And if I do it correctly, I can remove this canvas not only from the ground layer, but preserve the structure of this canvas. It is very slow going. I mentioned that once. I will mention it again here and probably a few dozen more times. This is probably the most tedious and slow process of scraping I have ever done. You can see I'm just barely making any ground with each pass, but that's what's necessary because if I want to save this canvas, I have to be careful and going slow is the way to ensure that. Now, I am incredibly lucky here that for some reason, the ground layer didn't penetrate through the canvas. If it had, this wouldn't be possible. That it's basically just sitting on the surface allows me to swell up that sizing and then peel back this canvas with the assistance of a scalpel. This is a rare case. More often than not, we usually can't separate the canvas from the ground. But for this painting, even though everything kind of went wrong in its life up until this point, everything is kind of going right from here on out. You can see that I've been able to remove a very large section of canvas. Larger than I thought, in fact. I was hoping for two inches square, maybe, but I've gotten a huge chunk. And you can see the impression of the canvas that's been left in that ground layer. You can also see that the canvas is full of old sizing and laponite. And that isn't what I want. So as I separate this section of canvas from the painting, I can then transport it over to a little piece of nylon release cloth. This is a tightly woven nylon that allows air and moisture to pass through it while really resisting sticking to anything. And I can lay this down into some deionized water. And I'm just going to let it sit. Of course, the sizing and the laponite are water soluble. And with a soft brush, I can start to remove them. Just gently breaking them up and removing them from the canvas weave. Once I've gotten as much out as I feel is really achievable, I don't want to soften this canvas up so much that it deteriorates. I can pick up the assembly and transport it over to some blotter paper where I'll press it and remove the excess water and sizing and laponite. I'm using a piece of silicized mylar on top so that it doesn't get stuck to the weights because it will if I don't use this. And then a couple of weights and we wait. While that's pressing, there's some work remaining on the area that I removed the canvas. There is a lot of old sizing and adhesive and fill-in and gunk and grime sitting in these voids. So by putting a little bit more laponite on and using a toothbrush, I can remove it. And you'll notice that not a single piece of paint was removed. Nothing was lost. That's because of the sizing and bonding it on the hot table. If I had just put the sizing on and not bonded it, it maybe would have held. But here I can ensure that it's rock solid. I can go over this multiple times with a toothbrush and a cotton ball to remove all of the residue. All of the sizing and leaving just the ground. Because that's really what I want to do here. I don't want any residues on the back of this painting. So I will scrape an area, then I will use the toothbrush, then I'll use the cotton ball, then the toothbrush, then the cotton ball, and so on and so forth until I have removed all traces of rabbit skin glue sizing and anything else that's on the ground. I want just the bare naked ground. And you can see that I am being a little bit more destructive with removing the rest of this canvas. It's a little bit faster and that's okay because we do have that large swatch that I've saved. So after the first pass, you can see that this is just the ground. There is nothing holding it together except the facing and the canvas. This is the paint layer. Bare. Naked. Vulnerable. If anything were to happen, this painting would crumble. Because paint film transfers are so rare, I felt it was really important that my assistant, Ali, get some time with this painting. She may never come across this treatment ever again. And if she does, well, having some experience on how it goes might be to her benefit and the paintings as well. Well, there it is. Painting with no canvas. So wait, what have we done here? So we have taken off all of the canvas. All of the structural support for this painting is gone. And what we are left with is the paint layer and then the ground layer. So what we're looking at now is the red oxide ground layer. This is effectively the painting with no canvas support. It is being held together by the facings that we did. And if we took these facings off, it would crumble into a bajillion little pieces. So this is the most vulnerable a painting could possibly be. There is nothing holding it together other than a piece of washi and a piece of canvas adhered to the front. Wow. Okay, so where are we going from here? Well, obviously, we have to put some sort of structural support on it because this isn't going to last. That can be canvas. That could be wood. It could be a composite. It could be metal. It could be plastic. It could be your best friend's favorite sweatshirt. It doesn't matter. We have to put something on the back here to carry the structural load. So we have to decide what we're going to do and then how we're going to do it. Okay, and have we decided those things? I have been ruminating on it for a long time and doing, again, more research. Yeah. But I finally come to what I think is going to be a satisfactory assembly and approach, and so that's what we need to figure out and then implement now. Well, what factors do you think we're thinking about when we are thinking about the materials? I mean, we're thinking about the material at hand. We have oil. We're thinking about where this painting is going to go, what life it's going to live, if it's traveling, if it's going to just be on a wall in a controlled museum. But I think this painting is going to have a little bit more of an exciting life, it sounds like, right? Yeah, we're also thinking about how the paint layer is going to interface with the structural support, and we're also thinking about reversibility. Yeah. Now, we can easily glue this painting to something rigid and know it will survive. But the thing that's missing from a lot of those is reversibility and accountability of future stresses. You know, we could take epoxy, glue this to a piece of plywood, and it would be stable for a gajillion years, but you could never take it off. Okay. Simply gluing it to something rigid, calling it a day, is easy, but that's why conservation is hard. We can't choose easy. So what it sounds like you're saying is that we need to allow for movement within the paint film layer, but we don't want any movement to be coming from the layer that is structural, like the canvas. Yes, we're talking about the movement of the paint film, because this paint film, even though it's several hundred years old and dry, cross-linked, oxidized, it does move with humidity and temperature changes. Very, very slightly, but that movement matters. We also have to account for whatever we adhere it to, because that also can move. Wood moves differently than canvas, moves differently than something like a plastic film or a composite. And so all of those things have to be factored. What we are trying to do is to create a structural conservation laminate that isolates the paint layer from environmental movement and stresses and strains caused by the structural support and impact and handling. And so that's where it gets complicated. We want the paint layer to be able to move as it needs to move. We don't want it to move because the structure is moving. And so one is movement that is required. The paint layer moves. One is movement imposed on the paint layer. And imposed movement is a stress that we don't want to have. So it sounds like it's going to be a piece of cake. Piece of cake. You already have a plan? I do have a plan. Like I said, I've been researching this for a long time, and I have all of our materials, almost all of our materials here. And we are going to be using one piece of canvas, one piece of flat-spun nylon gossamer, another piece of flat-spun nylon gossamer, a piece of PET film, a piece of adhesive film, another film layer, and then another adhesive. So we have three adhesives. One, two, three, four, five different pieces of material. And again, that's to isolate the paint layer's movement from its structural support. Yeah, the first adhesive and the first layers of nylon gossamer are going to support the paint film, give it some rigidity and stability, allow it to move as it needs. Then we're going to have an adhesive layer that's going to act as a uncoupling membrane or a strain relief layer that's going to allow this assembly to continue to move, but still be bonded to something rigid, which will prevent impacts, which will prevent strain and stresses. And then that will all be bonded to a carrier, something like a canvas. So what we have is a complex matrix that is a laminate that allows movement at the top and starts to restrict it as it goes further down, all while being rigid so that the assembly isn't vulnerable to flexing, to impact, to shock, to vibration, and can be undone because the adhesive that will be used on the first layer and laminate of the paint film to the nylon gossamers is a different adhesive than will be used to bond that assembly to the PET film to the canvas. And that's done specifically so that in the future, if ever is needed, the canvas and the PET film, which are the structural carriers, can be reversed and removed without taking off the structural support for the actual paint layer. That can be removed separately if need be. Okay. So the next person, if they wanted to remove this, could remove each layer? Yes. Independently? Independently. What we want to do is make sure that the next person can disassemble the laminate in a deliberate order without jeopardizing the layer underneath. And that sounds really easy, but it gets really complicated when you're dealing with multiple different adhesives that use different solvents or different heat set points. We are lucky that we have a lot of adhesives and so we can pick and choose ones that will meet our specific criteria. But this is all a plan. And while it works in my head, and it's worked on paper, and the math and the physics all make sense, we still have to do it. And that is where the money meets the road. All right. Well, let's get to it. All right, Allie. Get to it.