The Fourth Miracle - Epilogue

Welcome to a very special epilogue video for the fourth miracle. Normally I do these on Patreon for my subscribers, but I figured since this was such a big, epic, sprawling project, and since there were so many questions, we'd make this for everybody. So thank you to the Patreons for the great questions, and thank you to all of you for watching. I have with me here my conservation assistant, Allie. You may recognize her from some of the videos. She's been in the background for quite a bit. She was an intern here two summers ago and then worked last summer and now is here full-time. So welcome Allie and thank you for tolerating and putting up with this. My Patreons have asked a whole bunch of really great questions and we're gonna jump right into them and then talk a little bit about the project and the studio. So ChemGeek had a great question. Was there a point where you were like quote what have I gotten myself into and how'd you work past that and what solution did it lead to I think the first moment I felt kind of uh-oh was when we opened the box yeah I had seen photos of this painting but they don't do it justice and then when we opened the box it was just kind of like oh man it was not good it was definitely not good and the painting we took it out of the box and we left it in the corner for a little while just to assess it and i think really take in how much work it was going to be and it was so much more work than we even thought in that moment yeah yeah i mean we knew we had to do it yeah we were already committed to the project uh to john and john uh to making the videos but it just definitely was kind of a stumble right out of the gates um but ultimately we are problem solvers that's what we do and we love this work so after that initial kind of like kick in the gut there's the like roll up your sleeves get to work yeah start doing the thing that we always do piece by piece right one step at a time don't get overwhelmed and just work through it yeah and so that's i think what we did was just kind of work through it iteratively yeah um i mean that didn't mean that we and i didn't feel overwhelmed at many points yeah during this project but I think one thing that I've learned in doing this is to just step back a little bit put the painting aside and then come back to it maybe the next day with a fresh set of eyes and usually that results in a calmer more level-headed approach going forward yeah Hugo asked a question when exactly along the restoration process did you accept the fact that you needed to do the paint film transfer I remember when I was talking with John and John we were talking about how bad the the texture in the canvas was right and i remember john said one of the johns said something and i don't know if it was caught in the video but i remember thinking oh no like is this a paint film transfer no no don't even put that put it out of your head don't even we're not going there but i think it was once we pulled off the linings yeah yeah i remember you were working on taking off the linings and then obviously i'm sure you guys already saw in the video but once those linings were off we were dealing with whatever fill-in material was stuck on the back and you were working on that and I was retouching something else and I just remember you going silent and thinking like oh gosh something has really gone wrong if I'm quiet yeah exactly yeah yeah and I think even then it was really like hard for you to come to the decision to do the paint film transfer? Yeah, I think that's probably when it really kind of hit me and the reality of it kind of started becoming a far-fetched thing and getting much closer. And I remember leaving the painting for like a couple days and coming back to it magically hoping that at night the pink baby in storage would come out and fix all the problems. But that's not how it works. And so I think I just needed that two or three weeks where I didn't do anything on the painting to kind of accept what was realistically gonna have to happen yeah um and I didn't want to I I tried to convince myself no I mean we talked through so many alternative options before yeah and just nothing was going to be suitable for this painting yeah I mean this was not my first choice this was not even my like second third tenth fifteen This was like when everything else had failed, it was just the acceptance that this is what we're going to have to do. Which brings us to the next question from Skeptabrarian. They asked, I was curious if you could expand on the controversy about the technique of removing the canvas from the painting, which is effectively called a paint film transfer. paint film transfers are part of conservation. They have been since the first conservator in the history of time. And for a long time in conservation, they were just one of the conservator's tools in their toolkit. Not your first, but it was there if you needed it. But then, at some point, it started to fall out of favor, and then it never recovered. And so it's a technique that modern conservation has kind of forgotten about. Some may say for better, and some may say for worse. I think that's a good debate that conservators could have. I think it probably fell out of favor in the 30s, probably for a couple of reasons. You know, the successful paint film transfers are done in the workshop and go back up into the museum or to the gallery of the client's home. Nobody knows. It's done. It's perfect. Right. You might have seen many. You might have seen paint film transfers. It's the failures that get the attention, like so many things in life. And they get an outsized, undue amount of attention and they corrupt everything else that may be good. So I think a series of public failures, I think by the Hermitage in Russia, really cast a light on this as a dangerous or reckless procedure that conservators were kind of throwing caution to the wind and getting too big for their britches. And then I think with the rise of kind of modern conservation and brandy, that conservation shifted and everything became important, all materials became important, and the role of the conservator was to be as restrained as possible, even in the face of impossible projects. yeah when you something like i think so i mean i think like most you know fields there are things that become popular and trendy and then become maybe overused or a crutch or a go-to solution for so many problems i think another example at least in conservation in like the 80s 90s and early 2000s was linings it was sort of like a go-to fix it all just line it and And it wasn't just, you know, small conservators like our studio, but even like the National Gallery. They were lining things that did not necessarily need to be lined. And now we've really pulled back. But unlike paint film transfers, we haven't eliminated that tool, which I think is a mistake. And it's a mistake that we have decided that paint film transfers can't be done ever because yeah, I mean, I don't know who who who decided it. I don't know I think you know conservation has benefited from advancements in technology and materials and science and study like every field yeah you know 200 years ago surgery was performed with whiskey and rusty saws yeah imagine if we had not evolved past that if we hadn't kept trying new things and using science and research and evolving we would still be doing surgery that way, which would be considered crazy. But for some reason, conservation writ large has kind of stopped investigating paint film transfers. And so we just don't have modern information about them. They kind of stop and then there's this huge gap of nothing. And I think maybe that's another reason why it's fallen out of favor. Because for a young conservator, maybe who's looking for a solution to an impossible problem, there aren't white papers, there aren't videos, there aren't documented cases. There's just kind of lore. And so... Well, and even if there were, it wouldn't be with the modern materials that we use today. Well, that's right. They'd be really historic. So it really wouldn't be even possible to use any written examples. Right. And then teachers aren't teaching this in conservation schools. Yeah. Maybe because they've never seen it themselves or heard of it or just don't have the resources to put together an adequate program about this. So it's this comprehensive, slow deterioration of knowledge base, and I think that, coupled with all the other things, is why paint film transfers aren't contemporarily considered part of the conservator's toolkit. Yeah. So Nuanced Musings asked, Hi, Julian. Hi. I believe you said you've performed this procedure a few times in your career. One, what did you learn from your previous work in this process that informed what you did in this case, or what did you learn this time that will inform your practice next time you need to do this procedure? I hope I never have to do this procedure again. Me too. But I have done this procedure, I think this is the third time I've done it, and I've been doing this for nearly 30 years. I had the fortune of witnessing and participating the first time with my father, who learned it from a master conservator in Switzerland who learned that from a master conservator. You know, this was wisdom that was passed down from conservator to conservator in workshops and ateliers and studios. And I think the first time I saw it, I was just kind of like gobsmacked. Like I didn't even understand what was happening. Right. And then I had a chance to do it by myself the summer that my father passed away and I felt completely overwhelmed and way over my skis, not having him there. But it worked, and then now this time. And each time, it's been different. The way he did it was radically different than the way I did it. We prepared a traditional canvas with sizing, with a ground, and then we used, Gee, I'd have to look back in notes to remember what adhesive we used. But effectively, it was a permanent paint film transfer. It wasn't designed to be reversible because at that time it wasn't really a thing to be considered it wasn't really a thing to be considered and also some of the adhesives that I used just didn't exist right you know 28 years ago yeah so now having come where I have and knowing what I know and the experience that I've got I thought we can make this stable but also reversible yeah which is why I chose to use multiple different materials and multiple different adhesives to make disassembly each layer possible without affecting the next layer. So I don't know what this will mean. I really hope I don't have to do this treatment again. It was very stressful. It was very difficult. But if in ten years I do, who knows what adhesives are gonna be available? Who knows what technologies are gonna be available? So I'm not gonna make any projections. I will just say that if I or we or you have to do this, we will assess what is available, what what the painting needs and how best to approach it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, just the same way that we approached this painting, we can never really say what... I mean, even in the same procedure, it might differ so much between one painting and the next because they don't need the same amount of work or whatever it might be. Yeah, everything is kind of custom tailored to the painting. What did it actually feel like to remove the canvas? You appear so calm and rational on camera about the research you did to determine this was the last resort but it had to be a stressful decision and then the execution for something that you might only do a few times in a career that had to feel super nerve-wracking this is a question from John um I think the nerve-wracking part came before yeah i agree and then once i started doing the work i was just locked into the work exactly um especially once we had already assessed what procedure would be best to removing the canvas it's just then about actually doing it and there's no more nerves or stress yeah you kind of deal with all that beforehand and then you get to the point you know it's kind of like being in a play yeah you freak out for weeks and weeks and then the curtain comes up and you just like just go do it you've got no choice like we're here focus and get through it yeah I will definitely say that on camera I was probably more composed because I knew I was on camera and there were a lot of colorful words thrown around during the process but yeah I don't think it was scary or nerve-wracking or anything it was just a technical procedure and one that was kind of no different than peeling up a lining or peeling off a facing. I was thinking the same thing like once once we decided to do it it just felt exactly like removing a lining. Yeah. Fry Guy asked a really interesting question that I'm not sure I have an answer for. How does this restoration process approach differ from what a conservation process approach would have been? I think that there's this false dichotomy in the conservation world of conservation and restoration, that one is better than the other, one is different than the other, and that they're not really kind of married together and points along the spectrum. Or that they can be separated right you they can't right how how are you going to adequately treat a painting if you are only going to stabilize it and be cautious about it uh and if you are going to remove bad work and reveal damage what do you do now you just leave it you've pulled the thread right so you're not going to restore it i don't know um i think this is something that maybe exists more in academia and places where people talk about things as opposed to doing things yeah I know that all the conservators that I've talked to and have worked with in the past don't really have this kind of false dichotomy of, it's just kind of, you know, we know what we need to do, we know what we can do, we know how to do it, so we just do it. Yeah. I mean, when it can be done. Yeah, obviously, right. You're certainly limited sometimes in materials and techniques and clients and situations, but yeah, so I'm not sure that I even, I guess that's my answer. um but it does bring up another question that uh oshra asked what is the essential painting you're trying to preserve not the nails not the varnish not the base canvas or the paint which is retouched what remains and this is the ship of Theseus right so if so much is lost or replaced when does the original stop being the original right and in this case we replaced this stretcher we replaced the nails and tacks yeah we removed the varnish remove the surface grime we removed the old fill-in the old retouching we removed the canvas to which the painting was bonded and we replaced all of those things because they had all failed yeah and they needed to be replaced yeah i guess the question is or the answer to the question is the artistic vision yeah i was gonna say the exact same thing what what the what we can best assess as the artist's true vision that's what we're really going to preserve yeah there are some artists who take the object as part of their art right the stretcher bars are part of it the tacks are part of it and in that case we would work to preserve all of that but in this case none of that was original those were all replaced the stretcher wasn't original the linings weren't original the nails weren't original the varnish wasn't original so we have no obligation to save that but in the case that those would be original we'd have to assess whether the artist whether those were just materials vehicles to to an end result or if they were integral in the artistic expression yeah that's the thing that we always have to think about and in those cases where those materials are critically important to the artistic expression they're part of the art and we save them yeah where they're not then have to assess whether they're best for the painting or if something better exists yes exactly okay seth glassman asks i imagine some projects must require so much attention and time that they're not financially feasible it must be very difficult to say it's not worth it have you encountered that luckily that's not my call yeah right yeah we don't have to make that no we tell tell the client what it what's possible what it's going to cost and then they get to make those decisions yeah but yes we have clients all the time who say well you know i only paid a hundred dollars for the painting i don't want to put a thousand dollars into it yeah okay it's fine i often tell them it's like buying a fixer upper house yeah if you if it's cheap on the front end it's going to be expensive on the back end yeah but if you buy you know if you buy a house for five grand you're probably gonna have to put a lot of grand into it but if you buy a house for 100 grand it maybe doesn't need as much work yeah um but even still i have seen clients with paintings that are worth six figures who didn't want to spend 500 to have it properly cared for i have seen clients with paintings that have zero value spend unreal sums of money because it means something to them yeah and so worth is this hard thing to answer yeah yeah and it's always something I think that discussing with a client is difficult because they tend to only think in a dollar amount or an authorship amount and sometimes that's not really how a painting can be worth something. Yeah, I think everybody has to figure out what worth means to them and then we can step in and help them. Yeah. Was this painting worth it? I think that's a question that John and John answered. I think it was worth it for them. Yeah. It was important for their community, for Little Italy, for their church, and for them personally. And I think that they were really happy with how this turned out. I hope so, after all the work. Oh my gosh. Now, I will say that the actual cost of this project was heavily offset by making the videos. And I don't know if they would have proceeded had they had to foot the entire cost of it. um but i think that's one thing that we are fortunate to be able to do in the studio because we have the videos we can you know afford to do projects that maybe wouldn't be affordable for clients yeah so i think that we're really lucky because of that so keep watching so that clients can do more yeah more videos um okay dwight brown asks is this sort of treatment paint film transfer considered a last resort i think we've answered yeah it absolutely absolutely a last resort in the same way that using a laser to clean a painting is the last resort it's a it's in our toolkit but it's never our first choice right right and that's because it's one so invasive and two so timely oh time consuming yeah right yeah okay we answered that okay eric borgen says i know we almost never see things go sideways in your videos but i've always wondered what happens when the worst case scenario actually hits we would never show that I'm just kidding I mean you've been here for a little while have we had any things go like really sideways no I mean I think before doing any treatment we really assess like what state the painting is in what it can really handle obviously you know it can't speak to us so we can only know so much through tests and right and intuition from your experience but i don't think i've ever seen anything go truly sideways i don't like yeah i mean it's not like we're just gonna recklessly take a solvent and then like oops painting's gone yeah no i guess much like surgery there's always a risk yeah you do as much as you can to control for those risks yeah so that you've eliminated the the low-hanging danger fruit yes and if something serious happens you are prepared for it yeah you you have tools ready you have techniques ready yeah so that if something goes starts to slip you can catch it at that first sign of things not going the way you want as opposed to the whole thing going and then hey you are looking up and going uh-oh that didn't work yeah that's not what i thought was gonna happen and for this painting weeks of research yeah i mean so much i i've read so many papers yeah um done so much research on adhesives on materials i have i'm much smarter for it but my god it was exhausting yeah um but all of that was done so that i fully understood the materials so that none of them all of a sudden went sideways yeah and also i think we spent weeks talking about this yeah really thinking yeah you me and then uh our my other intern who was here and my other part-time employee we had lots of kibitzing sessions where we just brainstormed yeah i mean i was thinking about it constantly to the point when i would go home i would talk about it with my husband and he's sort of thinking gosh i have no idea but well he's an engineer i mean maybe we should be in on the conversation yeah exactly um so i i think that that kind of approach of really obsessing over it at the front end is why we don't have things going sideways or or catastrophes yeah that's just kind of built into the way we work here and i think like constant re-evaluation during the process you know it's one thing that i've always learned from you is as you're doing something you can't be checked out you have to be tuned in and really thinking like oh is this going right is this what i want is this the goal that the client has asked for etc and not being absent-minded when we're doing a treatment even if it's a treatment we've done a thousand times yeah because that's when you get in trouble yeah there's a constant feedback loop yeah of what's happening to what we want to happen and just constantly checking in and that keeps us very focused and very aware of where we are and where things could go um okay Polly asks are there any procedures in conservation that you have heard of but haven't had to execute personally if so would you try if it's necessary well if I haven't heard of them then I don't know they exist exactly you know I don't know what I don't know uh if it's necessary then yes everything is on the table yeah I think that's one of the things that I have always maintain as a tenet of the way I operate. If it can affect positive change on the painting, if it is in the benefit of the artist and the artwork and the client, then I owe it to all of them to at least humor it, to try it, to explore it. And so I think in that respect, there is always a way that a procedure or material or technique can be modified to meet the ethical guidelines that we are held to yeah um maybe i'm just too stupid to know um you know but i think that's one of the things that's really exciting about the work that we do yeah um trying new things i think it's always in any situation where we're stumped or need a different answer than maybe what we would normally think we turn to you know what is something new what is something that we haven't thought of and really try to think of something that we maybe haven't heard of yeah so we don't know what we don't know but we always try we're game if it happens yeah and the last question is from Emma Rose she asks a question for Allie if that's okay it is okay uh what made you interested in restoration what's the most important thing you've learned from Julian so far um what made me interested in restoration uh i think your videos when i was just in high school you know i was very interested in pursuing something in the arts you know i like most high school students didn't really know what i wanted to do but i knew i had a talent um for artistic things um and i loved your videos not to make you feel old and then I studied fine arts for a little bit I decided that really wasn't for me and I didn't want to go down that path and switch to art history which I loved but I really didn't want to be in the academic space and I found conservation as like the perfect cross-section between those two and it was really always my dream and goal to work here with you which of course you've already said I got to intern here during my grad school and then come on as a full-time employee but I think the thing that I've learned that I feel is the most important is that there is no one solution and I think this project is the perfect example of that like even when something might not be your first choice it's still an option or even when something might not be an easy choice to make you know this wasn't an easy choice to make and we knew that there might be controversy making the choice to do a paint film transfer and yet we talked through everything and I really loved how anything I brought to the table we were able to discuss I was never dismissed as just the assistant or anything like that you know I really feel like we're a collaborative team and I love that I love that about this studio and that we really don't have limitations on if it's the right thing if it'll work for the painting and the client and the studio we do it yeah I think that's the most important thing to remember in conservation is there's no one answer and I think there I think that's a really salient point throughout just like life life that there is no singular right way to do anything yeah and um being curious and tenacious are the two most i think the two most uh valuable traits somebody can have you know being approaching every moment with an open mind and not being knocked down when adversity hits yeah and and being strong enough to push through and persevere i think with a healthy dose of curiosity and tenacity you can do pretty much anything yeah yeah so i think that just about wraps it up like i said this was a pretty epic project for us uh that hopefully we don't need to revisit hopefully we don't need to revisit uh i think john and john and uh the Italian American Podcasts and their church in Little Italy all benefited from this project. I think it was a really great way to touch a large community to show the power of art, the power of conservation. Thank you all for coming along on this wild ride. We have plenty of fun projects in store and hope to see you back for more of them. So take care.