The National Art Gallery, Singapore

Angkor Wat

April 29th, 2010

5 days was what took me scrambling to my board of jumbled alphabets. It’s not all too easy to make sense of these letters and with good finger and eye coordination, allow a gateway of words that will eventually illuminate what paintings conservation encompasses. I am certain my section-mates had all started (if not, completed!) their elaborate blog entry on a conservation treatment for Yeh Chi Wei paintings and like most other writers, I still am undecided on how my opening should begin.

With a conservation conversation filled with jargon?
But that never happened.

Should I take a step by step approach on how the painting’s conservation was done?
Well, it would be conventional to write about what conservators do to use the singular noun ‘conservation’ to explain what is in fact, much more than a plural category.

So here I am, fingers locked, eyes fixed, and having thought about it for the longest time, I have decided.I want to start with a walnut.

Walnuts, every one and a thousand more are each distinctively different, yet all the same.
A brown walnut.
Now, visualize.
I will list names of brown that you may or may not be familiar with, and allow yourself to visually breakdown the myriad shades of the walnut – S L OW L Y. Layer by layer.

Burnt umber from Cyprus,
Burnt umber from Cyprus-B1,
Burnt umber from Cyprus-B2,
Raw Sienna from Italy,
Raw Sienna from England

Pick two, or even better, one, and decide if you should add Zinc white or Titanium white (or perhaps, none at all.) Then, attempt a dialogue with yourself and decide if you will refer to the color-wheel an arm’s length away or to follow your gut instinct.

In the simplest of minds, brown is always brown, and will always be. However, in what I have learnt in conservation, that has never been the case. Blindfolded, hold a walnut in your palm.

Instinctively, you will recognize it’s texture.What lies beneath the shell?

You know it, or rather, you believe you do. Seeing it once does not count as truth.Does it speak to you?

How can an inanimate object have a voice.What does it say?

I know – of all things – I chose to liken a painting to a walnut.

It arrived, 14th January of this very year.

In a visual second, it doesn’t take much of an art eye to identify of it as a painting. When placed amongst the rest, I can honestly say though, it had the most to say to me. In the dullest way, it was like most other paintings of its kind – Framed, with expressive brushstrokes covering the canvas face. And when placed in a gallery, you would probably catch yourself looking at it by taking a few steps back.

In the mad array of colors, ‘Angkor Wat’ had a certain sense of chaos in order – and I did not know where to look.

But since 8 weeks ago, I had to learn to look at paintings differently. No longer would the take-a-step-back approach work, no longer would how I was taught to see art still apply.
I must confront the painting – face to face.

First, the physical examination.

All paintings, and all artefacts alike, go through this. Just like how you would pick a fresh walnut from the grocery store. Look closely at it, observe the details

I lay it on the table, and lowered my body. In an attempt to be systematic, I started from the lower left and moved upwards. My eyes scanned through it – cracks, lifting paint, paint losses.

You raise the walnut up, against the light of the supermarket. Eyes squinting

The doors closed behind me and in pitch black darkness, I placed the lamp from a corner, and switched it on. I have never seen a painting in this light before (without pun intended.) In all its glory, shadows fell beautifully off the edge of its cracks. This is what I saw.

You believe you know what is inside the shell
I wanted to know better if I could see what my bare eyes couldn’t. It was quite common, the use of UV light to uncover and understand paintings better. Adjusting my eyes back to the darkness of the room, I turned the other lamp on. Certain paint pigments fluoresced, some had darker patches. Those that were darker told you that they had been overpainted or were painted at a later time. That was my first conversation with the painting.

You turn the walnut around, and look at it 360°
Unlike most paintings I have seen, this one was unusual. A wooden board replaced what would usually be the visible canvas of the verso. Sealed with brown tape, I knew it would take more than an easy feat for me to get to the painting.

With warm water and a flat spatula, I started. Reactivating the adhesive that separated me from the painting, and peeling away the tape – only to realise in dying anticipation – the frame was nailed onto the stretcher. This was not the first time. ‘Boats, Trengganu’ required that of me as well, but I had Mar’s assistance – picking 24 tiny nails with smaller pliers through a gap no larger than half a centimetre is as tedious as it sounds.

It pops open, a tiny crack from the top

‘Angkor Wat’ was out. I could see all of its details now – the details on the fabric. It made me panic a little when something unusual caught my eye – the sides. The paints on the tacking margin had not a visual link to what was on the top. I later learnt that it was quite a reoccurrence that artists of that time painted over their previous paintings. Desperately, I wanted to know what was beneath.

With a pen and paper, I wrote all I saw down.

And now, treatment.
Cracks, lifting paints, paint losses, torn canvas
Consolidation, infill, inpaint, canvas repair.
You pry the walnut open in halves now
It wasn’t too hard to decide on the treatment order. The painting had to be stabilized first before I could attempt any further. A natural fish glue, reversible with water, was decided on – isinglass. 1 day into my job had already illuminated how large a role the notion of reversibility plays in conservation.

Step 1: Consolidation

Space markers, heat, pressure, needles, time and fishes.

Consolidate only what was susceptible to further flaking.

Step 2: Infill

The conservation cliché alluding Shakespeare’s to be or not to be hovered my mind. To fill or not to fill, that is the question. I had little sense of the word ‘enough’. When is enough ever enough? When will I stop? Clearly, it would take me months to complete if I had chosen to fill all the losses with a ground. So, when shall I stop was key.
Remove visual distraction keeping in mind the artist’s intent

With binding chalk and a brush in my hand, I began.

Images of infill of paint losses

Step 3: Inpaint

The nut falls onto your palm
This is where I take you back to the beginning. And this is where you will see that it takes more than a formula. Empty spaces of what once were are now half-filled. I realise now it is where the viewer and the painting are at once disengaged. The painting is not completed, and at once I must use my instinct and eyes to bridge this link. And at once, I picked up my brush, spatula and beside the color pigments I sat, arriving to where the painting started for the first time.

Filling up the spaces

Step 4: Canvas Repair

The painting was almost complete. But like a torn sleeve of a shirt, the canvas bore a cut on its edge. With heat-sensitive adhesive, fabric and nimble fingers, Mar and I mended it with a patch from the back. And like a bandage to a wound, a thin sheet of conservation-grade plastic was what separated the canvas from and the heating spatula, lest the paint should melt.

For a month, I was passionately attached to this painting.

And without doubt, I had to move on to the next. Housing it back in its gold frame, I decided upon brackets to secure it. Black felt lining cushioned the frame rebate on which ‘Angkor Wat’ sat, with new hooks replacing its hanging wire.

& you place the nut into your mouth

So, here I sit, recollecting and revisiting my conservation experience with ‘Angkor Wat’. And with this, I’ve learnt – Conservation far surpasses what art and science can dutifully provide. It grabs you by your collar, taking you on an emotional journey where it engages in a space for reflection, challenges your gut instincts, and everything else you once thought you knew. Every painting wants to be read and I believe, illiteracy is far in where paintings conservation comes from.

Conservation carried out by: Diana Tay