How to Repair a Torn Painting

Video Transcript

"I'll show you in this segment how to repair a torn painting. Take a look at this beautiful painting, this beautiful work of art is from the nineteen twenties. From first glance as a connoisseur of art, and as a person who loves art, you really can't tell there's anything wrong with it. The only way to be in a museum and know if a painting has had any damage, is not to look at it from the front, because sometimes the front has been repaired so well that you can't tell. There are two ways to do it. Number one, you use a light, a blue light, and black light the painting and then what happens is you can tell if there's been any in painting done in the painting. If there's in painting that will show up. Almost like something fluorescent. The other which is what they don't want you to see for the most part, is the back of a painting. Because from the back of the painting you know if there's been any repairs and if the repairs have been done well. Obviously if from the front you've got no damage, you have no visible damage, the repair has been adequately. Let me give you an example. In this painting, there is a repair, but if you hadn't turn the painting around, you wouldn't have been able to see that this had been repaired. To get to do a repair, actually there's two, there's a smaller one here, you get a piece of canvas, you make sure that both sides of the canvas are flat and then you use a very strong adhesive glue to repair the canvas. And that's how you repair a painting, but again I stress don't do it yourself."