documentary about the restorers of modern art what so have to deal with the strangest materials we need one is what's in everything from sculptures made from excels to work made from elephant excrement at his studio in los angeles they stay tuned for that if you can so now on behalf of the whole team thanks so much for watching. it's all happening good job with. your link to news from africa the world your link to exception the stories and discussions can you and will come to their views after doing program tonight from one journey from one uses easy to our website d w to whom smart africa joined us on facebook t.w. africa.

from giant rats made of polyester. to lashings of synthetic resin. the big name contemporary artists are radical purveyors of pushing back the boundaries of convention. berry early on i was your return also we're not encumber awards new motor or dirt. how do you deal with unstable materials. i'm not talking to christian about how to conserve my work primarily i'm talking about how i'm making it. today the entire art world faces a huge challenge in how to preserve contemporary masterpieces many of the un orthodox materials accused are not designed to last forever. german conservator christian shi'ite a man is the go to man in this field. his new your. studio deals with many of the

most important works of our time. leading galleries multimillionaire collectors and many of the world's top living artists all seek his help. christian chinaman opened his new york studio in 2002 but his career started in the german city of hamburg his 1st restoration studio was on the flight and an island surrounded by canals in a beautiful old building. on november 9th 1989 the same day the berlin wall came down a huge new exhibition space open in hama. the dash to holland became a leading center for contemporary art. that's just not only we have these 2 halls in hamburg that were dedicated to large scale exhibitions of contemporary art and art restorers found themselves facing new demands like how can i conserve

a loaf of bread that's part of an exhibition what do i do when i need candy that always needs to look original even 300 years from now and what we did not always didn't let on yahoo and. christiane was the right man at the right time with his natural curiosity and enough excited on old techniques and ways of thinking. because there was one tragic mishap involving a washbasin by a hole but. the child evidently thought it was a real sink and wanted to swing on the edge of it so it ended up broken and christiane was called in he went to go back studio in new york and i think that was his 1st foot in the door to the new york art world's. majok a quince to vote tory but my work at the top holland in hamburg brought me into contact with a range of artists it was very inspiring and these artists would ask me questions that no one in hamburg had ever asked before. like how do i conserve bananas.

i found it really interesting. so through dr holland i got to know a lot of artists and the wider art scene i mean i remember going along the street in hamburg one day and getting a call from david. and he said we need someone like you in new york. do you fancy coming to america discerning just now i mean i was about. is that really going after an obviously it's wonderful to visit all the art studios here in new york and to be involved in the production of these works of the research for them and ultimately conserving them to. do. but. christian chinaman loves getting on his bike and writing to his studio in chelsea but these days he's often traveling the globe advising artists during the creative process or seeking to rescue a piece that's been damaged. you know they can start generally artworks come to our

studio just before they're about to change hands. so we have to be very discreet because obviously no collector or auction house wants to see their works in a restoration studio in a month so the studios in. these days art is often produced in a very short space of time but conserving it is painstaking work that requires a lot of devotion. and works with a team of highly specialized conservators. it's a really amazing place to be work comes here to the studio was not just a monetary value but it's also bought and emotional value as far as monetary value we try to remain at arm's length as much as possible because for a conservator to do their work properly it doesn't matter if the work is from a junkyard or if it's worth $10000000.00 you still have to execute. the same sort of treatment. today

a work by on vogue american artist way gotten has arrived at the studio. he creates his large scale works using inkjet printing. many are displayed in art museums. it came from germany and the great was never opened apparently and then this happened to fall on the head of. the 5 in terms. of the painting looks pretty severe to me someone inside the crate i can fix it and then i. feel all these flashes are not part of the yeah it's the. it's mostly in the right. now so we're on the top. was an unstable climate or so so we'd make some test get. times because. there's also this

misconception that things come here only if they're broken and that's not the case often things come here just for initial import are things come here to be cleaned or you know just to be freshen up which isn't necessarily. a dead end you know so it's a one stop shop here. we do it up here it is it's like no i've done this drawing that illustrates the path taken by an artwork from the artist's studio to the museum so. it includes the individual stops which usually involve a freelance conservator at some stage. the work is born in the artist's studio. many contemporary works comprise experiments with untested materials. the artwork then leaves the studio. for the 1st time it's now in the hands of people outside the studio presenting a high risk. at this stage changes can still be made. the photo for

a catalogue then documents its original condition. whichever gallery puts the work on the market decides its future fate. it might find a permanent home in the house of a collector but often artworks of bought as an investment and spend their lives in storage. and basel switzerland combined storage with display for art experts. if the work gets purchased by a museum the museums and restores take care of it. if an accident at any stage causes irreparable damage the work and up an insurance company storehouse ending its life. the. stations that an artwork passes through from artist studio to museum are a source of danger but also of joy for the artwork some artists say their works get better treatment than they do. for the

museum of modern art in new york the ephemeral nature of many contemporary art works is a major challenge. it's thrown up new questions for the museum's chief curator for painting and sculpture and. whole new phenomenon over these last couple of decades which christian represents absolutely of close collaboration in the creation of the artwork many artists really are consulting with conservators before or during their making work. and in the olden days that would not have been true. christian chinaman is a frequent visitor to los angeles an important center for art. today he'll be working for paul mccarthy his task to conserve desert dust on a sculpture by the american coast pop artist. mccarthy rose to fame through his

provocative performance art. the i have a not so i 1st met mccarthy in 1903 during the post-human exhibition in hamburg in the dive to holland i'm amazed at the creations that he and his sizeable team come up with the most is team mom. this is paul mccartney's version of a pirate ship made and here he's created a traumatized version of disney's 7 dwarves. they have a somewhat demented look as they stared back at their observers. this culture references westerns again he distorts the myths of american movie making. mccarthy's team numbers up to 40 people and includes sculptors engineers and carpenters who turn his visions into reality here

a group of experts are working on a silicon replica of mccarthy's own body. will use the technology part of that motion picture industry and also theme parks all this kind of stuff it really functions well the people in vol. i have sympathy and interest in art. what. is some degree it's it has to do with obstructing the normality or flipping the form an expression about the absurdity of a big 1st goods. one of the pieces or inches from my film that i may live cast and cast for the solar panel and then put skeletons when i'm so. can move and we use them in the

film as a sort of film doubles for certain actions and especially action was involved amputation in that process we filmed in the desert and dust gets all over 'd. all over or more fake blood the question then began to be as objects to sell in columns could last platinum silicone the theoretical a should have a really indefinite life but the dirt would get in the dirt in the dos. and became like do i try and preserve us. if as all we had said sylvie mun just as you can conserve man surfaces on paintings we're trying here to conserve matte surfaces on sculptures and there are ways of doing that. and here i know the whole thing reminds me of eve klein paintings which often have very powdery surfaces.

koby and it's here here we're trying out a medical nebulizer. in this case we're putting in sturgeon glue dissolved in water . the that would be vaporized in the air and then very slowly settle on the grains of dust and link them with each other so that they don't immediately fall off and you might even be able to touch them and it was the 1st conservator i ever really approached and he was a conservator there was interest a lot of the issues that were being brought up by contemporary art of digital road controls the boy is in flux or so. the things are meant crowd materials that were being used 'd. in a way come out of that tradition to. learn

. to speak. to the other. that's not moves. right that's almost a black. hole . and the sand. will. be a little. pretty. soon. our. next christian chinaman has to

brooklyn to visit up and coming artist ryan sullivan. for the 1st time he's going to be on hand as sullivan creates a new artwork allowing him to study how the materials behave during the process. ok we usually just go do the get the moves ready and i'll put it into a purse that will take it from there. ryan sullivan turned to him and to get a better understanding of the chemical reactions involved in his paintings. he's left a number of works to dry overnight. using paint brushes he applied resin mixed with color pigments into silicon molds. every morning we take them out of the molds and flip them over and so that's the 1st time that we see the face of the painting. i used to hold the big is the rez

is toxic. or when i come in it's silent and when i start working yes the machine start the fans the machines come on and i don't think it's. intentional. thing that i batted but may be subconsciously these things become part of. the head space. as my work seems when. you spoke of a calm and goal of monks painters in the late sixty's to the

relevance of painting and the power of painting despite the fact there's been a lot of criticism about whether painting is still a valid medium to use. this . it's a tactic trip. so you directed it but then it did seem something like oh so little yeah that trips they all but there's a link on. their live and some of the silicone and that they said so so i i must preserve electricity what is there in the beginning of count i say they do that eating up you know they move around a little bit but it's almost like my theory being that something about that that is puppets of it's coming out. 'd

when work such as those by sullivan are transported special attention has to be paid to the materials they contain. the crows your company is a specialist in this area and like shot in the studio it's based in the new york art district of chelsea. most accidents occur during transport because of the size of the works there are enormous value and the delicate materials involved transporting them is a major operation. on one of the people that goes out on the trucks and 1st here and takes artworks installs the tags the condition reports that we meet with clients and problems all the difficult things out there and that come up with trying to move something really valuable and difficult to handle. many contemporary art welch to. show gold look they want $52.00 majority of their calls for international travel but they sometimes front fits in even the launcher

trucks that we use so we often look to other industries to learn lessons whether it's an extreme trade should look to hell not so move some of the larger items around whether it's. full lives or whether it's full of rockets. i don't study sculpture but i do photography and performance based on. my vocation is to be an artist you know for now and just to create a crozier for of people or artists because then they already have the experience with handling work. and once these objects give parents away into their boxes i always kind of wonder when one would want to see them do. a gallery shows the artwork in perfect condition and ideal surroundings. in order for that to work the artist in the gallery have to

trust each other. the divots gallery which operates on 3 continents represents british artist chris ofili. he was the 1st black artist to win the prestigious turner prize. ofili became famous for using elephant dung and his paintings shine him in has been advising him for years on how to work with this organic material. feelings exhibition paradise lost takes visitors on a journey through lost innocence alienation and desire. a little bit of a new direction in the work and in terms of black and white power. they seem very abstract however you can't really enter the cage so we're looking from the outside in we have these beautiful murals that are behind us but they somehow mirror some of the imagery that we see within the sounds and therefore individual works and ultimately will probably make their way to my walls and.

to the actual explosion of the art market has made conservators and particular christian increasingly needed as a conservator is in demand now all over the world and so it is. now working with the number of collectors who really want him to have a look at anything they buy before they actually make a final commitment and he maintains advises them on storage and transport and also more philosophical intellectual aspects related to artists intention. you can. see this this is a watercolor by chris ofili that he gave to me. and. it's very nicely frame from the back with a dedication. of mine thanks christiane on who continue to

support. what i perceive to have been doctors i basically travelled all over the world visiting various collectors to stabilize their pictures because everywhere there was elephant dung that was slowly coming away from the layer of paint and causing breaches. oh here it was a couple easier the pictures are propped up against the wall standing on elephant dung that has been soaked in resin. it's a good thing is. this isn't going to send for chris it's important that it's not just any elephant dung but specifically from elephants in london zoo. and once when he was here you go down the names of the elephants that he collaborates with as it were. long. money. and of course that

creates a personal link with this dung. chris doesn't see it as excrement at all. but as an important means of orientation for nomads in the desert prefigures. material for no martin and to this is also the mind bit for those it's also an important building material for nomads and it's used for making a fire too much. in a way he's almost like a fashion country doctor who makes house calls he likes to touch the object is not afraid of the object i've noticed that when he is shown something that for which you know we we need his opinion help touch it he's not going to focus finger on it but he wants almost like someone a good medical examiner will will touch and and really feel the patient. in her work strange fruit named after the song by billie holiday installation

artist zoe leonard explores the fleeting nature of life following the tradition of vanita still life paintings in the early ninety's she scooped out the flesh of $300.00 pieces of fruit and then sew them back together with needle and thread. listen to me all you know by these are the original banana skins that she stitched back together. and this is an off the work was inspired by her friend david voight norwich who had died of aids. and then she heard that we're able to conserve food so she got in contact. we did all kinds of tests and after 2 years of correspondence she decided to just leave it instead. informed christian of her decision in a letter. as for the fruit i did sleep on it and i reached a decision i'm very pleased about it i decided that the fruit should be left to

disintegrate slowly. i thought of many other thing about saving the skin after the fruit is gone decorating death. that there is something pathetic and something beautiful in our need to preserve. private art collectors also faced the question of what to do about perishable materials. until krauss and her husband are collectors of contemporary art she doesn't seek expert advice when buying her work preferring to follow her own intuition instead. she says her artworks are like members of the family. this is nicole eyes in men where i love about this piece is. the artist's studio

into our apartment issues that are difficult to deal with as a collector i mean the wife the tube of paint goes through the hole in the floor lots of organic materials and things that over time will definitely. it's challenges we have a lot of things in our collection that are definitely major materials that are not . conservation happy christian and i have really bonded every 3 years over things that are difficult we're going to walk into the living room and i'm referring to this from is my garbage trim all the artwork is made with detritus so things that have been thrown away and reused by the artist there are problem children and and i just heard of referred to the earth whose children.

are temperamental just like little kids who are. now one to another possible step in the process the shallow end basel switzerland. run by the headstock in des moines architecture firm it has a unique concept it's a storage place for art but here the works are not stowed away in boxes they're put on display in rooms offering the ideal climate conditions. this allows experts to study the originals and observe any changes. or so not just the show naga is an open storage space for arts unlike other storage options the art here is not packed away but unpacks one problem that a lot of museums face is having to lock away many of their works. the advantage here is that you can constantly work with the collection even if it's not being made accessible to the public.

this is a mom a graphic store room for matthew barney barney works with a lot of new materials so enabling the works here to be studied intensively and checked regularly represents huge progress. at least 6 often matthew barney is often inspired by materials that are intelligent or that have certain abilities that makes it really interesting for the conservator so i think he's a real master of the linguistics of materials used. in. the the darling of the new york art scene plays the leading role in his famous film project the cream master cycle. it's a mixed media project involving a suite of 5 feature length films with related sculptures photographs and drawings

. is a fitting feel naked because i think he produced about 10 copies of the film series . everyone who buys the films gets a glass showcase which i think is wonderful a showcase with this culture and this d.v.d. . is this one is awkward plaster each cream master has a different material as the protagonist. so the protagonist is not a human being but immaterial. to d.v.d. this is the d.v.d. case for cream master to order and here you see the artificial honeycomb made of wax and. you can see there are some darker things and a collector asked recently whether it ought to be cleaned. then i had lunch with matthew and he said oh yes i remember we put nutmeg in there to simulate the pollen

collected by the bees and bean soup in. duchamp evaded the history of modern art away from some kind of insistence of the role of the artists own hands in the making of the object still today there's somehow a premium put on something coming from the 2 hands of the artist and this is very very very old fashioned at this point you can have the artist studios. which really don't need to even be anything because the artist could be on his or her laptop on a bus and then you have also artist studios that are full of rows and rows of workers as if it were a bank on their computers figuring out sketches diagramming looking up things on e bay so there is no one artist's studio.

i know it was always one of my dreams to be able to work on pop art so i was very happy to be asked to work with james rosenquist and his the state stage. rosenquist was one of the great protagonists of the pop art movement his widow mini thompson is now responsible for the many works he left behind works dominated by the themes of advertising and the american dream. we have a lovely team that works together and try it we try to imagine what jim would want to do as far as exhibition selling more and. storing work and everything so. i don't think we can actually be his voice but the next best thing which would be some you know somebody who cares about the work and really tries to imagine what he would do if you were in our

situation so. it's. is that that's not an easy role. meenie thompson pays a visit to what used to be her husband's favorite diner. the walls are adorned with a number of rosenquist paintings in tribute to the great artist. in 2017 shadowman studio prepared a large selection of rosenquist paintings for a retrospective in germany. morocco penya was charged with cleaning the works the. without making them look new again so as to retain the sense of history. i haven't seen this beautiful glowing stay just coming through so this edge here is not yet cleaned and you see the finger marks and the abrasion of the different her nose and. and the clean this side. and overshadowed by.

the opposing conditions at the moment is that the nice thing about all these words is that you still see the history if you didn't if educate the history it would have lost aura of this from the seventies and we all know different pieces of information so it's great when we all get together or talk to every writer down there yes. which is they were important to that would be a great thing we haven't forgotten that you know. you. know jim would love to see them. right now. and looking so good. you know those just you know if you know. we've been talking to you yes. i read that. accidents can be extremely expensive especially if the work is

damaged beyond repair. but then a vajra is an art expert and legal consultant. if a piece of art gets damaged she liaises between the collector and the insurance company. she works closely with christian chinaman and his team. today she's coming to the studio to assess the way guyton work that was damaged. one of the things that is very difficult in art market is it's not fun. carol so you have to look at multiple markets it's kind of like bit korean actually it's being traded and there's a black market which is kind of like the private dark matter so are collectors trading it amongst themselves there's no records there's the dealer and so we work with the dealers and talk with the dealers and trying to figure out especially if it's an iconic work you know there's this irrational kind of element like what

could this work be worth so it's very abstract and then there's a kind of transactional element what's happening at auction every day and globally and you have to combine all of that data i am allies and most importantly look at the work right before it was damaged and the condition of the work right before it was damaged so that's that's one element and that's one discussion and that is totally a fiduciary responsibility as it is static one is more about you know what does it represent and what have we lost in terms are made our retail culture and our history and the 3rd is really about the artist to talk about whether it should be considered a total loss or not and over here you can see 5 finger marks. ok then over here you have this has a different sheen with it i think someone cheated it probably was this looked like a war and cloth. and regulated you can see this pattern of saying what happened is

that moisture was trapped in wrapping the painting in a plastic wrapping and must have just you know because it's patterned actually all the way are the way down you know such a shame that yes ok it's an awesome penis in amazing pain because this is really one of the breakout 2000 either a this and it documents the beginning. of his work and this and that there are in that maybe a horse has been. long line of monaco blacks unfortunately this farm really is the death of the playground so i guess they can get a condition report from you later with all the detail yes it's tragic it's a tragic death it's like watching a fatal car accident and so after a total loss you know the artists they vary every artist has a different approach they have a different working process some artists are you know everything they want to have

and preserve and so they take the death very very very hard and there's a long mourning period and there's a long discussion and other artists who may work more prolifically or federally they may be. more open to it and then there's a kind of 3rd artist who is like the suicide artist who you know. there are all the in the collectors they don't think that damage is a big issue but the artist is ready is going to kill their own their own object. christian chinaman maintains close links with many of the artists he works with. the late karalee schneeman was one of them. he would travel to upstate new york every 2 months to visit her. she led the way for an entire generation of female performance artists and yet only achieved global fame herself late in life.

we filmed him visiting shimon to discuss preparations for an exhibition. he brought a few delicacies from manhattan for the 2 of them to share over a leisurely chat. karalee schneeman struggled with the fact that once her work was sold it wasn't clear what would happen to it. many of her works were highly personal and radical experimenting with the issue of the female body in 2017 she received the golden lion at the venice be in. sally for her life's work that same year the museum of modern art in new york presented the 1st comprehensive retrospective of her work spanning 6 decades and so she needed chinaman's help. you know when you come into the studio is that i can museum oh yeah yeah is that is i going to use arning being sort of oh i have a big problem for you waiting in the big studio. and this problem one

is the big favor is the same kind of photographs it's 7 feet long and now they wanted in the museum at p s 4. 0 yeah there's still that very soon so we'll look at that today and they're very excited that you can give me some advice . maybe we can fix it. i think you can fix it but really not much time what will you please use you know the work is somehow separate from the appreciation that's coming from the world the people who take the work they just i it. and suddenly all my early most significant work is gone. and then what do they do with it we don't know i put it in storage could be you know now they live there that i don't know is it mostly museums. no mixed

private people some of them donated to me do you know rehab or is not locked away or for some investment in the future and actually throw the switch and you'll see them go up and down. and then give it a minute it warms up. and said plug in. yeah. i think sometimes through the way they're not stiff and so it's very very they i think i should just. take. it so they don't die they just. happen. in her performance piece interior scroll karalee schneeman stood naked on a table with dark paint on her face and body and slowly to

a narrow strip of paper from her vagina. it was just go over the image over extracting the text from my vagina as a source of into your knowledge. male does not make himself honorable he always oka straight something for nude women. to accrue to his sexual dynamic and so my intention was that i would never have any participant do something for a work of mine that i wouldn't do myself so i had to try everything on myself and i had to be within it to take several 100 going to need to take the energy to take the. surprise of what it would be.

one of the reasons that all this has been happening at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century is that we don't have these myths of forever and these myths of immortality and so why does the artwork need to be somehow outside of that cycle of birth and death that's why the work that christian and his colleagues to touch is a philosophical questions that are at the root of why artists make car and why people come to museums to see it they've been off the park we're often asked whether we work for the collector the artist or the insurance companies. and our answer is always the same. we're there for the art itself ready

ready ready. the artist. or the oscar winning director carr you know. her films go straight to viewers' heart because she shows the world through children's eyes could not find joy come and sing on society not to children it's great fun in. the spotlight on telly nearly. any interview. 30 minutes w. . for more.

on the show going to. save you. walk over. to the real work. christmas time.

this is g w news that lies the problem as prime minister is false to apologize for vacationing in hawaii all parts of his country thousands of firefighters are struggling to contain catastrophic places across several states to sydney for the latest also coming up hong kong police cracked down on assisted rally activists.