Capitol's art treasures restored in Culver studio

Evening Outlook - January 4, 1982

By Nellie Henderson

Culver City - Spanish priests scroll in the cool shadow of Mission Santa Barbara while semi-naked Indians bathe in a muted blue bay. Others stand on the banks in brush-stroke grass, waving toward the glowing amber hills in the distance. In flat blocks of dim colors, this vision of California's past was frozen in the oils of San Francisco artist Arthur Mathews when commissioned by state in 1910. The three-panel scene is one of four triptychs by Matthews lining the capitol building rotunda, where soot, light and age have conspired to dry and crack, fading the color and obscuring the detail. Although grimy and yellowed, the 12 individual paintings re valued at more than $100,000 each and stand nearly eight-by-nine feet in size. And they created an imposing effect even when lying on the floor or leaning against a warehouse wall. They were in the Culver City studio of art conservator Nathan Zakheim, whose mission was to rescue six of the scenes in time for unveiling and re-dedication ceremonies Tuesday in Sacramento. With a restless eye and warm baritone voice, Zakheim criss-crossed the bright room shepherding the flock of art students as they worked to meet their deadline. He told one to be more careful, and sent another for more brushes. Zakheim won the restoration job in a national competition, and says he and his team worked 17 hour days sine July. Actually, "restoration" is the wrong word, he says. His task was not to restore the works to their original condition, but rather to conserve what is there. He has not repainted the scenes, but instead recovered lost detail and color. His army spent two months cleaning the murals with a special poultice designed to absorb the filth without harming the paint. Then the canvas was infused with wax to strengthen it, and mounted on curved pieces of honeycombed aluminum. The final step was to revive the colors with a thick layer of clear varnish. As if wiping the mist of a window pane, or switching on a light within the canvas, Zakheim quickly painted a square of varnish on one corner and pointed proudly to the surface, "See, it will be brilliant." Although art restoration is a highly refined science, Zakheim says he is drawn into his profession rather than formal training. His 86-year-old father Bernard is an active artist trained in Europe, where he learned all the skill of color grinding, paint mixing and canvas preparation. His mother Phyliss is an art history professor. Sitting on his father's knee, he read art books rather than fairy tales as a small child, and said he just absorbed much of their knowledge. But he rebelled against art as a profession, leaving his native Sebastopol, California, to become a folk singer and guitar teacher in Santa Barbara. He studies music, psychology and English at Berkeley before leaving school to "study independently, and fish in Alaska." He discovered his talents when the University of California in San Francisco planned to raze a building, thereby destroying two of his father's frescoes. With no previous experience, he and his brother saved the works by pioneering a technique for removing a mural, intact, from a wall. He said he knew that he had to work in art, but also knew he lacked the temperament to be an artist. "I can't stare for 10 hours at a piece of stretched canvas," he said. He described artists as "crusaders with their own shape of cross to bear...I deal in the world of people. We are all walking around in 3-D sculpture, changing it and improving it. I have no time to condemn it to canvas." And he finds special satisfaction in art conservation. "I know I've helped Rembrandt come out, be seen again as he wanted to be, with all of the dignity of age, and with none of the indecencies."