00:12
So, I think this is a good point, maybe, if you want it.
I can shift to sharing as a final note in our piece here, the idea of slow looking.
Do you want to make that? Alright.
So, to everyone listening, this idea that I think we're dancing around.
One, release your sort of expectations of going in.
You have to just engage. You have to give some type of engagement,
some type of chance to see what that art is.
Or you don't. But let's say you do.
Let's say you want to try and see if something is there.
Well, you have to actually look at it, right?
You have to spend time thinking about it.
You have to spend time just observing whatever's in front of you.
And this definitely touches on a concept which, at least now, is termed slow looking.
Which sounds both obvious and not really clear what that means.
But this word does literally mean looking at something, not just slowly,
but I would say with the intent to observe everything you can observe.
So, to keep looking at it, right?
Not to simply pass by, let's say, the painting and go,
yes, yellow flower.
And then continue walking to the next painting, right?
Yeah, so maybe this method, slow looking, is more for
once you identify something that tingles you,
then what do you want to do after that, right?
It can be worth taking this more intentional, conscientious approach to it.
I think I would argue from this position that
you can also use this to unlock something that you might be interested in.
Yes.
So, the stuff that I'm drawing from, and if anybody wants to look up slow looking,
one of the individuals who I know was doing this and had done a workshop on it
is Olivia Meehan.
And in part, it's mentioned that people spend like 8 to 20 seconds
looking at a piece of art.
Which sounds roughly on par with us describing how people move through a museum, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's kind of enough time to see if you might have an interest in it, right?
If you want to spend more time on it.
Yeah, it's a first survey.
Yeah, exactly. It's a first survey.
And I think if you can break that just by a little bit,
you might have more of an opportunity, right?
To sort of see something in the piece of art.
You also, to connect back to our other episode, the last episode,
I think it's less likely that you'll need a picture of it.
03:00
So I did a workshop with this and she brought in some art,
some, I forget the term that it was, but they were like engravings.
I think they were engravings, but like on pieces of parchment paper.
I can remember those paintings.
Like I can remember those ones.
And I sat there and just looked at them for like, I don't know how long it was, right?
And I don't have to remember the whole thing,
but I can remember the senses that I got from that.
And I didn't take a picture.
I didn't take a picture of anything during that.
And I can remember a whole lot of the sort of visual and auditory things
that we played with within that couple of hours.
Right, and I bet that if you happen to stumble upon the same artist's work
in some random art museum, I bet you can be like,
oh, it looks like that work that I saw before.
Yep, you might be able to draw those conclusions, right?
Or at the very least, you are now engaged, right?
Like you are now actually looking at it.
Now you're taking a step further than just recognizing that there is a painting.
You have one step more.
And that's why what I mean by, yes, I do take pictures of something
that moved me as a record to remind me,
but in no ways I'm relying on that image to re-experience
what I did in front of the artwork,
because it's never a replacement for that.
I would need to physically stand there and observe, take it all in.
And I think for what you're describing, this slow looking,
it's basically a more general term for what people in art history do,
which is called formal analysis.
Okay, yep.
It's not formal in a sense of formal and informal,
but more like a form analysis.
Like what is it?
So without any historical context or artistic individual's context,
without any knowledge of an artist or what era it was produced,
just looking at and describing what it even is, right?
Okay, yep.
And a lot of these like flowery lingos that art historians come up with
stems from this description, like this training.
They get drilled in this training of how to describe an artwork,
because if you can describe, I don't know,
like Mona Lisa in more exciting ways than people,
countless of people have ever done,
that makes you a good art historian.
06:01
I see, okay.
What it does is you pay attention to color, the size, the composition.
There are like few factors that people latch onto that you can do
without any prior knowledge about the artwork.
You just look at the artwork in front of you and take in, describe,
think about what it is and think about the sensation.
Like what kind of sensation does it bring to you?
Does it make you uneasy?
Does it make you feel like you're like diving into the painting?
What about it?
If it's unsettling, what about it is unsettling?
And things like that.
And you might notice the texture.
You might notice different elements of artworks.
But if you don't train to look at it in this way,
in this slow and intentional way, it's just what it is.
And honestly, knowing anything technical about artwork,
like brush strokes, composition, and things like that,
all of this are just like additional elements to how you can enrich
your formal analysis and slow-looking experience.
So the more you know, the more ways you know how to talk about it.
But really, you don't need all of that because if you can see things,
that's an information.
You're already getting an information of some kind.
It's just that most of the time, people don't really do that.
And maybe people only pay attention if there's a crowd of people
in front of them.
It's like, I guess this is an important artwork.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
But you know, crowdsourced information has its place.
But yeah, you might not find your own personal relevance
in that crowdsourced space.
Yeah, yeah.
So I think slow-looking really is a new word for formal analysis.
Yeah.
I mean, formal analysis only really applies to artwork.
But slow-looking, you can do that for anything.
I was going to say, yeah.
I think the formal analysis is a great thing.
I'm glad you added that in because it's not only done with artwork
because I imagine you could take formal analysis
and the way that you've described it
and you apply it to literary analysis.
It's just rhetorical analysis in general applied to a whole.
But this is stuff that I really appreciated and enjoyed
during my undergrad.
And that really resonates with me in that space.
And then this slow-looking, it's just another attempt,
attempt, another opportunity, maybe,
another way of presenting the idea of looking at something
09:02
and just taking the parts that you happen to see in front of you,
trying to absorb them, trying to think about them.
Yes.
And then you usually get more meaning out of it, right?
Whatever that might mean to you.
Yeah.
Don't go in.
Interpretation of the artwork happens after that, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you don't even have to interpret it.
Most of the time, in your first time looking at this new thing,
all you need to do is actually look, which most people don't, right?
Yeah.
And honestly, with so many artists,
I never get 100% of the information from the first look.
I would typically need to look at it over and over again
to really feel like I've seen everything.
Right.
And then think about what else.
Does this look like somebody else that I know?
What does it say when the person portrayed in a portrait
is looking a certain way?
Yeah.
And all these other interpretations come after that.
Right.
But, yeah, the first and foremost, you need to look at things.
Yeah, you have to look.
And that means just spending time with it,
just means taking in what's there,
almost taking things in without judgment,
just being like, what is it that is sitting in front of me?
And have I really captured it the way that I need?
Then you can interpret, right?
You can try to pull in your own stuff.
Exactly.
And for the most part, who the fuck am I to say
what art is better than the other?
I don't know shit, you know?
Yeah.
And honestly, the first thing I can do to any artist
when I look is to look, right?
If they caught my attention in a certain way,
they deserve my attention, more intentional attention.
Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I try to give it a fair shot.
And maybe that's it.
Maybe that interaction with that artwork is just that,
and that's it, and I go off and go be attracted
to some other parts of the museum.
Or I can keep that in a part of my brain
and then maybe look up more things about the artist
or what era they painted or made this artwork.
And if you know the historical context,
it might also make it more interesting, right?
I can't believe that he painted something like this
when everyone else was painting Marys and Jesuses.
And that's so cool, right?
And he painted John.
12:00
He was over here painting John the carpenter.
He had a thing for this guy.
Yeah, or like, oh wow, he painted intentionally ugly Jesus.
Yeah.
You know?
They're not all ugly because they were just painted
with human adult faces.
Medieval paintings, medieval religious paintings
had its own aesthetics.
That's true.
And when I look at it, they do look creepy.
That's a nice way to put it.
All of the Jesus photos, not photos, Jesus paintings,
he looks immensely unimpressed.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't blame him.
Based on the context, I'd be pretty unimpressed.
I mean, you know, I'm sure being a baby in medieval times
was not fun.
Yeah, I mean, it's like, wow, all right, this sucks.
Like, they didn't know how to make a cozy place for a baby.
No.
How about some straw?
And honestly, I'm diverging again,
but there's a really interesting transition
in how artists are painting babies and toddlers
across historical time.
Yeah.
Basically, there's a clear division around, like,
17th, 18th century, where they finally recognize
that kids or babies are a little different from adults.
Until then, they just thought of them as mini adults.
And that's why they, like, have these, like,
creepily, you know, salient look.
Like, they don't have, like, the baby's innocence
of not knowing what's going on in the world.
Like, they look like they have experienced
50 years of their lives, but like in a baby's form.
This is what happens when you don't look.
Exactly.
Look at the babies.
Collectively, people realized that babies are a thing.
Oh, man.
Did you know that babies look so much different
than you or I?
Like, what type of conversation is that to be had?
No, but genuinely, it's a thing.
It's a thing.
Okay, fine.
So, you know, not just us viewers,
but artists also needed to look carefully.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's an important part of the process, I think.
Yeah.
No, but I do think, I like that you shared with me
about slow looking.
We'll put some sort of link, I guess, to the show notes.
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how we'll, yeah.
Oh, we can, yeah.
We'll, like, link something back to Olivia Meehan.
Yeah, Meehan, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Meehan, yeah.
And, yeah, we'll do something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love talking about this because I feel like
15:00
even for me, 12 museums in a few days were a lot.
But, like, the reason why I don't really regret it
is not because I managed to see everything
that they had to offer,
but because I was able to walk away
with, like, handful of artworks that are now, like, my favorite
and it will, like, you know, stay in my brain space somehow
and learned a new thing about my already favorites as well.
So.
Nice.
What an absolutely wonderful time you seem to have had.
So, that's great.
Indeed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And everybody can take away from this.
Just give up and go and do something in a museum.
Give up, but also look.
Yeah, give up, but also look.
But also look.
Oh, man, that's going to be,
that's definitely the file name for this.
Give up and look.
Okay, okay.
All right.
All right.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
