How to view art:
1. Take
time
The
biggest challenge when visiting an art museum is to disengage from our
distracted selves. The pervasive, relentless, all-consuming power of time is
the enemy. If you are thinking about where you have to be next, what you have
left undone, what you could be doing instead of standing in front of art, there
is no hope that anything significant will happen. But to disengage from time
has become extraordinarily complicated. We are addicted to devices that remind
us of the presence of time, cellphones and watches among them, but cameras too,
because the camera has become a crutch to memory, and memory is our only
defense against the loss of time.
The
raging debate today about whether to allow the taking of pictures inside the
museum usually hinges on whether the act of photographing is intrusive or
disruptive to other visitors; more important, the act is fundamentally
disruptive to the photographer’s experience of art, which is always fleeting.
So leave all your devices behind. And never, ever make plans for what to do
later in a museum; if you overhear people making plans for supper, drinks or
when to relieve the baby sitter, give them a sharp, baleful look.
Some
practical advice: If you go an hour before closing time, you won’t have to
worry about what time it is. Just wait until the guards kick you out. Also: If
you have only an hour, visit only one room. Anything that makes you feel
rushed, or compelled to move quickly, will reengage you with the sense of
busy-ness that defines ordinary life. This is another reason that entrance fees
are so pernicious: They make visitors mentally “meter” the experience,
straining to get the most out of it, and thus re-inscribe it in the workaday world
where time is money, and money is everything.
(Monica Ramos/for The Washington Post)
2. Seek
silence
Always
avoid noise, because noise isn’t just distracting, it makes us hate other
people. If you’re thinking about the mind-numbing banality of the person next
to you, there’s little hope that you will be receptive to art. In a museum,
imagine that you have a magnetic repulsion to everyone else. Move toward empty
space. Indulge your misanthropy.
That’s
not always easy. Too many museums have become exceptionally noisy, and in some
cases that’s by design. When it comes to science and history museums, noise is
often equated with visitor engagement, a sign that people are enjoying the
experience. In art museums, noise isn’t just a question of bad manners but a
result of the celebrity status of certain artworks, such as the Mona Lisa,
which attracts vast and inevitably tumultuous throngs of visitors to the
Louvre. But any picture that attracts hordes of people has long since died, a
victim of its own renown, its aura dissipated, its meaning lost in heaps of platitudes
and cant. Say a prayer for its soul and move on.
Seek,
rather, some quiet corner of the museum full of things no one else seems to
care about. Art that is generally regarded as insipid (19th-century American
genre paintings) or hermetic (religious icons from the Byzantine world) is
likely to feel very lonely, and its loneliness will make it generous. It may be
poor, but it will offer you everything it has.
(Monica Ramos/for The Washington Post)
3. Study
up
One of
the most deceptive promises made by our stewards of culture over the past half
century is: You don’t need to know anything to enjoy art. This is true only in
the most limited sense. Yes, art can speak to us even in our ignorance. But
there’s a far more powerful truth: Our response to art is directly proportional
to our knowledge of it. In this sense, art is the opposite of popular
entertainment, which becomes more insipid with greater familiarity.
So study
up. Even 10 minutes on Wikipedia can help orient you and fundamentally
transform the experience. Better yet, read the old cranks of art history,
especially the ones who knew how to write and have now become unfashionable
(Kenneth Clark, Ernst Gombrich). When visiting special exhibitions, always read
the catalogue, or at least the main catalogue essay. If you can’t afford the
catalogue, read it in the gift shop.
Rules for
the gift shop: Never buy anything that isn’t a book; never “save time” for the
gift shop because this will make you think about time; never take children,
because they will associate art with commerce.
Many
museums have public education programs, including tours through the galleries
with trained docents. Always shadow a docent tour before joining one. If the
guide spends all his or her time asking questions rather than explaining art
and imparting knowledge, do not waste your time. These faux-Socratic dialogues
are premised on the fallacy that all opinions about art are equally valid and
that learning from authority is somehow oppressive. You wouldn’t learn to ski
from someone who professed indifference to form and technique, so don’t waste
your time with educators who indulge the time-wasting sham of endless questions
about what you are feeling and thinking.
(Monica Ramos/for The Washington Post)
4. Engage
memory
The
experience of art is ephemeral, and on one level we have to accept that. But
beyond the subjective experience, art is also something to be studied and
debated. Unfortunately, unlike most things we study and debate, art is
difficult to summarize and describe. Without a verbal description of what you
have seen, you may feel as if nothing happened during your visit. You may even
feel you can’t remember anything about it, as if it was just a wash of images
with nothing to hold on to.
But even
if the actual experience of art is difficult to retain and remember, the names
of the artists, the countries in which they worked, the years they lived and
were active, and a host of other things are easily committed to memory. Some
museum educators, who know these things, will tell you this kind of detail
doesn’t matter; they are lying. Always try to remember the name of and at least
one work by an artist whom you didn’t know before walking into the museum.
When
trying to remember individual art works, make an effort to give yourself a
verbal description of them. Perhaps write it in a notebook. The process of
giving a verbal description will make details of the work more tangible, and
will force you to look more deeply and confront your own entrenched blindness
toward art. If your description feels cliched, then go back again and again
until you have said something that seems more substantial. If all else fails,
simply commit the visual details of the work to memory, its subject matter, or
general color scheme, or surface texture. Turn away from the work and try to
remember it; turn back and check your mental image against the work itself.
This isn’t fun. In fact, it can be exhausting. That means you’re making
progress in the fight against oblivion.
(Monica Ramos/for The Washington Post)
5. Accept
contradiction
Art must
have some utopian ambition, must seek to make the world better, must engage
with injustice and misery; art has no other mission than to express visual
ideas in its own self-sufficient language. As one art lover supposedly said to
another: Monet, Manet, both are correct.
Entertainment
Alerts
Big
stories in the entertainment world as they break.
Susan
Sontag once argued “against interpretation” and in favor of a more immediate,
more sensual, more purely subjective response to art; but others argue, just as
validly, that art is part of culture and embodies a wide range of cultural
meanings and that our job is to ferret them out. Again, both are correct.
The
experience of art always enmires us in contradictions. I loathe figurative contemporary
art except when I don’t; ditto on abstraction. When looking at a painting, it’s
often useful to try believing two wildly contradictory things: That it is just
an object, and an everyday sort of object; and that it is a phenomenally
radical expression of human subjectivity. Both are correct.
Art is
inspiring and depressing, it excites and enervates us, it makes us more
generous and more selfish. A love-hate relationship with an artist, or a great
work of art, is often the most intense and lasting of all relationships. After
years of spending time in art museums, I’ve come to accept that I believe
wildly contradictory and incompatible things about art. The usual cliche about
this realization would be that by forcing us to confront contradiction, art
makes us more human. But never trust anyone who says that last part: “art makes
us more human.” That’s meaningless.
Rather,
by forcing us to confront contradiction, art makes us ridiculous, exposes our
pathetic attempts to make sense of experience, reveals the fault lines of our
incredibly faulty knowledge of ourselves and the world. It is nasty, dangerous
stuff, and not to be trifled with.
Some practical advice: If you feel better about
yourself when you leave a museum, you’re probably doing it all wrong.
Five Rules for (Kinda) Viewing Art
1. Take Time
… lots of it, because you’ll need it. The most important thing when visiting a museum is to see as much artwork as possible, since, let’s be honest, you don’t manage to go that often, do you? Yeah, didn’t think so.The best way to ensure that you see enough art is to set an Instagram quota for yourself for the day’s visit. Think about how many photos you posted on your last art outing and try to up the number by some reasonable amount, like 10. Bonus points if all the photos are selfies, but keep in mind that this might be difficult to achieve if you don’t have enough selfie experience. Maybe try starting with a selfie with every work in one specific gallery, for instance. Be aware of your strengths and limitations, and of those of your Insta followers. #awesome
In order to leave yourself enough time, line up at the entrance to the museum at least half an hour before opening time. Plan to spend the entire day with frequent breaks and trips to the various cafes and restaurants within the institution, since food is the new art anyway. Make sure to Instagram those meals, too — your warm goat cheese and toasted walnut salad alongside your favorite newly discovered Minimalist sculpture might make make for a slightly ironic but also intriguing visual comparison.
2. Bring a Friend
For art critics, the way to process art is through writing; for laypeople, it’s through talking. Bring a friend or a date to help you talk your way through whatever art you’re planning to see — conversation in front of a painting inevitably produces fresh insights. If you can’t find an equal, think about bringing a child, either your own or one borrowed from a friend. You’ll be amazed at what thoughtful art viewers kids can make.If that’s not an option either, visit alone but plan to be bold and make acquaintances (famous artworks are best for this: there’s always a crowd around the “Mona Lisa”). This has its advantages: strangers can offer perspectives you might never even dream up — plus, you never know what might happen. A long, involved, unbelievably romantic story of how you met your future spouse while seeing art will make for a great entry on your future wedding website.
3. Go with an Open Mind
And by that I mean really open. Some people say you have to read and learn about art to understand it, but that’s really only if you’re a critic or an academic. Everyone else (the lucky bastards) gets to just see and experience art, rather than having to think about it so hard. If you’ve looked at the work and still want to know more, read the wall label. If that’s not enough, you could consider a docent-led tour, definitely a good way to meet people and engage in conversation.But there are more interesting and original ways to open yourself up to art and commune with it. Try talking to the work, or moving around in front of it, letting your limbs lead you into a freeform improvisational dance. If you see a vibrant red and it inspires lust, run with it. Find a way to express the feelings the art stirs within you before, like everything else, they’re gone.
Later, when the museum’s about an hour from closing time, visit the gift shop. Try to find the mouse pad, calendar, umbrella, watch, or water bottle that most embodies your experience that day, and buy five of them: one for you, four to share with your closest friends who really get you.
4. Don’t Worry Much about Remembering Things
Back in the day before the internet, people had to remember any and everything they thought was worthwhile — texts, how to cook a chicken, their age, etc. Now that the digital blessings of computers and smartphones have been bestowed upon us, we’re able to free up that memory space for day-to-day minutiae, like whether or not we forgot to turn off the stove last night.The same applies to art: it used to be you had to remember the names of specific pieces and artists you like, but thankfully now it’s all just a Google Image search away! Instagram also comes into play here: the more photos of artworks you post, the fewer you’ll have to remember. This is also why it’s good to visit with a friend — if you can’t remember enough to get a solid Google/Google Image search going, just text them. Between the two of you, you might just be able to figure out who made that immersive installation filled with found trash, flickering lights, and taxidermy that you took selfies in and what it was called.
5. Seek Out Art that Fits Your World View
These days there’s so much art being made and shown, it can be hard to know where to start. I find it’s always good to seek out art that reflects your own ethos and approach to life. Art can be many things, but it’s probably most effective when it’s a mirror — either literal or figurative — reflecting yourself and your ideas back at you. If you’re into abstract art but find its politics hard to decipher, just look at the institution that’s showing it and you should get some answers.Some say art is meant to be beautiful; others argue it should seek to enlighten or enliven. It doesn’t really matter what camp you’re in as long as you’re in one. Seeing art is worthless until you walk away with four things: a story to share about your experience, an opinion about what it meant, a larger lesson to draw from it, and at least one Instagram. This is how you effectively view art in the age of social media.
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