Ways of Seeing: Art and Attention

A practicum in art and attention.

Illustration from Erbario, via the Public Domain Review

Dear Friends,

I’m trying out something new this week. Here is the first installment of “Ways of Seeing,” a series of inspirations and practical exercises for deepening attention and engaging with art. I’ll be interspersing these exercises between my longer posts. Let me know what you think!

To start us off, here’s a method of looking excerpted from my book, The Uses of Art. I hope you have a chance to try it out! If you do, post your results and responses in the comments.

—Sal

Practicum

So, you find yourself standing in front of a work of art; what do you do?

I’ve come to believe that a person can make something happen between themselves and virtually any work. To approach a new piece, there are a few simple principles I follow.

First, I try not to judge the work, not to worry if it is good or bad or great.

Second, I try to focus directly on what I see or experience, whether I know anything about the work or the artist or not.

Third, I expect that the process will need some time.

These are the basic ingredients: your own direct, personal experience without judgment or expectation, and time. This kind of experiencing implies a slightly peculiar kind of art-going—you might visit a museum or exhibition and see only one thing.

As a practical matter, if you are going to experiment with this, try to give any work at least twenty or thirty minutes.

Begin with simple looking (listening, smelling, feeling).

Focus on the work, but let your own self be part of your awareness as well. As with meditation, don’t worry about being distracted—simply return your attention to the work when you notice that it has wandered away. If the time seems long you can give yourself perceptual tasks: count the colors or figures or shapes, find the darkest and light- est places on the work, divide the work into quadrants and make sure you travel through each one. Invent or borrow methods.

It can be helpful to take a break midway, to leave and return refreshed.

Before you are done, ask yourself, and ask the work, what have you to say to each other, what could you mean to each other?

You might take a work of art to be a kind of oracle, as if you were reading tea leaves at the bottom of a cup, or watching birds cross the sky. You might look for keys and resonances between specific aspects of the work and your momentary, feeling self. The connection you have with a work may go on for years, circling and returning; your changing relationships to works of art can be indices of your changing self.

The key to entangling yourself with works of art, making something of them, is simply to believe that you can.

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The title Ways of Seeing is an homage to the continuing inspiration of the BBC TV series and book by John Berger.

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Today’s post is an excerpt from my book, The Uses of Art. Further adventures and new ways of seeing can be found there.

Artist Sal Randolph’s THE USES OF ART is a memoir of transformative encounters with works of art, inviting readers into new methods of looking that are both liberating and emboldening.

Dazzlingly original, ferociously intelligent.
— Michael Cunningham

A joyful, dazzling treasure-box of a book.
— Bonnie Friedman

Here’s a guide, to waking up, over and over again.
— Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara