Last week I enjoyed a long-awaited trip to the Met. I was so happy to finally be going back. It was already a few years since my last visit. I haven’t been on vacation since last summer but a trip to the Met is a little tiny bit like a vacation.
I wanted to do an exercise I’d read about years ago, spending at least twenty minutes just looking at one painting instead of (or in addition to) skimming through gallery after gallery. I wandered around to find a painting for this exercise. I saw the right one from a distance through a series of doorways — the big blue sky caught my eye and I knew a painting of that scale would be easy to look at for so long (and it had a bench in front of it).
It was Young Ladies of the Village by Gustave Courbet. I read the name afterwards; I think namelessness helps the art percolate in your right brain. As the minutes slid by, I could feel my breath slowing way down. I could feel the sunshine on my face, hear the lowing of the cows, feel the grass against at my ankles. I could feel myself running and running through the grass, past the painting’s horizon and disappearing from view. I didn’t have much to say to the figures in the painting but that didn’t seem to be a problem. I didn’t time myself, I just had a sense of how long 20 minutes would be and when I checked at the end I was just about right (it’s a very long time).
So this is something to try the next time you go to an art museum (perhaps this is a reason to go to an art museum in the first place)!
I had kind of a similar feeling recently when I saw this painting in the brooklyn museum. I want to get it as a puzzle because I think it’s a picture I could stare at for a long time.
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/1558
Wow! Love it, thanks for sharing.