Category Archives: Blog

Viewing Art, Being Present

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From time to time, we post short articles from Slow Art Day hosts. The article below is by veteran Slow Art Day host, Paul Langton.

A rainy day. I am early for an appointment. An opportunity to go to a gallery for forty or fifty minutes, without expectations? I realise don’t actually know what is currently on at the gallery.

Fortunately I listen to my intuitive self, and a few moments later find myself in the Whitechapel Gallery, exploring Mel Bochner’s fascinating work. But, I become aware that his exhibition would need more time than I feel I can allow. I then go into a room with a single sculpture. A tree. Immediately fascinated I walk around the sculpture. I notice the materials used – gold leaf, bronze. I feel at home in the space and decide to spend some time in this room.

Spazio di Luce by Giuseppe Penone at the Whitechapel Gallery (image from the Whitechapel Gallery website – click the image to visit)

A well-placed bench allows for some slow art thinking. Who is this by? What is it doing here? I walk around, I sit down. I walk around again. I go and read the information about the sculpture. I ask the attendant if I can I touch it.

The exhibition is very peaceful. Occasionally people come in and I notice their reactions to the piece, yet I am pre-occupied by my own thoughts. I feel I am in the right place at the right time, as though I was meant to see this piece today. I love the way each time I view the tree it look different and I love the light further illuminating the gold leaf, shining light on this wintry day. I walk alongside it and see it from different angles. I don’t hug but I do touch.

The sculpture, I find out, is Spazio di Luce (Space of Light) by the Italian artist Giuseppe Penone and is a Bloomberg Commission, in the Whitechpael Gallery until September 2013. Space and light, they seem ideal words. It’s good to find out it will be here for a few months, and another visit will be possible. I realise I may have seen some of Penone’s work before as part of Arte Povera at Tate Modern, but I couldn’t be specific.

I have been thinking of trees in the last few weeks and the importance of trees – there was a fascinating discussion on the radio the previous month about trees with James Aldred and Mark Tully – and this sculpture adds an extra dimension to my current feelings and thoughts. I reflect on nature, art, myself, others, and art as part of life.

The light in the title becomes so appropriate as I leave the gallery, literally feeling lightened and uplifted. I then wonder on how something so beautiful and fascinating just appeared in my day without notice. In my head I thank the artist and the gallery, for being presented with and for being present, for some time, with this wonderful sculpture. Please visit if you can.

(If you are not able to visit a video of the artist talking about the work is on line: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/the-bloomberg-commission-giuseppe-penone-spazio-di-luce).

The Whitechapel Gallery is one of 160+ Slow Art Day venues for 2013. Click here to find out more or register.

– Paul Langton

Note: An earlier version of this piece first appeared in Paul’s blog: http://artsandmoresw4.wordpress.com    

MOCA Jacksonville Urges Patrons to Look Slowly

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The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, a new host for Slow Art Day 2013, is exploring the concept of slow looking in an exhibition SLOW: Marking Time in Photography and Film that runs through April 7, 2013. Exploring the work of seven internationally known artists- Eve Sussman, Kota Ezawa, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Chris McCaw, Idris Khan, James Nares and David Claerbout- the museum challenges visitors to engage with the works for an extended period of time.

The exhibition features work that explores topics of time and duration through the fields of photography, film and video. In an age of mass production and instant gratification, the works in SLOW compliment and challenge one another as they confront typical perceptions of photography and the time-based restraints of a work of art.

Artists such as Eve Sussman and Sam Taylor-Wood give life to paintings past. Sussman, in 89 Seconds at Alcazar, animates the famous painting by Diego Velasquez, giving the viewer a look into the life of the painting’s characters before and after the composition. Along the same lines, Taylor-Wood, in Still Life, explores the work of the 17th century Dutch paintings by filming the decay of fruit plates, altering the viewer’s perception of time.

Other iconic videos that speak to one another are that of James Nares and David Claerbout. Nares’ Street, is a video work in which passersby seem to be frozen in time as the viewer moves along in real time whereas Claerbout’s work explores the relationships between the still photograph and the moving image, forcing the two to co-exist in his large, video installations.

The exhibition SLOW, also showcases the work of artists who explore different processes in photography such as Idris Khan’s appropriative work that consist of multiple layers, created the illusion of extended gestures and moments in time.  And, yet, the viewer’s sense of time continues to be affected with Chris McCaw’s sun-etched photographs that track the sun and Kota Ezawa’s cut paper assemblages of iconic photographs.

Curated by MOCA Jacksonville director, Marcelle Polednik, Ph.D. SLOW is the museum’s landmark exhibition for 2013. Of the exhibition, Polednik says, “Time is not only the conceptual thread that binds all the works in the exhibition together, but also the real dimension that connects us to these explorations, providing we devote the seconds, minutes, or even hours to see them unfold. In taking the time to fully engage with these photographs, films and video works, we gain infinitely more than the minutes we spend.”

If you are in the Jacksonville area, be sure to stop by the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville to see this exhibition for yourself. And don’t forget to take your time. We look forward to seeing what MOCA does on Slow Art Day to continue the dialogue they have started with SLOW: Marking Time in Photography and Film.

-Dana-Marie Lemmer, Global Coordinator

150+ venues registered for Slow Art Day 2013

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Now in its fourth year, Slow Art Day 2013 is on track to be our biggest in the movement’s short history! We want to take a moment to highlight some of the milestones that Slow Art Day has reached this year due to the work of our dedicated group of volunteers and college interns (if you want to intern with us, click here to find out more).

Slow Art Day 2013 is taking place in:

  • 150+ venues
  • 128 different participating cities
  • 20 countries, including Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Italy, France, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, Poland, Turkey, Lithuania and many more.
  • 5 continents

Over the past year, our team has grown from 5 core volunteers to a team of over 15 people, strongly helped by the internship program that global coordinator Dana-Marie Lemmer created. Our team has been hard at work helping to raise awareness about Slow Art Day 2013. We now have 7,000+ followers on Tumblr, an active and growing Facebook and Twitter presence, and regular updates to this blog. We also built a global database of galleries and museums and are in constant communication with all of those institutions.

Of course, Slow Art Day would be nothing without our vast network of hosts from around the globe; from museum coordinators to art-lovers, our hosts have enthusiastically responded to the Slow Art movement, registering to host their own Slow Art Day events at their local museum or gallery.

There’s only three months left until Slow Art Day 2013. If you want to connect with other art lovers, enjoy the art of looking, and take a break from the hustle and bustle of our fast-paced world, then sign up to host in your city and become a part of this rapidly growing global movement.

– Alie Cline, Social Media Manager

The Nationalmuseum Showcases Artists That Slow Down

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Featuring contemporary art and design made by artists using a slow creative process, the Slow Art exhibition launched recently at The Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and continues for another week. We know about this exhibit thanks to Slow Art Day host, Nadin Mai. She is running the Slow Art Day event at the The McManus Art Gallery & Museum.

Slow Art at the Nationalmuseum highlights thirty works from the Nationalmuseum’s permanent collections, including examples of silver, textile, glass and ceramic objects. Showcasing the work of artists such as Helena Hörstedt, Eva Hild and Jane Reumert, the exhibition features items that have been meticulously crafted, through a slow, and painstaking process.

The art ranges from Eva Hild’s ceramic sculptures to Helena Hörstedt’s handcrafted garnets, which emphasize structure and technique, to Jane Reumert’s work in porcelain and salt-glazed vessels.If you are in Stockholm, then be sure to stop by and appreciate the work slowly. If you can’t make it to the Nationalmuseum, download their free app for a virtual tour here.
-Dana-Marie Lemmer, Global Coordinator

Slow Looking at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth

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Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 college interns to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing.

Mark Bradford Kingdom Day 2010 580x388 The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth celebrates 10th anniversary of building designed by Tadao Ando
I went to the Modern Art Museum to look slowly at Mark Bradford’s “Kingdom Day,” a mixed media collage covering roughly 38’x 38’. Mark Bradford is one of my favorite artists so I really wanted to dive into this piece…and just look.

This piece overwhelms pleasantly in its rich detail and intricacy. It requires looking both at a distance and up close to gain a full sense of it. Up close, I can see the texture of the lines carved into the layers of what looks to be thick sheet of paper or cardboard, that are either painted over, scratched through, or exposed in tiny bits here and there to give hints of its original appearance.

After looking up close, I move to about 10 feet away where I can see the whole thing at once.  In this view, I can see larger patterns in the lines scratched into the surface, and I am able to read the four individual canvases that were put together as pieces of a narrative, each telling a different story.

I naturally begin to move along the piece in this way, seeing each canvas as a series of messages. The first canvas has the word ‘Kingdom’ at the top. The engraved lines look like a satellite view of a city, with tight grids and patches that mimick the patterns of streets and neighborhoods. There is a black patch that looked like the shape of an angel flying over, which gives it an ominous feel, like the city was being haunted. The next two canvases are more sinewy and abstract; the grids become more complex and intertwined, and are less representative of a city. I can make out faces behind all of the lines, making me think of people in jail behind bars. The ravaged surface and destroyed parts of advertisements remind me of corruption or war.

I get lost in the bright colors, lines, and layers that overwhelmed my eye.  I move to the last canvas. I notice the word ‘Day’ at the top, both framing the piece and reflecting on its title. This canvas has the most pink in it, which suggests a dawn or a new hope to me. The lines once again become more orderly and city-like, and an arrangement of black shapes behind the lines look like a city skyline against the pink background. I get an immediate sense of optimism despite the ravaged appearance and various allusions to crime, corruption, or war. For me, the piece seems to resolve in that last canvas, but I can look back on the first three and still feel the energy and uneasiness through all of the lines, layers, and faces.

When I am satisfied with looking at the piece, I look down at my watch and discover that I have been gazing for 18 minutes. 18 minutes? I am amazed at how much the time had flown past, yet how much I have experienced and thought about compared to what I would have seen from just a cursory glance. I feel so much more enriched than I normally do from looking at art – and I normally love looking at art.  The effect of just slowing down and focusing on the art is incredible, and similar I think now to the feeling of meditation.

I will not only continue working on Slow Art Day as an intern, but will definitely be doing some more slow art looking in the future, and I encourage you to do the same. And if you are in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area soon, go to the Modern Art Museum and look slowly at this wonderful piece by Mark Bradford.

[Mark Bradford’s Kingdom Day (2010) was viewed in the Fort Worth’s Modern Art Museum as a part of their permanent collection.]

-Adrienne Parker, University of Texas

Getting Lost in El Anatsui’s Black River

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Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 college interns to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing.

I was a little nervous about my practice run of looking slowly at a single piece of art. I have never been able to focus on an artwork for more than 2 minutes without fidgeting and I can’t even spend time sitting in a room full of friends without doodling or making crafts to occupy my hands and wandering mind. Standing still for ten minutes absorbed in a single work of art seemed very daunting.

However, armed with the task of my Slow Art Day homework assignment and my choice of El Anatsui’s undulating sculpture Black River, I had no problem spending fifteen minutes admiring the textile constructed out of recycled metal.

I had noticed the piece before working with Slow Art Day but I had never taken the time to see how many different types of recycled caps were used, how the light filtered through the negative space between the pieces of metal and how the curators had strategically pinned the sculpture against the wall so that it appeared like a cascade of gold. I admired it from numerous angles and different distances for its texture, and after reading the museum plaque, for its meaning.

And the experience didn’t just change how I saw that artwork. After leaving the museum I was able to focus more than I had ever before. I generally appreciate the beautiful and interesting aspects of my environment as an artist and an art history major, but I rarely take the time to actually stop and stare at something I find intriguing. After my slow encounter with Black River, I noticed a gaggle of geese and stopped to stare at them for over ten minutes. I took in the texture of their webbed feet, noting how it compared nicely with their fluffy feathers, and gawked at the striking contrast between their black necks and the white patches underneath their eyes. Slow Art Day has taught me that art is everywhere and anything can be beautiful as long as you take long enough to sit and appreciate it.
– Gabrielle Peck, Boston University
[El Anatsui’s Black River (2009) was viewed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art.] 

Connecting the Dots: Slow Looking with Roy Lichtenstein

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Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 college interns to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing.

While spending some time at home in Virginia over the holidays, I headed into Washington DC to check out the National Gallery of Art’s retrospective of Roy Lichtenstein, one of my favorite artists. Lichtenstein’s mechanical, removed style has always intrigued me, as most of his paintings are void of any painterly brushstrokes. The retrospective was truly spectacular, displaying not only Lichtenstein’s cartoon style, but also some truly stunning landscape paintings made near the end of his life. These landscapes managed to combine Lichtenstein’s trademark ben day dots with traditional Chinese landscape painting, two styles I wouldn’t have expected to mesh well together.  I had never seen these works before, and spent over 10 minutes in front of this painting, Landscape in Fog, created in 1996, a year before Lichtenstein’s death.


Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape in Fog, 1996, Oil and Magna on canvas, 71 x 81 3/4 inches (180.3 x 207.6 cm).

Both painterly and mechanical, this late, almost minimalistic work seems to layer dots behind and under a more abstract expressionist brushstroke. Looking at the ben day dots receding into the white background towards the center of the canvas was difficult on the eyes; it was almost impossible to tell whether the dots were covered by the white background, or whether Lichtenstein’s virtuosity with circles produced a gradient effect. Looking at the dots up close was mesmerizing; each dot is painted individually, and the subtle flaws in the imperfect circles reminded you that the artist painstakingly filled in, by hand, every single dot. The black dots used to give the effect of mountains were equally as fascinating, as Lichtenstein included slivers of individual dots to help define the outline of the mountain peaks.

Without careful observation and slow looking, these incredible details would have been lost. Not only did I get to see a series of paintings that I had no idea even existed, I interacted with this piece in a way that helped increase my awe and fascination with Lichtenstein. As I spent more time than the other visitors in front of this piece, I felt almost a kinship with Lichtenstein, who must have taken ages to carefully paint in each individual dot; the art of slow looking connected the artist and the viewer in a meaningful way that I won’t soon forget.

Alie Cline, University of Texas at Austin
Slow Art Day Social Media Manager

[Roy Lichtenstein’s Landscape in Fog (1996) was viewed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC at the exhibition: Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective.]

Turin Point: My Face-off with Franz Kline

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Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 college interns to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing.

Meandering the sparsely populated gallery on a normal Tuesday afternoon, it is nearly impossible to not be transfixed towards Franz Kline’s Turin (1960). As I draw closer to the magnetic canvas, it’s massive presence causes Turin to loom over, dwarfing me with impressive size. My first instinct in the face of such a monolithic painting is to scatter to any corner of the exhibit. Instead, I decide to stand my ground in the front of the gallery. This bolstering of will initiated by the intimidating strokes anchors my legs directly in front of the canvas. Perhaps my initial reaction can be distilled with a measured and slow look.

Within the first minute I am already wavering.  The raw, impressive energy of Turin is overwhelming head on. I am used to standing off on the side, not facing a work so directly. I cannot afford to be passive, however, I have to engage with what I am staring down before me. Instead of an impartial sweeping glance across the room, I find myself fixated. Here, I am held captive.

I am drawn first towards the thick, heavy vortex of black paint. All I see is black, as my eyes are downcast towards the frenetic yet firm grip of the brushstrokes. The distracting murmurs of the gallery’s other inhabitants echoing in the spacious gallery begin to dissipate. As far as I am concerned, I am in solitude with Turin.

I become more preoccupied with trying to discern how brooding columns of pigment can pair so well with fibrous sweeping gestures. I follow the strong, deliberate beams outward until I must step back and shift my weight in order to follow their lead. As the concentrated black swirl leads out in angular, cantilevered bars, I exit the vortex that had first captured me, my eyes watching the articulate arching reaching outward. I soon realize that Turin, in fact, has an abundance of white space.

By standing my ground, I have the revelation that Turin exists in a state of contradictions. It appears both dark and light, crowded and sparse, belabored and spontaneous. I realize that there is a wealth of information behind it’s initial intimidating stature. With this reveal, it becomes obvious that Kline’s abstraction is a well-crafted process revealing a plethora of competing elements.

I step away with satisfaction, having spent a good deal of time exploring the varied and numbered passageways within Turin. Without stopping and looking unflinchingly at the canvas, I doubt I would have been able to fully appreciate Turin’s dynamism, or been able to see the fluidity in his taut lines.

-Karen Trop, Bennington College

 

[Franz Kline’s Turin (1960) was viewed at the Allentown Art Museum’s exhibition: Franz Kline: Coal and Steel. The Allentown Art Museum is a participating venue for Slow Art Day in 2013.]

That Which We Call “The Rose” – Slow Art with Jay DeFeo

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Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 college interns to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing. 

I recently went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), to visit their currrent exhibition “Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective,” which I’ve been wanting to see for a long time. While there, I did a compressed version of a Slow Art Day event with one of my friends; we spent about 15 minutes looking at DeFeo’s piece “The Rose,” and afterwards sat in the (excellent) SFMOMA cafe to discuss the work.

My familiarity with DeFeo’s work is fairly recent. I attend Mills College in Oakland, CA, where DeFeo taught for several years in the 1980s, so when the retrospective at SFMOMA went up it was heavily promoted on the Mills campus. In November, when the exhibition opened, I attended a lecture that art and music critic Greil Marcus gave at Mills called “Jay DeFeo and All That Jazz,” about the relationship between DeFeo’s art-making process and contemporary jazz music (Marcus was also a contributor to the exhibition catalogue accompanying the DeFeo retrospective). While the lecture was certainly eye-opening, when viewing the exhibition I found myself wishing that her work was entirely new to me, so that I could experience it without any preconceptions.

Jay DeFeo, “The Rose” 1958 – 66, image via the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

DeFeo’s piece “The Rose” is a colossus at more than 10 feet in height and weighing in at over a ton; the paint on its surface is more than a foot thick in places. DeFeo spent over seven years working on the painting but never considered it finished. Her work on the painting was interrupted in the 1960s when she was forced to move out of her apartment in San Francisco, where she had worked on the painting (according to Greil Marcus’ lecture, she was evicted because neighbors complained of her and her husband’s eccentricity). Her new apartment didn’t have space for such a large painting, so it went into storage for several years. When DeFeo was moving, a construction crew had to be called in to pry the painting from the walls and take it out of the building via a crane and the fire escape.

In the retrospective, “The Rose” is presented in such a way that it seems almost diminutive at first glance. Set apart from the rest of the exhibition in a sort of alcove, with unusually dim lighting, the staging is supposed to mimic how the work would have looked when in its original location, a wall in DeFeo’s apartment. From a distance, “The Rose” looks small and unimpressive, but up close, its sheer bulk is overwhelming. The many layers of paint that make up the work cause it to protrude so far out from the canvas that it appears to be free-standing, blurring the line between painting and sculpture. My only problem with the SFMOMA’s presentation of the work was that the separate room it was in prevented much freedom of movement around the work, so that I couldn’t view it from as many different angles as I would have liked (that didn’t seem to discourage creativity among other viewers though – a museum guard told me that she had once seen a man try to stand on his head to see the painting from a different perspective).

Even after spending over 15 minutes with the painting, I’m still not sure what to make of it. As the most famous of DeFeo’s works, it was the one that most of the viewers were flocking to, and they all seemed to be suffering from the syndrome that occurs when you encounter any famous work of art in a museum, where you’re drawn to a work of art simply because it’s famous, and not for anything inherent in the piece itself (I call this the Mona Lisa syndrome). I felt the same way at first too, excited to be seeing the one work of DeFeo’s that is regularly featured in art history textbooks. But after a few minutes it made me sad more than anything else. The layers of cracked and fractured paint dividing the painting, once white but turned gray and black in places, brought to mind the ruins of a once-great cathedral. I couldn’t help but think of how DeFeo had spent over seven years of her life working on “The Rose,” and she never even got to finish it. She also didn’t live to see the work find fame – it was exhibited only once during her lifetime, at the Pasadena Museum of Art, and subsequently bought by the San Francisco Art Institute, where it was installed in the wall of a conference room. There, it sustained such damage that a false wall was built to cover the painting, obscuring it from view. In the 1990s, a decade after DeFeo’s death, it was bought and restored by the Whitney Museum in New York.

I thought it was apt to do a slow art viewing experience with “The Rose” given the extraordinary amount of time that DeFeo devoted to it. However, this was an instance where spending 15 minutes looking at a single work of art didn’t feel like enough time. I kept thinking about how DeFeo spent every day for seven years in front of this piece, and so it felt like a disservice in a way for me to only spend 10 or 15 minutes. I’m planning on returning to the exhibition soon, to spend more time with “The Rose” but also with the other works in the exhibition, a couple of which caught my eye. If you’re around San Francisco (the retrospective will also be opening at the Whitney in late February), I highly recommend checking it out to form your own impression of DeFeo’s work.

[Jay DeFeo’s The Rose (1958-66) was viewed in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective.]

– Maggie Freeman, Mills College

Experiencing the Slow Art Day Movement

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Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 college interns to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing. 


One afternoon, I spend 20 minutes looking at Rufino Tamayo’s El Hombre En La Ventana (1980). At first glance, it appears that the man is only momentarily looking outside the window. But after further observation, I come to believe that this man is not just casually looking but staring as if looking out into the distance, out into the future.

As I look more, I reflect on how the style of the piece is important. The style is Mexican – I know because of the style and materials of the blinds. These are traditional Mexican wooden blinds, not conventional American plastic ones. I also begin to think about this Mexican man. Perhaps he is looking to the future because he is a father and has a family that he needs to support. This piece is very simple but seems to suggest a deep topic in a very simple yet impactful way.

I stand back and also think about where I am seeing this painting. The Vincent Price Art Museum, in partnership with the East Los Angeles Community College, seeks to serve the culture and history of the Mexican community both in Los Angeles and in Mexico. Through a motif of modernism, this museum and its varying collections offers a new view of modernism that reflects the local community. So maybe this Mexican man is at a window at his home in Mexico or maybe he is here in East LA.

As the minutes tick by, I begin to reflect on the moment the painting was created: 1980. The U.S. and many other parts of the world are in recession. Many people, including perhaps this man in the painting, were thinking of moving for jobs. Even within the U.S. a big migration was beginning from the rust belt to the sun belt.  I think more about the body language of the man. He has his hands on his hips. I think he is ambitious. He wants control of his future for himself and his family. He is very similar to many other men at this time because they all wanted something better for themselves.

I’m amazed at what I’ve seen in 20 minutes. In really looking slowly at this piece of artwork, I have thought about much that would have gone unnoticed. Looking slowly is a great way to truly evaluate and appreciate any artwork and was certainly true for this Tamayo. Next time you are in Los Angeles, I recommend you visit not just the big museums but come to the Vincent Prince and take some time to really see.

[Rufino Tamayo’s Hombre en la ventana (1980) was viewed in the Vincent Price Art Museum’s exhibition: The Views of Mexican Modernism.]

-Cristina Gonzalez, UCLA