Life is an Art Gallery : How Slow Looking Can Improve Your Life and Relationships
Nothing can make a person feel dense and inferior like a room full of fine art. It’s a silent source of shame for many.
Let’s set the scene. You’re in an art gallery. To your left, a man with a ponytail weeps as he takes in a single red dot on a floor-to-wall canvas. Across the way, an uppity elderly couple holds hands beside an old broken statue. They admire the work in collaborative silence, sharing in some sort of telepathic, intellectual bliss.
You, however, waft about the room like a funny smell: out of place, with absolutely no distinguishable goal or direction. Bad thoughts flood in. What went wrong? Why are you like this?
You came here to have a revelation or, at the bare minimum, a decent time. Even a bit of entertainment would be nice. But here you are. Utterly bewildered, and worse, utterly bored.
What are you missing?
I feel as if I experience amnesia after every visit to the MoMA or MET. I can’t count the number of times I’ve woken up with an itch to absorb fine art, convinced I will come out of the museum enriched, satisfied, and enlightened. This time, it will be great, I tell myself. It never is.
That is, until last week when I tried something known as Slow Looking.
The slow looking approach is based on the idea that we need to spend time with a work of art in order to truly experience it.
Simply put, slow looking is learning through observation.
Here’s what it looked like for me.
I settled in front of a painting at the MET – a long French painting I found in the European gallery. At first glance, I saw it featured what looked like a riot – a vibrant cluster of men and horses gathered under an arch in Paris.
I chose this piece because it had the optimal conditions for a staredown: there was a nice bench in front of it, and the canvas was busy enough that it was unlikely I’d get bored looking at it. I chose not to read the informational placard on the wall beside the painting. I wanted to approach the work sensorially rather than intellectually.
I set a timer. Twenty minutes.
The first thing I felt was dread. Twenty minutes? I couldn’t focus on Netflix for more than five minutes at a time without checking my phone. It seemed utterly impossible that I’d be able to stare at this painting in silence for more than sixty seconds without having an aneurysm.
I let the doubt wash away. One thing at a time.
It started out like a game of I Spy. First, I focused on the color red. Where did I see it? How many times? I counted. There were different shades of red, I noticed, which led me to explore the rosy pink and other warm tones throughout the painting – in clothing, in the sky, on the hillside. I noticed that same softness in the darkness – greys and dirty stone.
Eventually, my gaze flowed through the painting like water. I let my eyes wander without resistance, and noticed the emotions that arose in response.
It hurt to look at the foreground, and at first I couldn’t understand why. I couldn’t make sense of the imagery. Horses and people in high contrast lighting were all squished into the foreground like sardines, but not in a way that made any sort of sense. I would try my best to focus on one figure at a time, but I wasn’t able to relax. In my periphery, every other subject in the foreground simultaneously tugged at my attention. All the chaos did not point to any single focal point, like a song that doesn’t resolve its key.
I was uneasy. The artist was not trying to help me. They were trying to make me uncomfortable.
My gaze was drawn upward, by some force of gravity, to the distant hills and buildings. The tension in the foreground contrasted the serene and harmonious background. There was simplicity and peace in the world behind the chaos. The landscape felt alive. Clouds and branches seemed to move as I followed their guide. It was real, I was in it.
Because I took in the sensory experience of the painting and reserved my judgement, the visuals triggered other sensory associations I had stored in my memory. When I saw a shadow on the hill, I heard wind. When I saw darker stone and branches, I smelled moss. When I saw the dark sky, I saw its humidity and felt impending rain on my skin. I heard the silence of birds as they awaited a storm.
This sensory exploration led me to discover a major point of tension I hadn’t noticed before.
There was a big stone archway on the left side of the painting. My eyes wandered between its legs to the scenery behind it. This was something I would normally overlook – a few square inches of canvas. But I let myself experience the rosy hills. I saw they continued behind the arch, a soft, hazy backdrop. I could smell it and feel it. I craved it. From what little I could see, it was the most beautiful and lovely part of the painting. And it was obstructed.
If I hadn’t looked closely, I wouldn’t have noticed the tragedy of this. I assumed this was the intended reaction of the work. The artist wanted me to want peace, then see that peace obstructed. They wanted me to sit with the discomfort and chaos that impeded it.
I reached this realization by breaking the piece down into its component parts instead of projecting what I thought it should mean intellectually or how I was supposed to feel about it.
Slow looking primed me to learn and have unexpected realizations.
By simply noticing colors, shapes, tension, harmony, empty space, and crowded space while reserving judgement, I was able to have a natural emotional response.
Paradoxically, in order to stay on task, I had to allow myself to lose focus.
Much like in meditation, it is inevitable that our minds will wander from the task at hand. I tried to use this as an opportunity. My mind wandered to other things, but the practice of slow looking itself had opened the floodgates of awareness. Events from the past days and months resurfaced, along with my true feelings about them. I had flutters of anxiety, involuntary smiles, and misty eyes, all in the course of 20 minutes.
I acknowledged these things as my reaction to the work, then I redirected my focus to the painting.
What originally felt daunting was now addicting. Twenty minutes was not nearly enough. I wanted to stay with the painting through the evening. I was addicted to this feeling of connection, authenticity, and newness. It was something I had been craving.
Truth emerges from stillness. I saw this in art, and I see this in life.
Just as slow looking primed me for a deeper, more intuitive understanding of a painting, it can optimize your potential for new realizations in life.
The key is to focus on your five senses, not your intellect. At least initially.
Some paintings don’t inspire any sense of connection until you’ve looked at them and thought about them for an extended period of time. Similarly, in other areas of life, slow looking will allow you to make connections where you didn’t think they’d be.
Focus on one thing at a time. How does the air feel? Allow sounds to greet your awareness. In the same way, notice smells, shapes, then colors. Don’t think about them. Merely give each one your full attention.
I used this technique in conversation with a friend I’d known for years.
We were sitting in her favorite restaurant as she talked about her family. I’d heard her tell most of these stories before. I’d already given my thoughts, offered advice, and laughed at her jokes.
We feel we know our loved ones well, just like a painting that’s been hung in front of your toilet for three years. You’ve spent so much time staring at it, you feel you could paint a replica from memory.
But familiarity comes at a price: our attention becomes habitual. We paraphrase, gloss over, and miss out on reality.
So this time, I tried slow looking instead. I didn’t plan my response. I listened.
Much like I’d notice the texture, color, shapes, and symbols in a painting, I observed the speed and cadence of her speech, her emotion, and the topics and themes in her language.
First, I just looked at her. Her face was narrower than I remembered. Her eyes were sharper and mirrored the color of her hair, which was now neater than it ever used to be. But her skin had the same glow it did when we were kids.
Next, I paid close attention to the quality of her voice. I was startled to notice it sounded older. Dull, almost defeated.
I observed how her mood and body language evolved with her story. There were points of tension, insecurity, and joy. She prodded at her food like a child when she talked about her father. Her voice grew tense and defensive when she spoke of her mother, adopting a sort of dry sarcasm that harkened back to when we were teenagers. In her language, I noticed themes of betrayal and nostalgia.
I didn’t offer my opinions or try to relate to her. Instead, I asked questions. More importantly, I didn’t try to predict how she would answer them.
And she surprised me. The habitual rules of our friendship were set aside. She was allowed to be exactly who she was in that moment – not who I’d known her to be, not the persona she’d grown comfortable showing me.
I was sitting across the table from a woman I’d known since the third grade. But she felt entirely new.
I learned things about her I never could have inferred from how I’d grown comfortable understanding her.
The challenge is to be more observant and override our brain’s predictive tendencies. Often, we stop listening halfway through another person’s sentence. Once they say something we feel we can build on and respond to, we start planning our response. We miss out on most of what they have to say, because we’re so busy projecting onto them and inferring their thoughts. This leads to dissatisfactory, stunted communication.
Listen to understand, not to respond. This opens the door for high context communication. We can reach emotional understanding more quickly by waiting to understand what the other person has to say.
Remember, you don’t know what to look for yet. Let yourself explore.
Slow looking can inspire empathic listening in conversations and group interactions.
The most important (and often the most difficult) thing to remember is: perceive, do not judge.
Gauge your initial reaction without controlling it.
When we observe a scene in a play, we listen to the dialogue openly and exploratively. We don’t think about responding. Our job is to listen and observe. As a result, the experience is much more rewarding.
Practice observing the scenes of your life like an audience member. Stay curious and attentive.
This means allowing yourself the time and space for discovery but not forcing the discovery itself. Think of it like trying to pet a cat. You can’t approach it or force the interaction. Instead, you create the perfect conditions for the cat to come to you, then you wait. It will come to you. Slow looking encourages a similar intentionality.
In other words, trust the process. Trust yourself. It’s okay if nothing comes to mind. Stray from the cerebral mission of the work, and explore how you interact with the subject of your focus right now. Even though it seems counterintuitive, this is the most authentic, and ultimately the most effective, way to learn.
To emphasize perception over judgement, it helps to focus solely on the physical sensation of emotions as they arise.
Do a body scan to notice your body’s physical response to stimuli, rather than trying to identify, quantify, and name your emotions through internal dialogue. As each emotion rises, ask yourself: Where do you feel it? What qualities does it have? For me, anger is a prickly burn at the top of my head, loss is an open wound in my lower gut, and excitement is a fuzzy tingle in my shoulders and chest.
And ultimately, remember to stay curious and ask questions.
Slow looking is not passive. It is an intimate, internal practice.
Patient and immersive attention to content leads to a deeper level of meaning-making, inference, and critical thinking. This is starkly different from the way we absorb information in our daily lives, at high speed.
You can reflect on your experience in a journal or simply by talking to yourself.
Ask yourself: what did you feel? What did you learn? What had the greatest impact on you? What surprised you?
You don’t have to examine something once. If you look at the same work again later, ask yourself: how does your response change with the seasons? With milestones? With you?
When slow looking at a work of art, you’re not listening to what historians or artists think you should see in the piece. You are allowing yourself the time to form your own meaning and discover your own connections. This optimizes your potential for learning and growth.
Applying slow looking to every aspect of your life may seem impractical. You don’t have time to indulge every moment in life, just like you can’t spend an hour with every painting in the MoMA and get out before they close.
Don’t worry, it’s okay to be selective.
When approaching art, it’s important to select work you are drawn to – perhaps because it intrigues, attracts or frustrates you. That means there’s something to be learned from looking closer.
Similarly, lean in to moments in life where you find yourself uncomfortable or intrigued.
Recently, I was on the phone with my mom. We talk often. Usually, I listen like I’m running. My mind races to make connections and think of the best responses over the phone.
As we talked, our two dogs were playing in the yard, and it had apparently gotten out of hand. My mom started scolding them, which devolved into laughter as she gave me a play-by-play of the unfolding action.
My first response was to think of something to say, like “that’s so funny.” That felt dry, so I sifted through a number of questions I could ask to keep the conversation alive. I caught myself feeling restless and uncomfortable in this interaction with someone I loved dearly.
Without any plan or expectation, I decided to approach the moment with slow looking instead.
First, I noticed the colors on the wall of my room – a space I’d made my own, many miles from where she was. I felt the emptiness around me, the silence.
Finally, I focused on her voice. Even through the crackle of the phone, its quality was vibrant like a bell. She sounded young. I’d always known how much joy our dogs gave her, but now I could hear it. They brought her to life.
I was struck with emotion as I realized I hardly heard her laugh like that growing up. In her older age, she’d grown softer and regained a sense of humor. I became curious about her. She was no longer just my mother. She was someone I wanted to get to know better.
I let her giddy laughter warm me, and with it came a single thought: That’s my mom.
This phone call was no longer regular, it was precious. The moment was intimate, melancholic, and more beautiful for it.
This is a challenge, but an important one.
We are inclined to fabricate or project a sense of subjective meaning onto life. But if we do that at the risk of curiosity, we limit ourselves.
Remember: You don’t know what you don’t know. The sky’s the limit. Stay curious about what life can mean, who people can be, and what is possible.
All you have to do is surrender your time and attention.
In the face of static experiences – be it a painting on a wall or a day at the office – we have the power to be surprised and enriched. But it’s a choice we have to make.