From Pixels Don't Breathe.

[randomness]

From the Epicurean Dealmaker:

One fine, convenient day, close your laptop, shut down your monitor, mute your smartphone and slip it into a pocket, and go visit an art museum. Once inside, skip the bookstore, shun the gift shop, and eschew any special exhibitions of Blockbuster Anything or Super Duper Famous Artist retrospectives. Instead, find the painting galleries in the permanent collection and wander around until you find a nice piece that particularly interests you—preferably one with a bench commodiously arranged before it—and sit down. Just exactly what kind, vintage, or style of painting is entirely up to you.

The point is to experience an object in real time—in the flesh, as it were—unmediated by the lacquered page of a book or the reflections on a computer screen. An object which has been created out of canvas, and wood, and paint, and whatever else the artist chose to incorporate for the express purpose of being looked at in itself, as an object: here and now.

Given how much of my personal and professional life is conducted or mediated through the sterile arrangement and rearrangement of glowing pixels on a screen, I find an occasional such exercise to be a refreshing and even reinvigorating way to reconnect with the physical world. You could accomplish the same thing by contemplating a tangerine, or your belly button, I suppose, but I personally tend to find fine art more intrinsically interesting. Plus, there's the advantage that staring for 20 minutes at a painting in a museum will garner you fewer incredulous stares (although not none) than doing the same thing with a piece of fruit in a farmer's market.

I am sure I could draw parallels between my little exercise and others you could perform to pierce the electronic veil before your eyes and reconnect with the world-as-it-is, but I will leave that project for you to contemplate.

Comments

[muffyjo]

I absolutely support this. And then, of course, come home and blog all about it. ;)

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

Speaking from privilege a bit, isn't he?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

This is a lovely idea stated with such overweening obnoxiousness. It both makes me nostalgic for the times in college I'd spend an afternoon hour in a campus museum between classes, and makes me want to slap the author or at least ask how many people he volunteered to babysit for so they can do this.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

I think it's funny that he mentioned contemplating a tangerine, because stopping to mindfully and slowly eat a tangerine and really notice all the sensory input of peeling it, handling it, and eating it, is a classic mindfulness exercise.

You don't have to go to a farmer's market and stare at fruit. Take a five minute break, or use part of your lunchtime, to mindfully eat something you like, and stop and think about your senses. It doesn't require an art museum or a whole afternoon or whatever. 20 minutes or an afternoon stopping and contemplating art is great. But if you can sit outside for 2 minutes and contemplate a tree, that's a worthwhile effort too with a whole lot less pretension and "this is the _right_ way to be contemplative."

[spinrabbit.livejournal.com]

"the lacquered page of a book"

I have never encountered a book with lacquered pages. Bindings, yes; they're not *common*, but both the medieval Persian and modern Japanese bookbinding traditions include lacquered boards. (http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5358790 ; http://www.pbagalleries.com/search/item_img.php?acq_no=129524 ) Some sort of art book could be done with rigid pages (say, wood or sheet metal) coated with lacquer, but I haven't seen it.

[I know, I know, he's talking about glossy paper. :P ]

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

"Explore the big blue room. Marvel at its resolution and rendering speed. -- from alt.sysadmin.recovery"

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

One thing that always amazes me about these kinds of articles is the assumption that people don't do this (or things like it, if art museums aren't available or are too expensive or aren't their preference) already. I mean, I realize that if the author is personally lost in an electronic haze it must feel revelatory to break out of it, but that doesn't automatically mean that everybody shares the former state but just doesn't know it.

[flit.livejournal.com]

I would rather contemplate that tangerine. Nom!