A week with nothing in the diary
The last full week of August empties the galleries of hurry. The summer visitors have thinned, the autumn programmes have not yet opened, and the rooms are quieter than they will be again until the middle of January. Nicole Brachetti Peretti has come to treat this as the best week of the year for looking at art properly.
It is worth saying what makes it different. There is no shortage of art in a busy month, only a shortage of the conditions under which art can be looked at. Those conditions are quiet rooms, unhurried time and the absence of anywhere else to be, and this is the one week that reliably supplies all three.
Looking is not visiting
A visit can be completed. A room is entered, the works are passed, the exit is found, and something has been accomplished. Looking is a different activity and a far less efficient one. It involves stopping in front of a single thing for longer than seems reasonable and staying there after the first impression has been used up.
Most of what a work has to offer arrives after that point, when the obvious has been exhausted and the eye starts noticing decisions rather than subjects. Nicole Brachetti Peretti finds that this is where the pleasure is, and it is almost never available in a crowded room.
One work, twenty minutes
The most useful habit for a quiet week is also the simplest. Choose one work and give it twenty minutes. Not a room, not a floor, and certainly not a whole collection. One picture, one object, one drawing.
Twenty minutes sounds excessive and turns out to be about right. The first five are spent settling, the next five noticing what was missed, and the last ten are where the looking actually happens. It is a small experiment and it changes more than most people expect.
Not knowing is a good position
There is a persistent worry that looking at art requires preparation, and that without the right background the time will somehow be wasted. It is a discouraging idea and it is not true. Attention is the only qualification, and everybody already has it.
Reading about a work afterwards is generally better than reading about it first, because the reading then answers questions that were actually raised rather than supplying opinions before there was anything to have an opinion about. The reading notes take the same view.
Second visits see more
Nicole Brachetti Peretti has long preferred returning to something already seen over seeking out something new. A second visit sees more than a first, because the effort of orientation has already been spent and the attention is free for smaller things.
The same holds for cities, for books and for most things worth attending to. A collection gives up very little on first acquaintance and a great deal on the third, provided the third is unhurried. The art pages and the gallery are largely a record of returns rather than discoveries.
Notes make the looking last
A work looked at without notes tends to leave an impression rather than a memory. A few lines written the same day, describing what was actually noticed rather than what the label said, turn the impression into something that can be returned to and argued with later.
The notes do not need to be good. They need to be specific. A sentence about one detail is worth more in December than a paragraph of general enthusiasm, and the writing pages make the case for keeping them short and immediate.
What slow looking actually finds
The rewards of staying in front of one work are rarely dramatic. What tends to appear is a sequence of small decisions: why an edge was left rough, why one colour was allowed to dominate, why a figure sits slightly off centre when the obvious arrangement was available.
None of these findings would survive a summary, and all of them change how the work is remembered. A picture looked at properly once is recalled far more precisely than a dozen glanced at across an afternoon, which is an argument for doing less rather than more.
The light is part of the work
In any room with daylight the works look different in late August from how they looked in June. The light arrives lower and warmer, and surfaces that were flat at midsummer acquire a little more depth.
It is a small seasonal difference and it is worth catching, because it will not come round again for another year. Nicole Brachetti Peretti tends to plan a return visit for exactly this reason rather than for anything in the programme.
Before the season opens
Within a fortnight the autumn programmes will begin, the rooms will fill and the year will resume its usual pace. That is welcome, and there is a great deal to look forward to in it.
But the week now closing offers something the busy season cannot, which is time in front of one thing with nobody waiting. The companion note on choosing what to see this autumn looks at what comes next.