Slow Looking at Slow Art: The Work of Pierre Bonnard

Abstract

Slow looking is an increasingly prevalent strategy for enhancing visitor engagement in the gallery, yet there is little research to show why looking at artworks for longer should be beneficial. The curator of a recent exhibition of Pierre Bonnard at the Tate Gallery in London encouraged viewers to look slowly in order to enrich their experience of Bonnard’s paintings. This article explores some of the reasons why Bonnard’s work, in particular, rewards the viewer who spends more time studying it. The authors draw on various scientific studies of the ways in which observers process color contrasts, spatial configuration and figure-ground segregation in artworks and in everyday vision. They propose that prolonged interactions with works of art can facilitate perceptual learning, and they suggest ways in which these effects could be empirically studied using psychological methods.

Non-metric distance judgements are influenced by image projection geometry and field of view

“…For example, Cézanne painted objects in the centre of his compositions, these being his main focus of attention, much larger than they appear in the equivalent photographs relative to objects in the visual periphery, as illustrated in Figure 1 (Pepperell & Haertel, 2014). Similarly, Pierre Bonnard's depictions of interiors show centrally fixated objects much larger and peripheral objects diminished in size compared with photographs of the same interiors (Burleigh et al, 2018(Burleigh et al, , 2021Chamberlain & Pepperell, 2020).…”

Slow looking at still art: The effect of manipulating audio context and image category on mood and engagement during an online slow looking exercise.

“…There is also the possibility that certain categories of art, or even specific features in certain artists' works (Chamberlain & Pepperell, 2021), are better suited for slow viewing. Indeed, there was an array of photographic, representational, and abstract works showcased by each institution for their online slow viewing events, although abstract art was shown more frequently by the hosting educators (Slow Art Day, 2021).…”

“…de Heem was chosen as the representational artist, and Fernand Léger was chosen as the abstract artist (see Figure 1 for sample representational and abstract works; see https://osf.io/3bajp/ for a link to photographic work). Furthermore, participants also indicated that they preferred a viewing time of 3 min, which is less than traditional in-person slow viewing exercises (Chamberlain & Pepperell, 2021) but considerably more than average unaided viewing times reported within galleries (Carbon, 2017; J. K. Smith & Smith, 2001;L. F. Smith et al, 2017).…”

Slow Looking at Still Art: The Effect of Manipulating Audio Context and Image Category on Mood and Engagement During an Online Slow Looking Exercise

“…There is also the possibility that certain categories of art, or even specific features in certain artists' works (Chamberlain & Pepperell, 2021), are better suited for slow viewing. When it comes to general preferences for art viewing, there is evidence to suggest that non-expert viewers prefer representational art over abstract art (Pihko et al, 2011;Uusitalo et al, 2012), and that representational artworks show greater convergence of evaluation and associations across viewers (Schepman et al, 2015).…”

“…de Heem was chosen as the representational artist, and Fernand Léger was chosen as the abstract artist (see Figure 1). Furthermore, participants also indicated that they prefer a viewing time of 3 minutes, which is less than traditional in-person slow viewing exercises (Chamberlain & Pepperell, 2021) but considerably more than average unaided viewing times reported within galleries (Carbon, 2017;Smith & Smith, 2001). Lastly, survey respondents also indicated that loss of focus was a major factor, so a pre-viewing focusing exercise was added to the protocol.…”