Why We Should Still Look at Paintings in the 21st Century

The benefits of sustained visual engagement

Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber (c.1602) by Juan Sánchez Cotán. Oil on canvas. 68.9 × 84.46 cm. The San Diego Museum of Art, California, U.S. Image source Wikimedia Commons

It has been said that standing in front of a painting is like looking through a window into another world.

The picture frame appears to puncture a hole in an otherwise solid wall and the painting gives us a view of what’s on the other side.

I like everything about this metaphor — especially how it suggests a touch of magic in the act of looking at a painting. But I think it also misses an all-important aspect of the experience.

When you look at a painting, or any complex object, your eyes — and therefore thoughts — are pulled this way and that by the things you notice. There is a timeline of observations. Personal perceptions come in stages.

And it is this opportunity — to watch ourselves taking part in the act of viewership — that provides at least one good reason to keep looking at paintings from art history.

We live in a time saturated with images, most of them fast-paced and fighting to gain our attention. Paintings are, almost by definition, engaged with a different pace of image generation. They are made to be looked at through prolonged engagement, where our looking is not done in a single moment but can — if we wish — last a whole lifetime.