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Painting
As you may remember, the painting you just saw is “Blue and Silver Nocturne” by American painter James McNeill Whistler. (You may also recognize one of Whistler’s most famous paintings, a portrait of his mother.)
The piece you just saw is currently on display on the second floor of the Harvard Art Museums.
Lauren O’Neill, The New York Times
The painting, part of a series that Whistler began in the late 1860s, depicts the industrial banks of London’s River Thames in dull blue tones.
In an 1885 lecture on the interaction of the artist with nature, Whistler spoke of the transition from day to night: “The evening mist covers the riverside like a veil of poetry, the poor buildings disappear into the gloomy sky, the tall chimneys become bell towers, the warehouses become palaces of the night.”
The mark we just saw was Whistler’s “signature” and versions of it can be seen in many of his paintings. It is derived from the shape of a butterfly, and he used this symbol repeatedly throughout his life.
So what about the second reflection? Now, here’s where it gets interesting: while you might want a definitive answer, the painting itself doesn’t actually provide one.
Kate Smith, senior conservator of paintings and director of the paintings lab at the Harvard Art Museums, has examined infrared photographs of the painting and has her own theory.
She believes that Whistler may have started a painting, then simply changed his mind, turned the panel over and started again.
Smith explained that the mysterious reflection could be what’s called a pentimento, a change in a work of art that slowly appears over time. It’s possible that the reflection wasn’t intentionally present when the painting was completed; it might have only appeared decades later.
Or perhaps Whistler purposely left the ghostly reflection there for us to see. He described the paintings in this series as an arrangement of “first line, then shape, then color.” He was once asked to identify whether the figures in another painting were human, but he could not say either way.
“They’re just the things you like,” he said.
(If you’d like, please take another look now that you know the details.)
point
This painting was a perfect subject for our experiment because a closer look revealed a mystery. But the purpose of this experiment wasn’t to get people to notice the mystery; it was just to get people to notice it.
Researchers say that the act of concentrating, no matter how scary or pointless it may seem, is possible and worthwhile, and that’s especially important in a world where the typical office worker spends an average of less than a minute on any one screen at a time, according to research by Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine and author of “Attention Span.”
When we’re used to frenetic social media feeds, “it’s hard to pay attention to content that doesn’t change,” she says.
Think again about the time you spend looking at a painting.
At first, you may find it so boring that it won’t hold your interest for even 10 seconds, let alone 10 minutes.
When Harvard Professor Roberts first came up with this assignment (the three-hour version), she thought of it as a springboard for students to write art history research papers. But these days, she also sees it as a way to teach perseverance. (She suggested this Whistler painting for our assignment.)
She says that many of her students respond to this challenge with “horror.” (Maybe this has happened to you.)
“It’s a combination of, ‘Oh my god, that’s not possible,’ and the feeling that it’s therapy,” she said.
But, as you might expect, her students usually find the experience neither too difficult nor too easy. They realize that they didn’t see everything worth seeing in the painting at first glance, she said. And they get a little bored and realize that by stepping a little outside their comfort zone, something new emerges.
If you like how it feels, try it again with any piece of art — or, even more daring, print out Professor Roberts’ original assignment — then go to the museum, pick a piece of art, and sit back and admire it.
Consider songs and poetry too, or ignore art altogether.
“Just look at the trees,” she said. “Just look at the rocks.”
Mark says that attention is the product of many factors, not all of which are under our control. But a little practice can help. “We perform many actions automatically,” he says. “Being aware of those automatic actions is a skill, so you can have better control over where you direct your attention.”
And if you hone those skills, you’ll stay longer and better.
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