Looking At Art

The late Richard Wollheim, one of the most profound British philosophers of art, regularly spent four hours in front of a single painting. He wrote: "I evolved a way of looking at paintings which was massively time-consuming and deeply rewarding. For I came to recognise that it often took the first hour or so in front of a painting for stray associations or motivated misperceptions to settle down, and it was only then, with the same amount of time or more to spend looking at it, that the picture could be relied upon to disclose itself as it was. I noticed that I became an object of suspicion to passers-by, and so did the picture that I was looking at." For the full story - click the title Irish Art