Wonderful image from Nick Van Woert - fourteensquarefeet.com

How long does the average person spend in front of the average piece of art in an average museum, on average?

Well, the Inquisition can’t answer that exact question. It would appear it is too open-ended a question to arrive at a definitive answer. But, it must be noted that Elizabeth Addison, an ex-director of MoMA, states that the average visitor there spends two hours perusing the galleries. Those who rent audioguides stay for almost a third longer.

According to Google the average visitor to the Inquisition spends 2 and three quarter minutes viewing, perusing and defiling this fine online curiosity shop. Now, while the Inquisition could never claim the greatness of even the smallest gallery or archaeological repository this figure is somewhat instructive.

The human capacity for undivided attention differs according to situation while also varying wildly according to any number of other factors. We happily spend 2 hours cooped up in the dark of a cinema, throwing ourselves headlong into tatty narratives. Some of us can spend hours buried in printed media while others tire after a cursory glance.

The Inquisition has addressed this notion previously but is returning to it here from an art critical perspective. What does this mean for true art consumption?

butdoesitfloat.com

It is to the Inquisition’s eternal shame that time is tight these days, and so most new art is discovered via blogs and online media outlets such as Today and Tomorrow, FFFFound!, Tumblr and so on…

While the quality varies, the relentlessly updated and renewed content places false barriers between the producers and their audience. Truly great art is a rare commodity, and yet everyday these sites ‘discover’ new ‘art’.

While some of it is undoubtedly worthy and interesting work, the conveyor belt-cultural output distances the viewer from their rights – legitimate time to digest, live with and critically dissect art.

Leaving aside discussions of situation, size, tactility and other tangible aspects of visual art, we can be amazed by art online but we are rarely moved by it. For regular readers, the image is replaced before it has even lodged itself into our long-term memories. This is not just a problem with visual culture – it appears the internet in general is having a similar effect to what Pharoah Thamus feared would happen with writing(alternate version).

Nielsen Survey of online behaviour

According to the Nielsen Online Survey (see image) the average viewer spends no longer than 1 minute on a webpage. This is half the time each slide is displayed in the restaurant at NGI, which has been deemed an optimal time for the kind of distracted viewing diners might indulge in. It falls far short of what you might expect a viewer to spend when they are truly engaged with an item. Here is an illuminating description of how a typical user engages with this type of content.

ffffound.com

The Importance of Context

In About Looking art theorist John Berger describes a trip of veneration, twice taken, to spend time with a piece of art. The piece which drew him is The Isenheim Altarpiece by the German artist Matthias Grunewald and which, he suggests, is the only real draw to the town where it hangs – Colmar. Colmar although pretty pales in comparison for Berger to time spent in front of this triptych.

David Hockney’s methods as a practicing artist are deeply founded on a wide knowledge and appreciation of the art world, past and present. In Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters Hockney describes a pilgrimage-like visit to see a particular piece. He describes the process of spending time with the artwork.

As Hockney points out; sculpture, paintings and printing in certain cases were for a large part of human history the only images people saw, albeit rarely for most. Cinema has now ennured us to many visual effects and spectacles. Cinema itself still holds our ocular attention over sustained periods. In fact, due to the popularity of Youtube and its vast repertoire of inanities, it would seem that it is the movement and not necessarily the images, narratives or other devices that draw us in.

There is no question that art is validated by context. The same piece of work may have far more power in a gallery than it would discarded in a dump. For some media this context is slightly more subjective. In terms of video art the internet may be a great place to show it, technically at least. But how much video art would actually hold our attention outside of where it was intended to be shown? If we are surrounded by other stimuli would we still engage in a meaningful exchange with a video piece? After all, why do we rush to see a movie in the cinema, in the knowledge it will come out on DVD? Context.

Popularity

In terms of popularity museums lag behind cinemas although not as far as one might imagine. New York State museums welcomed 51.8 million visits by patrons in 2005. That same year saw across the entire United States 1,415 million movie theater visits. So the figures by extrapolation, although separated by a large amount, are closer than might be suspected at first. The biggest blog presence in these terms is TMZ.com with 8,214,682 complete visits a month. In terms of single institutions, the Louvre blew them all away, mid-recession, last year it embraced 85 million visitors. Presumably that means at least 20 people saw more than the obligatory androgyne.

The Louvre is a massive museum hidden behind a tiny painting

According to Tori Orr, writing in The Information-Seeking Behavior of Museum Visitors published in A Review of Literature, having a website violates some of the motivations for visiting museums. As described above it puts your experience of the visit at one level of remove because of the barrier of screen and machine. However, again according to Orr, many museums see this as a necessary evil to reach communities of visitors limited by geography, time or ability and answer their specific information needs for a non-immersive but still enlightening experience.
Our online sources indicate different behavior patterns, require different models and address different needs. An excellent example of this methodology in practice is to download Google Earth and visit the Prado. This is as good as the virtual museum visit gets.

Help at last!

Finally, do bear this in mind – it is very hard to learn the possibilities of, methods of and protocols of internet use if you are coming to it for the first time (presumably of course you aren’t because if you are you would be somewhere much more interesting than here). Thankfully the museum need not be fraught with such pitfalls as some kind souls have composed a how-to for visiting art museums (http://www.wikihow.com/Visit-an-Art-Gallery). Bless their cotton socks.

Bibliography
The Information-Seeking Behavior of Museum Visitors, A Review of Literature, Tori Orr
Attendence figures at British Museums – Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Issues on museum attendence in general – Indianapolis Museum of Art
Bridging the gaps between museums, art and technology
Is the internet making us stupid?
Blog visitor trending data
Social networking is the new email
The Motion Picture Association of America’s own figures (in a pdf that may have been designed by colour-blind monkeys)
NY museum figures
The Independent (UK) reports on the Louvre figures
The Indianapolis Museum of Art’s blog touches on these issues
Social media traffic reports
Museum management, Kevin Moore, Routledge, 1994
Mirror of the World: A New History of Art, Julian Bell, Thames & Hudson, 2007
Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters, David Hockney, Thames & Hudson, 2006
About Looking, John Berger, Bloomsbury, 2009

One More Thing!

Be sure to check out the Sunday Times’ list of online museums

Original content created by: The Inquisition

A Parallel Image by Gebhard Sengmuller

The art world, like the real world, is in constant flux. Genres redefine themselves, whole areas are reinvented, meanings and readings shift. Art is constantly undoing itself. The modes and media are fluid and evolving.

For example, art fought its way out of galleries through the 60s and 70s in an attempt to reclaim itself from academia, the market and ownership in general. However, art is now finding its way back in to these galleries which allow the greatest expression and with the kickbacks that prominence in a market can bring. This market is the key – everyone wants buy the latest big thing. Except in price and exclusivity it is no different to the MP3 player market – who wants to buy an ipod from 2 years ago?

In the (paraphrased) words of Matthew Collings ‘nothing in art is new. It is about re-interpreting the past to be relevant to now’.

Detail of Hieronymous Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights and detail of the Chapman Brothers' Hell

Max Raphael wrote that art’s aim was the “undoing of the world of things”. Marcuse refers to it as “the great refusal”. John Berger speaks that art is the bridge between what is given and what is desired.

In other words we already have art but by its nature art must always strive to be beyond the art that was. The problem is that we can’t invent a new art, it is always founded on concrete art history.

Detail of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Hunters in the Snow and Detail of an un-named piece by Francisco Infante-Arana

Human history also interrupts the story of art causing it to lose and change its meanings. A triumphal imperial painting might now be seen as tasteless colonial suppression. In the two examples below we see cutting edge scientific progress, which now looks like schools’ science.

Detail of A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery by Wright of Derby and detail of The Anatomy Lesson by Rembrandt

Millet’s peasants doing back-breaking labour in a seemingly endless field speak to us more of a predominantly rural past than of agricultural production.

Millet's Les Glaneuses

Art and history conspire to make art become artifact almost as soon as it is seen, digested and assimilated. Every year, as soon as the Turner prize is announced the ones that didn’t win become footnotes in the history of the prize, not the vibrant pieces they were previously.

This process is also internalised – as we see a piece we digest it, consign it to memory and go on to look for further visual stimuli. But if we return to a piece. its familiarity is over-riding. It is a thing of the past.

Bibliography
About Looking, John Berger, Bloomsbury, 1980
Seven Days in the Art World, Sarah Thornton, Granta, 2008
Gebhard Sengmuller reinvigorates the silhouette
Image of Gebhard Sengmuller’s work used without permission. If the artist or any of his representative’s wish it to be taken down please contact the Inquisition.

Original content created by: The Inquisition