Slow Learning, Slow Looking

This event will explore the challenges and rewards of slow learning and slow looking in art historical research. Putting into dialogue short papers by two medievalists who are, in their respective projects, striving to take a ‘decelerated’ approach to their subjects, the session will be pitched as a counterpoint to the demands for high-speed access to information and knowledge in academia and beyond.
 
‘And Now for Something Completely Different’
 
Professor Elina Gertsman (Case Western Reserve University) will reflect on her experiences as a medievalist who spent years on ‘medieval’ art as synonymous with ‘Christian art’ and who has got herself into studying Hebrew manuscripts. Introducing examples from her current research on zoocephali in medieval Jewish book art, the paper will emphasize the slow and thorough process this new learning requires in both visual and textual languages.
 
‘Waiting for Van Eyck’
 
Professor Bob Mills (UCL) will take as his starting point the experience and temporality of viewing a recently restored painting by Jan van Eyck, The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin(c.1435), with patience and attention. Focusing especially on the newly visible reverse of the panel, which was painted to resemble marble, the paper will shed light on some of the available models of slow looking in the period. But Mills will also keep in view the challenges of recapturing such contemplative modes of looking in settings such as a recent exhibition of the painting at the Louvre, where museumgoers were literally instructed to ‘wait in line’.