Jennifer Roberts teaches art history at Harvard.
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Oliver Burkeman writes about her methods in his excellent book on time management, Four Thousand Weeks:
“When you take a class with Roberts,” he writes, “your initial assignment is always the same: choose a painting or sculpture in a local museum, then go and look at it for three hours straight.”
No screens. No phone for any reason. Just take the time and look.
Roberts often does this exercise herself.
Once she picked a painting called Boy With A Squirrel by John Singleton Copley:
Boy With A Squirrel by John Singleton Copley
She explained her experience to Burkeman:
“It took me nine minutes to notice that the shape of the boy’s ear precisely echoes that of the rough along the squirrel’s belly—and that Copley was making a connection between the animal and the human body,” Roberts said. “It took a good 45 minutes before I realized that the seemingly random folds and wrinkles in the background curtain were actually perfect copies of the boy’s ear.”
Burkeman, as part of his research, also did the exercise himself.
He chose a painting called Cotton Merchants in New Orleans by Edgar Degas:
Cotton Merchants in New Orleans by Edgar Degas
The longer he looked at it, the more the painting gave him, opening wider, unveiling itself and its subjects and their circumstances.
“Before long, you’re experiencing the scene in all its sensory fullness,” Burkeman said, “the humidity and claustrophobia of that room in New Orleans, the creek of the floorboards, the taste of dust in the air.”
The exercise — called “slow looking” — has since spread beyond Harvard.
It’s a movement now, no doubt spurred by the breakneck speed of modern life, the instantaneity of it all.
Because when everything is fast, it feels good to ease off, to be thoughtful and intentional. The change of pace is hard at first, tedious and irritating, but eventually the discomfort abates, giving way to the true benefit of slowness:
Noticing the details.
A non-art example to draw from is the HBO show, How To with John Wilson.
Part documentary, part collage, part poem, it’s a collection of random happenings captured in New York City. John Wilson films, narrates, and edits the show, which was born out of slow looking in a different context:
“My first job out of college was actually working for a private investigator,” said Wilson. “I had to comb through hours and hours of the most banal footage you can imagine and try to find one little incriminating moment,” he said. “It really trained me to notice the little details.”
Ah yes, noticing the details is a trainable skill.
And you develop it by slowing down, by embracing tedium, by accepting that “things take the time they take,” as Burkeman puts it. Indeed:
Time illuminates the details. And details give way to connections. And connections are the basis of creativity, a cornerstone of copywriting.
So to be a good copywriter — and a creative person, in general — you must take your time.
You must allow yourself to decelerate to the speed your work demands.
