art is for everybody...
but museums and galleries are really just one great, sprawling cocktail party that's tailor-made for introverts...
like me...
let me take you around and show you just how fascinating and entertaining art really is...
come and crash the party with me...!
let's go get you high on art...
if you’re an introvert, like me, you probably hate cocktail parties…
and that’s not because introverts hate meeting new people,
we just don’t need to meet twenty of them all in the same night…
extraverts may thrive on all of that chit-chatting and acquaintance making…
but we’d rather face the Spanish Inquisition than have to make small talk all night long…
for us introverts, a great cocktail party is one where we actually meet just one fascinating person
and end up having a deeeep, searching, one-on-one conversation that pretty much lasts the entire party…
chances of that happening though are usually pretty slim
and always unpredictable…
which is why party invitations will usually give us some form of introvert-angst…
but I know of one party that’s not only angst-free…
it’s guaranteed to be introvert heaven:
and that’s a museum…
you see, I know for certain
that every single time I walk into a museum or gallery,
it’s like I’ve arrived at some great sprawling cocktail party where
I’m always gonna meet someone new and fascinating, AND
have a great private conversation…
except that I’m not talking about meeting the other visitors,
I’m talking about meeting the art…
funny thing about museums, though…
almost all of the visitors I see either act like tourists
and get led around by docents or by those rented headset thingies…
or they go the default route and act just the way extraverts do at cocktail parties: they circulate…
I see them walking around and around
going from painting to painting…
and just like extraverts,
instead of having a nice long conversation with the art,
all they ever do is catch its name, make some small talk and move on…
and hey, I’m not making this stuff up…
studies have shown that the average museum visitor spends less than 30 seconds looking at a painting…
and that includes the time it takes to read the wall label and take a selfie…
[Smith, L. F., Smith, J. K., & Tinio, P. P. L. (2017). "Time spent viewing art and reading labels." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 11(1), 77-85.]
but you know what’s really crazy…?
even introverts do that…
I know I used to…
but not anymore…
not since I found some really wild-ass museum mojo…
okay, so it took me a while to find it,
but now I know.
there’s no great secret to going deep with art…
(although I've gotta say, it helps to be an introvert who really likes art…)
but you just have to trust that all of the metaphoric guests at these great sprawling cocktail parties they call museums
are fascinating as hell…
even the ones you think you could never like…
they may be wallflowers,
but they’re not boring—they’re bored stiff…!
all they’ve been doing is hanging around waiting for someone like me or you to get to the party…
and all they want is to get us alone so they can bare their soul…
maybe you think that all art is blatantly exhibitionist and snooty,
but even the super-famous pieces,
even those eccentric ones that nobody understands, but are still worth gazillions…
they’re aren’t just fascinating,
every single one of them is lonely as hell…
hey, even the Mona Lisa, the most famous introvert in the world, is lonely…
you think she’s happy being stuck in a room with all those crowds swarming around…?
truth is, most of those people don’t care about understanding her,
they just want a a selfie with her…
trust me…
every painting and sculpture desperately wants to lock eyes with you and have a really deep tête-à-tête…
like anybody else, they just want to be understood…
okay, so maybe this sounds like a really silly analogy…
but looking at a painting or sculpture is exactly the same as meeting someone…
except that you never have to say a single word…
you don’t even have to introduce yourself…
you just walk right up to them,
you stand there
and you stare…
honest to god, you don’t need to know anything about art or art history
you just have to let them lead the conversation…
because they do that…
they talk to you…
not literally, of course…
you don’t start hearing voices…
but they’ll speak to you…
you just have to give them a chance…
and if you’ve never heard them before
it’s because they speak to a part of you you probably never even knew you had…
I call it your Intuition…
and trust me, you’ve got one…
but here’s the thing…
you don’t need to know what Intuition actually is…
you just need to know what it’s not…
and Intuition is NOT some sort of woo-woo psychic ability to make predictions,
it’s not about having premonitions…
and it’s NOT what’s generally known as ESP…
Intuition is just your innate ability to sense the truth of something…
and that’s what we’ll be using to catch a glimpse of the particular truth each work of art is just dying to tell you…
and that truth is always going to surprise you…
sometimes, it will even rock your world…
🎶
Swoon by Inaequalis (from their Bête Noire album)
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.
🎶
so that’s pretty much what this podcast is gonna be about…
the surprising things that art is gonna tell you…
and that’s where I come in…
I’ll be be visiting museums and galleries
and meeting individual paintings and sculptures…
some of them will be old friends…
but most of them will be works I’ve never met before or know anything about…
and they’re all gonna be talking to me…
and that’s where you come in…
when you listen in on my conversations, you’ll find the art saying something interesting and personal to you, too…
you’ll not only be seeing these works through my eyes and my intuition
but—and this is the important thing—
you’re going to learn how to do this for yourself…
in ANY museum and with ANY work of art—
—Even the Mona Lisa—
because all it takes is a little bit of one on one time…
(okay, forget the Mona Lisa…
there’s no way I’m ever gonna get close enough to have a real tête-à-tête with her…
not unless this podcast makes me as famous as Sister Wendy…
so please go ahead and make me famous…)
it’s not complicated…
no matter where we are or what the art is,
we’re just gonna be looking in a really simple way that you may or may not have ever tried before…
I guarantee you’re gonna be surprised by some of the things we find…
not to mention the deep impression the art is gonna make on you…
hey, even if nobody else is doing it…
it’s what museums were made for…
and as long you’re an introvert, you own this party…
come and crash it with me…
let’s go meet some art...
got a question, a comment, or just wanna say hi...?
I'd love to hear from you...