Most Museum-Goers Spend Just 10 Seconds Per Painting

In his new book First Blush: People's Intuitive Reactions to Famous Art, Dan Hill examines how we look at artwork, using an experimental approach that combines eye tracking with facial coding.

Image Courtesy Dan Hill, Sensory Logic

Facial coding involves the careful tracking of minute facial expressions that animate the face of a viewer while reacting to a stimulus. As we process images through our brains, the information passes through an emotional filter before we can rationalize what we're seeing.

Hill uses a market-research approach to analyzing our response to art. In a controlled experimental setting, he invites viewers to respond to a variety of famous paintings and photographs. The book is an informally written summary of his experimental results.

Image Courtesy Dan Hill, Sensory Logic

He makes some observations that should interest curators and us museum-goers. First, viewers have short attention spans. The best chance to hook someone's attention is in the first three seconds. After that there's a dramatic fall-off that never really bounces back.

Hill says: "an art work's window of opportunity for creating an emotional connection is typically super brief." After spending many hours in many different museums carefully watching how people interact with the art on the walls, he concludes that the average viewing time per painting in an art museum is about 10 seconds: "Most often, you're likely to look at an artwork for four seconds before taking five seconds to read the plaque (i.e., "tombstone") describing the work's title, the artist's name, and so forth. Then if still interested, you'll glance back at the artwork for another second, before moving on. The vast majority of museum viewers, he observes, read at most twenty words of the museum caption before their attention falters.
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On Amazon: First Blush: People's Intuitive Reactions to Famous Art

Al Parker Book Review

In recent years, the leading midcentury American illustrators, such as Tom Lovell, Coby Whitmore, Harry Anderson, and Albert Dorne are finally being represented with well-illustrated monographs.

Now it's Al Parker's turn. This edition by Auad Publishing showcases the work of one of the chief innovators of American illustration.



Parker pioneered the trend for the designed title spread in the glossy women's magazines.



Rather than compositions that fit neatly in a rectangular shape, these inviting openers combine hand-drawn headlines with an intriguing tagline and an illustration that promises drama.



Parker was always original in his use of posing, his color schemes and his approaches to storytelling.

None other than Norman Rockwell wrote him a fan letter, and said, "While the rest of us are working knee-deep in a groove, (Al Parker is) forever changing and improving."

Most of the book is devoted to visuals, including reproductions of original art, tearsheets, and comparisons between photo reference and final art.



The text includes personal reflections by Parker's son Kit, an article about Parker written by Stephanie Plunkett, thoughts about his artistry by David Apatoff, and a reprint of a 1964 interview.

Al Parker: Illustrator, Innovator is 9 x 12 inches, 208 pages, $44.95
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Related books:
Albert Dorne: Master Illustrator
Tom Lovell—Illustrator
Coby Whitmore: Artist and Illustrator
The Art of Harry Anderson
The Art of Jon Whitcomb
Henry Patrick Raleigh: The Confident Illustrator
Auad Publishing
Previously:
Al Parker at the Rockwell Museum

New Book on Austin Briggs

Austin Briggs is one of my favorite illustrators of the mid-20th century, based on what I have read about him in the Famous Artists Course and Masters of American Illustration.

So I was delighted to receive a copy of the new art book Austin Briggs: The Consummate Illustrator, published by Auad Publishing, which previously produced the books on Robert Fawcett and Albert Dorne.

Austin Briggs was born in a railroad car and raised on a farm with no books and no art. His mother never really understood him and his father and his sister died when he was young.

He came to New York as a teenager with a knack for drawing, but was so eager to get started working professionally that he skipped the chance to study in art school.

He parlayed his drawing skills into some pen and ink illustrations, but found to his dismay that art directors in the early 1930s didn't want to buy pen and ink anymore.



So he assisted Alex Raymond, a comic artist his age who had just invented Flash Gordon and other comic properties, and who needed help with the workload. Most of his contributions are uncredited.



After the war years were over, the magazines blossomed with realistic, color illustrations. Briggs went back to basics, learning the skills he would need to master color and painting.



He worked in many media, creating dramatic illustrations, car ads, and romantic clinches. They were inventive and original, and always based on solid drawing.



After the public became jaded with full color, realistic art, he shook up the illustration world by returning to his roots and doing black and white drawings. Even major advertising accounts bought into the casual look.

They look easy to do, but Briggs brought a craftsman's sense of thoroughness to the job, generating many preliminary studies and alternate versions.

Although the book is mostly devoted to high quality reproductions of the art, the introductory text is excellent, too. The book was written by David Apatoff, the author of the blog Illustration Art, and he goes into the gripping story of Briggs' life, his philosophy, and his working methods.
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Austin Briggs: The Consummate Illustrator from Auad Publishing (9 x 12 inches, hardback, 160 pages, full color, $34.95).

Briggs is also covered in a chapter of Masters of American Illustration: 41 Illustrators and How They Worked

Previous posts on GurneyJourney about Briggs

'I Went to the Morgues'

The Illustrated Press has released a new book on Rafael De Soto, who painted colorful scenes of crime and murder for the popular magazines.  

As with other monographs in this series, this one begins with a biography. It tells of his origins in Puerto Rico and his journey to New York to break into the illustration market.



The images are made both from original art and rare tearsheets, and most of the book is devoted to large reproductions of the artwork.

De Soto said: "The experience that I had in the pulps was unbelievable because I had to paint the most gruesome things that anyone can think up to attract the attention of the public." 

"To paint those kinds of covers I needed to do a lot of reference work. I went to the morgues and they pulled out girls' bodies for me to study! I went to the autopsies! This was not in my nature at all, but that's what I painted and that is the kind of stuff people wanted to read about in those days. I am a man of peace, who would rather be painting chapels than making those things."

At one point a friend of his who was a priest visited him. Troubled by the images he was painting, the priest asked De Soto why he didn't paint beautiful things. "Nobody buys my paintings of beautiful things," he answered.

The Art of Rafael De Soto is written by pulp expert David Saunders and published by the Illustrated Press. It's 224 pages, 9x12 inches, hardcover with dust jacket and priced at $44.95
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Previous books in the series on Coby Whitmore, Tom Lovell, and Harry Anderson

David Webb's book "Painting in Watercolor"

I'm pleased that David Webb included my little donut-jar painting in his instructional book on watercolor painting.

Watercolor is a subject that demands both practical information and guiding theory. Webb starts out with a thorough chapter on tools and materials, and then he shows a variety of techniques, such as gradated washes, wet on wet, wet on dry, and drybrush.

He demonstrates each of these techniques using step-by-step examples, and includes a few sidebars explaining troubleshooting solutions for problems that can happen, such as the paint smearing when the masking fluid is removed.

In the back of the book he invites well-known watercolorists such as Thomas Schaller, Jane Freeman, and John Lovett to explain their unique approaches in more detail.

Throughout the book, the text and captions are thoughtfully integrated with the visuals. Webb lists materials used in a given demo and gives helpful examples of each painting strategy.

The artwork is well photographed and the 256-page hardbound, 9x12-inch book is attractively designed and printed.


The emphasis is on a loose, colorful, and relaxed approach to the medium. Both the beginner and the experienced painter will find much inspiration and useful advice.

Painting in Watercolor: The Indispensable Guide

Catalog Review: American Pre-Raphaelites

Today the National Gallery in Washington opens the exhibition "American Pre-Raphaelites: Radical Realists."

John William Hill, Bird's Nest and Dog Roses, 1867
watercolor, gouache, and graphite

The exhibit examines a group of American artists that were inspired by the English critic John Ruskin. Ruskin advocated that young artists should go to Nature ‘rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.’ 

Thomas Charles Farrer, Mount Tom, 1865, oil on canvas,

The show includes more than 90 works of art, including oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings, some never before exhibited. One of the American leaders of the movement was English expatriate Thomas Charles Farrer, who was instrumental in spreading Ruskin's philosophy of close observation of nature.

Oddly enough, the curators left out Asher B. Durand from the selection of exhibited artists. He was a central figure in advocating truth-to-nature philosophies and practices, at least as much as Ruskin was. Although Durand didn't mention Ruskin by name in his Letters on Landscape Painting, he exemplified many of Ruskin's philosophies in his careful studies of trees and landscapes, and he gave Ruskin's ideas his own American slant. Durand exhibited these studies to a rising generation of landscape painters at the National Academy of Design in New York, where he was president from 1845-1861. Contrary to the impression left by the catalog essay, which quotes critics accusing Durand of belonging to a "past age and a dead system," in fact he remained an influential advocate of close observation, celebrated and beloved by younger artists until his death in 1886.

Henry Roderick Newman, Study of Elms, 1866, watercolor, 17 x 19 in.

The catalog begins with seven essays examining roots of the truth-to-nature philosophies, the role of photography in their work, their interest in still life painting, and the iconography of American Pre-Raphaelites.

Charles Herbert Moore, Hudson River, Above Catskill

One of the authors devotes twenty pages to the idea that some of the landscape paintings contain veiled references to the Civil War, Abolitionism, and other hidden political agendas. For example, the boat pulled up on shore in Charles Herbert Moore's painting Hudson River, Above Catskill is described as a "wrecked or stranded boat emblematic of a foundered ship of state and the associated fears for and even a loss of faith in the American corporate enterprise during and following the Civil War."

While some artists were certainly painting landscapes with political overtones during this period, I'm a bit skeptical of some of these interpretations. In the case of the Moore landscape above, maybe the boat was there because someone just beached his rowboat above the high tide line (the Hudson River above Catskill is tidal).

William Trost Richards Corner of the Woods,
1864, graphite, 23 x 17.5 in.

I wish the catalog's editors had devoted less page space to political theories (why not publish those online?) and instead tell the factual and humorous stories of the artists. What logistical challenges did they face, and what practical methods did they use? There are a lot of vivid, first-hand accounts in letters and journals to draw upon. I also wish the editors would consult practicing painters and conservators to give themselves more of a grounding in the concerns the actual artists faced.

Or better yet, cut back on the text and devote more pages to reproductions of artwork.

John William Hill, Apple Blossoms, watercolor, 1874, 9 x 15.5 in.

Despite those quibbles, the 312-page catalog is worth the cost ($65 list, $42 on Amazon) for the 210 color illustrations. There are high quality reproductions of all the works in the show, plus several closeups.

Fidelia Bridges, Study of Ferns, oil on board, 10 x 12 in.

I was especially impressed with the 11 works by William Trost Richards and the six samples by Fidelia Bridges. The back of the book includes an exhibition checklist, a timeline, artist biographies, notes, and index.
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Catalog: The American Pre-Raphaelites: Radical Realists on Amazon
Exhibition: American Pre-Raphaelites: Radical Realists will be up through July 21, 2019.