Rubens, Self-Portrait,1638
I remember going to the Uffizi 20 years ago, and tourists were walking around like zombies taking video footage of the entire experience, not pausing to look at the work. I’m in favor of tolerating hybrid spectatorship, where you look at the work and maybe take a photo as well. Obviously, going too far in either direction is also not great: If you’re only experiencing something through mediation, why are you there? And the “slow looking” movement comes across as pretty conservative—it’s excessively reverential and technophobic. I want to make a case for both being possible, for being with your phone as a way of close looking.
It was 1994.
We had left home early in order to arrive when the doors of The Toledo Museum of Art opened.
It was The Age of Rubens exhibition.
Brushstrokes. I can still see the light above the painting revealing the individual furrows created by the individual hairs of the brush that Rubens had held to paint that glove 350 years prior to that moment. We were there nearly all day, but kept coming back to that painting to gaze in astonishment at time, visibly streaked across that canvas.
Transfixed.
On the way home we stopped for dinner at a restaurant that had bagna cauda on the menu. I can still hear her faint giggle as she leaned in, allowing me to gently dab the glistening olive oil from her chin with my starched white napkin, her eyes fixed on mine as she continued chewing and smiling.
What a grand day. No pictures were taken. None were needed.
