Yoga in Luce is a new monthly program that pairs yoga and art appreciation. Alongside the artworks of the Luce Foundation Center, participants will practice an hour of Vinyasa yoga, a style that prioritizes flowing movement and breath, taught by a credentialed instructor from Flow Yoga Center. Afterward, Luce staff will invite participants to spend 15 minutes taking a focused look at an artwork of their choosing. Our first Yoga in Luce session will be on March 11 at 6pm. Please see the online calendar for more details, including how to register.
You have to give a painting more than a quick glance to appreciate the elegance of a single brushstroke.
But often when I visit a museum I don't have more than a quick glance to spare. A single brushstroke has a lot to compete with: the wall text, the gift shop, the urge to Snapchat a #museumselfie, not to mention the hundreds of other artworks that vie for my attention. With so much to see, it's not surprising that researchers estimate that the average visitor spends only 15-30 seconds looking at a given painting.
The famous art historian Kenneth Clark once said that the proper amount of time to view a painting is the "time it takes to peel and eat an orange." Others argue longer. Personally, I'd feel stuffed and sour if I consumed every painting on a museum trip as slowly as I eat oranges. Now and then, however, I take Clark's suggestion and, for a few minutes, devote my full attention to a single painting. Without fail, the painting rewards my effort and reveals secrets concealed from those in a rush: that oil paint looks three-dimensional up close, how many blues make up an ocean, or there's something timeless in the eyes of devious young boys. These paintings, the ones I've taken the time to sit with, are the ones that stay with me even after I've deleted their pictures from my phone.
Both the challenge and the payoff of intensely focusing on an artwork parallel my experience with practicing yoga. A common yoga class reminder is presence —drowning out concerns of the past moment or the next to fully receive what the current one has to offer. In Yoga in Luce, we'll silence our agendas, our to-do lists, our cell phones to deeply tune in to what we're experiencing in our bodies as we move them through space. Then, with our minds quieted and distractions removed, we'll switch our focus, from physical experience to visual experience, and spend 15 minutes getting lost in a single painting.
