The Crisis of Attention: How Speed Undermines Art Appreciation

The contemporary attention crisis affects how we view art, with museum visitors spending an average of 15–30 seconds per artwork, according to studies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, and the Tate Gallery. Mary Acton's book "Guardare un quadro" advocates for slow looking, emphasizing that paintings require time to decode internal relations, spatial constructions, and chromatic tensions. The article argues that platforms like Netflix, which allow accelerated playback, prioritize quantity over quality of aesthetic experience. Works by Mark Rothko and Botticelli demand sustained contemplation to reveal their full impact. The author, Alessandro Cutonilli, suggests that the most radical act today is to pause before a single image long enough to let it speak.