Categories
Art Education

Slow Art: Kirchner’s Street at Schöneberg City Park

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street at Schöneberg City Park, 1912-13 (detail). Oil on canvas. Gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley. Photo credit Larry Sanders
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street at Schöneberg City Park, 1912-13. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley. Photo credit Larry Sanders

Have you ever looked at a work of art for a half-hour straight?

In college, one of my favorite art history professors required that we spend at least a half-hour sitting in front of the work of art we were researching and sketch it, getting intimate with the figures, setting, lines and brushstrokes within it, and immersing ourselves in the choices the artist made. While looking for forty-five minutes at Kirchner’s Street at Schöneberg City Park, that was exactly what I did.