Bear in mind that the tradition of fine art evolved in Ye Olden Times Before TikTok, when there was very little to do. Artists poured weeks and months into putting as much thought as possible into a single painting.

These pieces of art are jam-packed with information — clues, commentary, and even some hidden messages. They would have taken months or even years to complete, so we can get a lot of benefits from spending a bit of time “touching the art,” rather than giving in to our more modern inclination to keep scrolling.

The goal of this method is to help you unpack that and experience these pieces of art the way they were meant to be experienced.

Step 1: Find a painting or sculpture that features your topic

Yup, you can use the AI!

List famous paintings and sculptures that in some way involve [an instance of my topic]. I'm especially interested in representative art that has one or more human figures. Don't give too much information about the pieces. I want to draw my own conclusions.

If you’re having a hard time, go broader. Select a new keyword that has to do with your topic and ask again:

List any fine art that in any way has to do with [keyword].

Varying the search terms can help with many of these types of queries. For example, Andy often uses the keywords reefs or ocean life when coral doesn’t turn up much.

Then look it up on Google Images, Bing Images, or — especially helpful for famous art — Wikimedia Commons. When you find your art piece, DON’T READ ABOUT IT!

There will be time to learn about what the artist intended later, but we are trying to help you build your own connection to the artwork.

Step 2: NAME it

Come up with your own title for the work, even if you don’t yet really understand it. You may already know the ‘official’ title, but ignore that. Pick something that makes sense to you based on your first impression.

Step 3: LIST stuff you see

Set a timer for three minutes, and just write write write write. We are trying to notice details here, to take stock of all that there is within in the artwork.

Step 4: tell a STORY

Even if you still don’t fully understand what’s going on in your artwork, try to make sense of what you’re observing with a story.

Step 5: engage your SENSES

Imagine you’re one of the people in the scene. What do you see, hear, smell? What pressure do you feel in your left big toe? What are you noticing, and do you feel any wind on your face? What’s the temperature, and is it the same on all sides of you?

If you’d like to anthropomorphize, imagine you’re an animal or an inanimate object or whatever, and adapt the senses accordingly. You could even place an imaginary person into the scene if there aren’t any obvious candidates.

Step 6: MIMIC the pose

Put your body in the position of the person (or whatever) you’re focusing on.

Seriously, do it. We’ll wait.

Step 7: Make a thought cloud or speech balloon

Imagine that your artwork is a comic, with one of those word bubbles coming from a character’s head. What might it say?

Step 8: Turn it into a movie clip

Imagine that the painting is one frame of a clip from a movie — perhaps 10 or 30 seconds long. What happens just before this? What happens right after?

You can include dialogue or just describe the setting and the action that is happening in your movie clip. Try to include some of the sensory details that you’ve come up with in the previous steps — sounds, smells, textures, proprioception (the feeling of your body in space), as well as just sight.

How can I do this poke if I’m not able to see the artwork?

Interacting with visual artwork isn’t necessarily straightforward for the visually impaired, but here are some suggestions to make this activity easier:

For step 1, you can pretty much use the same process of having an AI list some famous paintings.

Before you do step 2 and name the painting for yourself, you can do step 3. Download the image and upload it to a GPT with the following prompt:

List all of the elements depicted in this artwork. I'm interested in the details as well as the main figures. Don't give too much information about the artist or the broader context, as I'd like to draw my own conclusions.

This should spit out a fairly comprehensive list of all of everything in the picture. If it doesn’t seem interesting, go back to the list you generated in step 1. Otherwise, you should have plenty of details to come up with your own unique name for the painting.