Abstract

Listening to the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D-major by Brahms takes twenty-two minutes. It varies a few minutes depending of the soloist and conductor, but the duration is fairly constant. Reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy takes many hours. The duration varies a lot depending on the reader's pace, but reading literature, just as listening to music, takes a considerable amount of time. Looking at a work of visual art, on the other hand, typically takes less than a minute. This may be an exaggeration, but museum studies show that visitors to an art museum usually spend only a few moments in front of the individual work of art. Jeffrey K. Smith and Lisa F. Smith found that visitors to the Metropolitan...