James Elkins is the E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the author of several books, including Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students and The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing.

Elkins has a particular fascination with how we look at things, from paintings to everyday objects. His new series on that subject for the Huffington Post opened with How to Look at a Mondrian.

The second column in the series is How Long Does it Take To Look at a Painting?, in which he considers the time individuals devote to looking at a painting, from the cursory (the Louvre reports that people look at the Mona Lisa for an average of 15 seconds) to the kind of extended interaction with a painting that takes place over the course of a lifetime.

He focuses in particular on a beautiful little 15th Century devotional painting, Weeping Madonna by Dieric Bouts.

(His description of the painting, particularly the handling of the eyes, prompted me to think of another painting, very different in some ways, similar in others, by Rogier van der Weyden.)

Elkins invites comments on the post (login necessary) from readers who have had experiences with spending long periods gazing at a painting, getting lost in the work, or returning to it repeatedly.

Donald Pittenger has posted a wonderful Sorolla Museum: Pictorial Report from his recent visit to Madrid on his blog Art Contrarian.

The Museo Sorolla, unlike a number of museums for individual artists that consist of their house and/or studio arranged as much as possible as it was when in use by the artist, also houses numerous works by Sorolla.

The studio setup includes not only his easels and palettes, but the the painting Sorolla was working on when he suffered the stroke that left him unable to continue.

Pittenger has chronicled his visit to the museum with a number of photographs of the house and studio, along with details of some of the paintings, which he has been kind enough to post in fairly high resolution.

The latter include a rare treat, an unfinished work, in which we see some parts finished in Sorolla’s mature style, side by side with passages that are still in the early stages of development; giving us a glimpse of his working methods.

For more, see my post on Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida.

Douglas Martenson studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he now teaches painting. He is also a lecturer in Drawing at the PennDesign School at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the galleries on his website, you’ll find his recent work devoted to landscapes, architectural exteriors and room interiors.

I find his room interiors, of which there are additional examples in the “More Paintings” section of his site, particularly appealing. Often staged at night with table lamps providing pools of light and interesting relationships between objects and shadows, his interiors have a wonderfully tactile quality, a vibrant suggestion of the materials and surfaces of the household objects, and a naturalistic feeling overall.

He also focuses frequently on single windows, both from inside and outside, offering up fascinating explorations of light and shadow in the process.

His landscape subjects tend toward spare, open vistas of sea edge and field, with skies often dominant.

As you go back in time in “More Paintings” and “Early Work”, you’ll find more figures in interiors, as well as citscapes.

Don’t miss the Recent Drawings section, in which he explores interiors, objects and figures.

Martenson’s work is currently the subject of a show at the Gross McCleaf Gallery here in Philadelphia, and the gallery has a number of his works previewed on their website. The show is on display until November 30, 2010.