September: Reading about Artists

Five novels and a non-fiction read to immerse you in the world of art

How long can you look at one picture?

Late last year, I read Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Burkeman calculates that the average human life span is about 4,000 weeks though we often assume it’s much longer. The sooner we embrace the limits on our time, work with them rather than against them, the sooner we can relieve ourselves of the subconscious denial that feeds creative neglect.

It was instrumental in changing how I prioritize my time, putting an end to a mindset that kept me from writing and sharing— and sometimes from reading books, too.

It’s often not true that we don’t have time to do the things we value, or to create. But when we have 15 or 30 minutes we could spend doing these things, we can find ourselves impatient with the reality that the more meaningful or creative an activity, the less willingly it consents to being hurried.

Burkeman cites an exercise Harvard art historian Jennifer Roberts requires of her students to develop the power…