What does the observation of people walking have to do with interpreting
paintings or other artworks, past or present? Can an old painting be
‘activated’ or invite the viewer to participate and experience it more
actively? In this paper, I discuss some examples in which my own art
research practice has found in bodily movements unexpected sources and
ways to interpret paintings of the nineteenth and twentieth century,
useful for expanding the analysis and understanding of the events in
images. In this sense, I challenge the contemporary idea of an explicit
viewer activating an artwork by exploring its utility when engaging art
pieces of other time periods. I argue, without proposing a formula valid
for every form of art, that bodily experiences like walking,
observation exercises of bodies in motion, and even dance, might have a
hermeneutical value when interrogating artworks. This approach offers
new challenging ways of practicing art historical research and it
encourages researchers to recognise these bodily experiences within the
frame of their academic discourse.