Formal (rather than theoretical) issues are not primary in art these days, and so scale is a topic rarely discussed. Why does an object end up being large, small or something in between? Is it merely customary? A matter of the limited availability of manufactured art supplies? The size of a pickup truck’s bed? Is it related to the dimensions of our body—to be held in the hand, or the lap, or to sit on a table or easel and be parallel to the eye? Sculptors include in their bags of tricks the transformation of objects by fashioning them from surprising materials (a chocolate hammer), by making multiples (a thousand chocolate hammers), anthropomorphizing them (a chocolate hammer with eyes and legs), by making them small (two-inch long chocolate hammers) or by making them large (six-foot long chocolate hammers) What does altered size accomplish besides the obvious, that large things are inherently authoritative, and small things are inherently sympathetic?
Seeing something inordinately out of whack with everyday scale can cause us to see that object anew. The early 20th century Russian Constructivists called this phenomenon (with regard to literature) “estrangement.” Another related experience is seeing what previously had only been imagined. The AIDS virus blown up to the size of a piece of fruit in an electron microscope demystifies something miniscule, previously invisible, and overwhelmingly sinister. It allows us to wonder at the awful beauty of our predators. A mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion is one of the most beautiful things we have made in the past hundred years, but it cannot be separated from its dreadfulness. If we make something, no matter how large, aren’t we expressing some form of control over it as the creator? When we make a body-like shape of massive proportions, are we not extending our own modest bodily existence to those enormous levels of effectiveness?
Small scale requires precision, is unforgiving of the slightest error. It is the embodiment of concentrated attention. It is a point in time rather than a narrative. It is often the result of obsessive technique. The limit to miniaturization in science is the size of the tool itself used to make the miniature. The goal is to move electrons easier, faster. In small-scale art the goal is to move the image through the eye with the least waste and greatest intensity. Small-scale art can share—with minimalism and with miniaturization—a preference for reduction, the value of shedding, of maximized apprehension, reduction of the delivery system to virtual molecules of art.
Sometimes we are tricked. Sean McFarland gives us miniature landscapes that are just as huge in their appetite for the world as Richard Misrach’s enormous images. A large wall mural such as Vera Iliatova’s can depict severely curtailed selves and detailed observations. An Indian miniature can contain an entire culture. There is no end to the devilish play of the artist in defeating our expectations.
Disruptions in scale can afford us the opportunity to see anew, to home in on the particular, to tame forces bigger than ourselves, or to make David and Goliath exchange places, among many other provocative effects. We are left with the reminder that it is up to us to decipher the rhetoric of importance or unimportance with great care.
Renny Pritikin
March 2005
