Marginal Revolution got me thinking about the physical dimensions of art. The question, in summary, that they post is: are bigger paintings better? The rough answer is that in general, relatively speaking, bigger is better, but not always and not beyond say the point of impractical display. Sounds reasonable enough.
Although I think most of these points will apply to art in general, let’s just deal with painting for the time being. Let’s also assume that the artist has the financial capability of buying whatever materials necessary to produce the painting, so there is no barrier to purchasing a larger canvas or thirty trillion colors of paint or the finest brushes.
I think at its root, the painter has an idea. They may have an urge, they may be copying, but for whatever reason, they’re starting with an idea to produce something. (Just for prescriptivists‘ sakes, I want you to know that I am aware I am using the term ‘they’ for a singular– this is very common in English, so get used to it.) But the idea becomes malleable to the canvas, not vice versa. For instance, Henri Matisse was a painter by passion and profession, but his later work, consisting of paper layers (see left), conformed to the boards he could manage bed-ridden and working at desks.
Comment on Marginal Revolution:
If you think that artists choose the size of their canvas based on saleability then you likely: (1) have a bunch of landscape paintings in your home; (2) think Normal Rockwell was an artist; and (3) “don’t get” Duchamp. All are of course valid points of view. But any decent post-modernist would choose the best size to express their ideas. Focusing on a lesser-idea just because it would be on a bigger canvas is more landscape-style thinking than art-school-trained kind of thinking.
But here’s a point that doesn’t seem to be acknowledged on MR or elsewhere: an artist usually doesn’t know if they have a particularly great idea before they begin. They may not even be sure they can pull it off. Therefore, the idea that an artist will base their canvas size upon their idea, I think, is not a strong truism, as the author professes. What would be stronger in general is the artist considering the canvas, regardless of the fact that they can purchase any size, and then deriving an idea for the canvas. If I have a 8×10, I am far more likely to paint an icon or a person than a landscape. At 24×32, I am far more likely to paint a starscape or a landscape than a person or people.
In any case, postmodernists hardly have a monopoly on that artistic mission. The objective school of art, deriving from the old objective theory of art (classified by Abrams but finding its way into a lot of other schools), has been around since before Derrida swept us off our feets. Incidentally, I met him when he came to UF in 2001. He was really interesting… when I could understand his words. In any case, I completely believe that art dwells in this objective, end in itself mode.
Many professional artists, who sell their work, may very well have an idea first, or understand the nature of what they want to paint first, but given the economics– that some canvases may sell better than others, it seems that some people are putting the cart before the horse. The canvas seems to come first. What do y’all think? I have some other posts on the subject coming out, but wanted to get the discussion started if there is to be one.
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