Does Size Matter in the Art World?

[Bill_1856]

Without commenting on the content of large images in general, I have to ask: has the recent ability to supply very large, technically fine, color photographic images tended to level the prices which galleries can charge, compared to paintings? And perhaps make them more attractive for curators to present on the walls of museums (compared to the 8x10s of Weston and the 16x20s of Adams)?

[mrpengun]

Short answer is yes.
But it is worth noting that many of current photographers creating really, really big prints (40"x60" and above)--especially the German "Neo-Modernists" such as Gursky, Struth, Ruff, Hoefer, etc-- are also frequently lumped into the "Contemporary Art" world, rather the "Fine-Art Photography".
The staples of big, big prints, even those like Jeff Wall who are very turned into photographic history with their work, get their work promoted into Contemporary Art usually in order to make more money.
That said, however, it is worth noting that the second most valuable work ever sold at auction was one of Steichen's Moonlight Ponds.
(The first was 99cents by Gursky).

[Walter Calahan]

depends on which world you play in

HA!

[percepts]

A big corporation that wants some contemporary artwork to put on the walls of its entrance lobby and board room isn't going to be looking for a 10x8 black and white print. It might however buy some of these http://www.chrisjordan.com/ which creates the impression that they are worried about the environment which they may be.

So the question is are Chris Jordans prints that big because they need to be? Well in his case I would certainly say yes. Why? Because if you wan't to influence the big corporations who have influence over consumption and waste, then make your works big enough to make them attractive to that sort of buyer. I think his works are very clever in that they illustrate his point very well through their sheer size and content which needs to be that big to make each single occurence resolvable by the human eye. And at the same time making them big enough to be desirable as a work to be placed prominently in a public space or coporation offices.

So what is it about anyones work that makes it worthy of being printed that large? If it is simply fine art and has nothing to say aside from its own beauty, then it really doesn't need to be very big save for filling wallspace.

p.s. The cynical answer: People who have a bigger space on their wall to fill usually have more disposable money to fill it with.

[QT Luong]

Yes, I believe the large size of modern prints has been integral in photography gaining prominence in the art/gallery/museum world. Nowadays, even photographs from 35mm film are often enlarged to 30x40 and beyond. At the group show I attended in Telluride, Aaron Huey, an emerging photographer, had a print 200 inch wide. He learned to use a 8x10 camera for the circumstance. Needless to say, his show was more eye catching than Balog's and mine (we had roughly 24x36 prints). For a contrarian view, listen to Shore at: http://www.theartnewspaper.tv/content.php?vid=544

[SamReeves]

35mm to 30x40? Is that with help from Photoshop? :eek:

Otherwise you'd be looking at basketball sized grain with a darkroom made print.

In any case size shouldn't matter, but an old professor of mine at college once said "if it sucks, make it big." :p

[Drew Wiley]

Darkroom prints are capable of finer detail than digital, especially from large format
originals. Anyone who thinks otherwise has sloppy work in mind. Digital can be more
convenient for small originals, but you can't put detail into the print that doesn't exist
in the original capture. A 30x40 from 8x10 is capable of great detail - that's one reason
reason I mainly shoot this format. People get their noses into the print and discover all kinds of things. Forget all that bull about "normal viewing distance". But when you get
bigger than 40x60 the commercial world is probably going to splice digital output. I think a lot of this is a passing fad in the museum set and so forth. So many people are
starting to do it that it will inevitably lose its impact - the haute art world is extremely fickle - and the next exciting thing will probably be 35mm contact prints turned into postage stamps!

[monkeymon]

http://www.intofoc.us/storage/ApoPlanar105cm914-6.jpg

[mrpengun]

35mm to 30x40? Is that with help from Photoshop? :eek:

Otherwise you'd be looking at basketball sized grain with a darkroom made print.

In any case size shouldn't matter, but an old professor of mine at college once said "if it sucks, make it big." :p

I worked with a photographer who would make 40x60" prints from 35mm slides and B&W. He (well, his printer) would first make a 4x5 interneg and, using that, make either a print or another, larger interneg. They definitely had some grain, but I wouldn't say they were especially grainy.

His work sells for $40,000 now, so he must be doing something right :-)

[sanchi heuser]

Some months ago I visited an exhibition in Krefeld, Germany.
Photographs made by Andreas Gursky.
Only a few photographs were printed large size, the rest was printed in smaller formats (for example 17" x 24"). I liked that very much. The photographs kept their
amazing quality.
See more:

http://www.metropolism.com/reviews/andreas-gursky-a-question-of-siz/

It was planned to show the exhibition in Stockholm, Sweden and in
Vancouver, Canada.

sanchi

[Richard M. Coda]

Drew: I agree (and hope you are right about the passing fad).

Monkeymon: Very Funny!

[Drew Wiley]

I was thinking that if Michaelangelo was alive today he would be using some sort of
CAD program with an automated CNC engraving machine to sculpt the Pieta out of
giant styrofoam blocks in an edition of 50. Ten years later they'd all end up in recycle. And while the images of Gursky and so forth are undeniably interesting, I
don't personally see anything resembling genius, but merely a new application for
visual strategies used by painters for some time. And given the relatively fugitive
nature of the prints, the prices being paid border on insanity and merely inform me
of a pattern of conspicuous consumption - financial waste just to impress your peers
that you are capable of throwing money away, like wearing a fifty grand pair of high
heels just once to a party. That, combined with the novelty of big spliced digital
technology - which will indeed be routine and passe very soon - seems to be driving
the current hype. When something resembling Photoshop was just beginning, I was
visiting a commercial lab specializing in expensive pigment prints. A deservedly
famous Life magazine photographer decided he was finally going to make his mark
on modern art, so switched his style at the end of his life from 35mm street work
to the studio, a large camera and strobe, and paid some computer type a lot of money to do digital manipulations of images which looked like film imitations of
Marchell Duchamp paintings. I felt sorry for the guy, and nowadays every school kid
would just roll his eyes, because everyone in third grade knows how to do more
sophisticated digital tricks than that. But at the time, everyone in the lab thought it
was hot stuff and would sell for tons. It looked stupid to me from the start.

[John Kasaian]

My bride's cousin's husband's name is Art.
In Art's world, he likes doing things on a grand scale.
So size really does matter in Art's world. :D

[Maris Rusis]

Size matters for many reasons not the least of which is the opportunity for viewers to contemplate the tension between bigness and grandeur versus coarseness and vulgarity.

[Turner Reich]

I wonder if in the United States, with a huge use and waste history, the larger prints are more readily available than in other countries?

BTW, the largest trays I have are 20X24 inch and I have not used them, they are brand new stainless steel. They are "Leedal"?, anyway they have an L in a circle in the middle. 16X20 is the largest I do comfortably, what about you folk?

[John Kasaian]

I wonder if in the United States, with a huge use and waste history, the larger prints are more readily available than in other countries?

BTW, the largest trays I have are 20X24 inch and I have not used them, they are brand new stainless steel. They are "Leedal"?, anyway they have an L in a circle in the middle. 16X20 is the largest I do comfortably, what about you folk?

From a purely decorative stance, I think that a matted 11x14 is about the largest size photograph that fits in most homes. For exhibitions, I think 16x20 or 20x24 is appropriate in some venues and for some subjects---maybe even larger (but I shoot a lot of 8x10 and the details revealed in an 8x10 blown up is truly amazing to my eyes!)

[Turner Reich]

I think John is correct, the average, whatever that is, size home is perfect for 11x14 inch prints, I've see larger sizes in say 16x20 and they begin to make the home look like it was decorated by a store designer.

John, do you printed the 8x10 negatives to a size smaller than 16x20? I take it you have an enlarger capable of 8x10? That must be very nice.

[Bill_1856]

I think the average, whatever that is, size home is perfect for 11x14 inch prints, I've see larger sizes in say 16x20 and they begin to make the home look like it was decorated by a store designer.

In that case, my abode would look best with 4x5 contacts on the walls.:D
But seriously, folks, have you not seen the size of all those McMansions -- and these are the people who can afford to cover their walls with fine-artwork. I think that 16x20 would just be the starting point. Few of the paintings displayed in Art Galleries which I've ever visited are even that small.

[Bruce Watson]

It's pretty clear to anyone who walks into galleries that people want big art. Paintings have been fairly big for centuries. It's unusual to see paintings as small as 16 x 20 inches. People who want them find places to hang them.

Photographs have a history of being small. In the beginning they were limited to contact prints. It's not because people wanted small art. It's because photographers of the time were limited by the technology of the time. If they wanted to make big prints they had to make big plates. Thus began the tradition of photographs being small.

But just because photography started out that way (small prints) doesn't mean it has to stay that way. As the technology improved prints got bigger. And it continues on today.

Modern photographers have choice. Photographers who prefer to continue the old tradition of small contact prints can continue to make them. Photographers who prefer to take advantage of modern technology can make prints as big as oil paintings, perhaps starting a new tradition.

It's all good as far as I'm concerned. But it certainly does seem that being able to make prints as big as oil paintings have always been is opening some doors to photography that have been closed to it up till now. And that, I think, is a very good thing.

[John Kasaian]

Turner Reich,
I can haul the old Elwood out of storage for enlarging 8x10 negs, but I stick with contact printing for the most part (after awhile, an 8x10 contact becomes "intimate" looking) and there's my conundrum: I find that for my personal enjoyment I prefer 8x10contacts to 11x14 enlargements of 8x10 negatives.

Bruce Watson,
I can enlarge an 8x10 negative as large as I want using 1930's technology. Only limitations being the physical demensions of the dark room, easel, trays and paper :)

Bill 1856,
I've forgotten about those McMansions! I've seen some quite large photographs on the walls of some of my friend's homes but interestingly all the "jumbo" photos I can remember were very fine portraits of their children---which has to make me wonder about the psychological effects of growning up in a home where the kid's images on the wall are larger than they are?

[Bruce Watson]

Bruce Watson,
I can enlarge an 8x10 negative as large as I want using 1930's technology. Only limitations being the physical dimensions of the dark room, easel, trays and paper :)

My point exactly. By the 1930s the technology has improved to the point where you could. You had silver gelatin papers too. And film! Things were looking up by then for sure.

But just a few decades earlier in the mid to late 18oos, it was glass plates and contact prints, wasn't it? Carlton Watkins and William Henry Jackson were carting around huge glass plates to the western US as late as the 1870s, so they could then make those 16x20 prints. I don't think they would have subjected themselves to that kind of pain, trouble, and expense if they could have satisfied themselves (and their clients/customers) with 8x10s.

[mrpengun]

My point exactly. By the 1930s the technology has improved to the point where you could. You had silver gelatin papers too. And film! Things were looking up by then for sure.

But just a few decades earlier in the mid to late 18oos, it was glass plates and contact prints, wasn't it? Carlton Watkins and William Henry Jackson were carting around huge glass plates to the western US as late as the 1870s, so they could then make those 16x20 prints. I don't think they would have subjected themselves to that kind of pain, trouble, and expense if they could have satisfied themselves (and their clients/customers) with 8x10s.

One point to John Kasaian:

until recently, there were extreme limitations of how big you could print due to available papers. One of the reason why Jeff Wall's work always consisted of multiple transparency sheets was because there were not any printers big enough.

re: Watkins, Jackson & mammoth plates: While yes, there was a push to make plates as big as possible, I think it should be noted that 16x20 would now be considered small.
It reminds me a scene from one of the "Fistful of Dollars" triology, where Clint Eastwood has to talk to an old man who has gone crazy because "the railway lines are just making life too fast" :-)
all of our contemporary arguments "things so big, too fast, landscape used to be nicer, etc" are nothing new.

[tgtaylor]

I think John is correct, the average, whatever that is, size home is perfect for 11x14 inch prints, I've see larger sizes in say 16x20 and they begin to make the home look like it was decorated by a store designer...

I respectfully disagree with John and Turner on this. I live in a relatively small apartment (900 ft^2). When I first moved in I placed two 11x14 prints (matted and framed to 16x20) on the living room wall opposite the main sofa. From the sofa I couldn't really see the prints well enough to admire them without getting up and moving closer. I reprinted both prints to 16x20 and matted and framed both to 22x28. Now I can comfortably view and admire both from the sofa.

I have found the 11x14's to fit well in the dining room alcove that many apartments have and in the halls.

Thomas

[Drew Wiley]

Back when Carmel was the center of the West Coast photo market, the rule of thumb was not to hang anything in a gallery which people couldn't carry under their
arm. This is because most clients were tourists arriving in cars. Around the same time you had outfits like Jay Maisel and Color Corp of America making huge DT prints for the corporate market. Then the "new color" photographers arrived making
5X7 and 8x10 chromogenic contact prints, often of miserable technical quality. I have a mongraph from the era in which the critic exclaims how refeshing little prints
are, which force the viewer up close and intimate like tiny jewels. All this was sheer
bull of course, because just as soon as these particular photographers got some grants or possibly sales, they were having professional enlargements made, in one
case (Meyerowitz), 30X40's. The fact is, there are no set rules to this business.
The other day on Antiques Roadshow some dude appraised a larger painting by the
same artist below the smaller similar one because less people could accomodate a
big painting on their walls, even though this was spoken in the context of those who
could hypothetically afford a 50 to 75 thousand dollar painting. And the local shops
who are commercially printing really, really big digital prints locally are doing it
exclusively for the public venue (museum shows, etc). My own custom is to make
the print in the size that best suits the specific image. I've got prints right now in
my darkroom awaiting mounting all the way for 8x10 to 30X40. To hell with the rules - do what feels artistically comfortable to you and is realistically practical,
and give the next guy that same freedom of choice.

[John Kasaian]

My point exactly. By the 1930s the technology has improved to the point where you could. You had silver gelatin papers too. And film! Things were looking up by then for sure.

But just a few decades earlier in the mid to late 18oos, it was glass plates and contact prints, wasn't it? Carlton Watkins and William Henry Jackson were carting around huge glass plates to the western US as late as the 1870s, so they could then make those 16x20 prints. I don't think they would have subjected themselves to that kind of pain, trouble, and expense if they could have satisfied themselves (and their clients/customers) with 8x10s.

I think the purpose many of these large contacts off glass plates served were similar to what the larger banquet formats were used for, namely to record subjects of considerable commercial or historical importance for display in the museum or office building and rarely within a home. Many were joined into huge murals.

Was it in the 70's or 80's there was photographic wall paper where you could paper one wall of your home to look like the outdoors (I seem to recall one such wall in a small apartment which was papered to look like the room opened up to a blazing autumn forest!) Huge images do have a place and a purpose and technology to make them cost effective is improving all the time. But I'm not going to give up my elderly Elwood. While I don't enlarge much anymore, I enjoy the creative process it provides.:)

[John Kasaian]

I respectfully disagree with John and Turner on this. I live in a relatively small apartment (900 ft^2). When I first moved in I placed two 11x14 prints (matted and framed to 16x20) on the living room wall opposite the main sofa. From the sofa I couldn't really see the prints well enough to admire them without getting up and moving closer. I reprinted both prints to 16x20 and matted and framed both to 22x28. Now I can comfortably view and admire both from the sofa.

I have found the 11x14's to fit well in the dining room alcove that many apartments have and in the halls.

Thomas

Thomas,
My comment was a very general statement. Of course the size of the room is a significant contributing factor!:)

[Bruce Watson]

I think the purpose many of these large contacts off glass plates served were similar to what the larger banquet formats were used for, namely to record subjects of considerable commercial or historical importance for display in the museum or office building and rarely within a home.

Perhaps. I've got a 16x20 print of my great-grandfather, his wife, and kids (my grandmother at 2 or 3, so it was made or or about 1900). Clearly a contact print off a glass plate. And these people were farmers on the TN/VA boarder. The house it used to hang in wasn't large by any means. I don't know the story of it, but I suspect it was just a traveling photographer out selling his wares. My family certainly has little to no commercial or historical importance!

[Richard M. Coda]

To hell with the rules - do what feels artistically comfortable to you and is realistically practical,
and give the next guy that same freedom of choice.

Beautiful!

[Acheron Photography]

Some months ago I visited an exhibition in Krefeld, Germany.
Photographs made by Andreas Gursky.
Only a few photographs were printed large size, the rest was printed in smaller formats (for example 17" x 24"). I liked that very much. The photographs kept their amazing quality.

Interesting comment. I have a high opinion of Gursky in general, but when I have seen some of his things printed small - the Grand Prix images in particular - I think that they come off rather less well.

[drew.saunders]

I just went to the Adams/O'Keeffe exhibit at the San Francisco MOMA, and one thing that struck me was how small many of O'Keeffe's paintings were. Refreshingly small and intimate, on the order of 5x8 to 16x20 or thereabouts for most of her work.

The photos by Adams and others (they had a few photos and paintings of contemporaries to Adams and O'Keeffe) tended to be smaller than is usually presented, even including some 4x5 contact prints. I don't think more than a couple photos larger than 16x20 were presented.

It was mentioned in some of the wall text that, although O'Keeffe didn't photograph (much), she was clearly influenced in style and subject matter by her interactions with many of the Western photographers (and one Eastern husband photographer) of the time. Perhaps that's what led her to smaller paintings that could more easily be held in the hands?

Also at the SFMOMA is an exhibit on the 50th anniversary of Robert Frank's "The Americans," with fairly large enlargements (I think 11x14, but I could be wrong) of the 83 images used in the book. Since they're all from a "miniature" camera (Frank's term in his Guggenheim application, honest!), they tend to be grainy and a bit overly enlarged, but still seemed an appropriate size for a museum show.

Anyway, both are great exhibits and well worth the trip.

[Arne Croell]

Was it in the 70's or 80's there was photographic wall paper where you could paper one wall of your home to look like the outdoors (I seem to recall one such wall in a small apartment which was papered to look like the room opened up to a blazing autumn forest!) Huge images do have a place and a purpose and technology to make them cost effective is improving all the time.

Well, they're back! I just saw one (photo wallpaper that is) a few weeks ago in a new expensive restaurant in Atlanta Airport, Terminal E, see http://www.oneflewsouthatl.com/atmosphere.html

[nathanm]

My feeling is that if it is physically possible to inspect a print close up then don't enlarge it to the point where meaningful detail is lost. If there's a print that takes up a whole wall that's cool, but if I walk up to it and it becomes an abstract mess of blobs, well it's not so cool. But if I can't walk up to view it close because it's on a high wall then it's fine. Photography is more limited in this regard whereas a painting always has the built-in micro detail of the brush strokes themselves and the surface of the substrate.

[Leonard Metcalf]

Some images work well large, and others don't. As an artist you should consider your output size in a similar vein to composition, paper choice, tone, framing etc. Size does matter and it is an important choice. When creating an artwork it also important to consider its intended viewing place or its home. Large prints need large spaces to work effectively. You need to be able to get far enough away from them to see the whole image, and then be able to walk up to them to contemplate them further.

Size matters...

[Michael Alpert]

Art is particular and not especially responsive to social norms. To think in general terms about the size of artwork is to think about the Culture Industry, which is altogether different. When art becomes decoration and kitsch, it is unescapably decoration and kitsch. This one-way street includes some large decorations created by very well-known "artists."

[Toyon]

Art is particular and not especially responsive to social norms. To think in general terms about the size of artwork is to think about the Culture Industry, which is altogether different. When art becomes decoration and kitsch, it is unescapably decoration and kitsch. This one-way street includes some large decorations created by very well-known "artists."

Can you expand on that? Particularly, what is the "culture industry" and what sort of decorations have been made by very well known "artists"? Are you thinking of Ansel Adams decorative wall screens? or coffee cans?

[Michael Alpert]

Toyon,

I was obliquely referring to some of the photographers that mrpengun mentioned before. When an artist makes very suave giant photographs of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, he is, apparently, intending to sell expensive work that will decorate corporate headquarters. At least that is my assumption, especially when the same photographer continues to make huge images that have everything to do with economic power. (Any implied critique of monopoly capitalism is greeted with a wink and a nod.) Modernist critics like Michael Fried can then write about the "antitheatricality" and "presentness" of such works, as if these artists were philosophers with a shutter. This world of commerce is the Culture Industry that Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno recognized as a force that is alien (but not entirely antithetical) to art. Saint Ansel and other older artists were amateurs at this sort of thing. Think Hollywood.

[Bill_1856]

Well said, Michael!

[sanchi heuser]

Interesting comment. I have a high opinion of Gursky in general, but when I have seen some of his things printed small - the Grand Prix images in particular - I think that they come off rather less well.

Yes,

some pictures are better printed large, the picture with architecture of course
and the ones mounted together digital.

At the time I visited the exhibition in Krefeld, there were only a few people there
and it was possible to get close to the picture and watch all the details
all the time. Maybe this was the reason why it was a real pleasure for me.


sanchi

[Kirk Gittings]

Modernist critics like Michael Fried can then write about the "antitheatricality" and "presentness" of such works, as if these artists were philosophers with a shutter. This world of commerce is the Culture Industry that Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno recognized as a force that is alien (but not entirely antithetical) to art. Saint Ansel and other older artists were amateurs at this sort of thing. Think Hollywood.Michael Alpert

Well said Michael. It seems to me.....Art as commerce used to be a simple necessity for artists to master to make a living. But, for some high profile photographers, that has become the ideological goal as well. Commerce as art as commerce has taken the center stage of fine art photography.