If you can't make 'em good make 'em BIG!
Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 1:06 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00
Or make 'em red!
This is something that I hear periodically but it is something that I don't really agree with.
I'm mainly considering portraiture here, but I'm sure that it works for all genres.
I always used to wonder how a painter decides which size of canvas to reach for when they are beginning a portrait. Over a number of visits to the National Gallery in London (not the Portrait Gallery), I noticed that I was drawn to certain images and I didn't really understand why. Eventually, I decided that it was because those paintings were approximately life size.
If portrait is small, then we respond to it in certain ways. If it is larger than life then we respond differently again, but when it is life size, I think that it short circuits some element of our cognition and we innately respond to it almost as we would respond to looking at somebody face to face.
During the Summer, I saw a life size (full body) nude by Helmut Newton in Hamilton's gallery. This image arrested me as surely as Jason Brook's portrait of Paul Nurse. It felt like the photograph was watching me watching it which made me feel uncomfortable.
It seems to me that if it wasn't for daily practicalities, life size should be the default position and it should be larger and smaller than life images that need to defend themselves.
What do you think?
This is something that I hear periodically but it is something that I don't really agree with.
I'm mainly considering portraiture here, but I'm sure that it works for all genres.
I always used to wonder how a painter decides which size of canvas to reach for when they are beginning a portrait. Over a number of visits to the National Gallery in London (not the Portrait Gallery), I noticed that I was drawn to certain images and I didn't really understand why. Eventually, I decided that it was because those paintings were approximately life size.
If portrait is small, then we respond to it in certain ways. If it is larger than life then we respond differently again, but when it is life size, I think that it short circuits some element of our cognition and we innately respond to it almost as we would respond to looking at somebody face to face.
During the Summer, I saw a life size (full body) nude by Helmut Newton in Hamilton's gallery. This image arrested me as surely as Jason Brook's portrait of Paul Nurse. It felt like the photograph was watching me watching it which made me feel uncomfortable.
It seems to me that if it wasn't for daily practicalities, life size should be the default position and it should be larger and smaller than life images that need to defend themselves.
What do you think?