The bigger the better

Large works of art make better investments not because of their size but because of their quality

There is something about scale that challenges an artist. No matter how exquisite some small works might be, just like architecture the best works of an artist are their grandest, most representative and therefore priciest when they are also the largest.

Consider some of India’s seminal works — M F Husain’s Battle of Ganga and Jamuna from the Mahabharata series or his Zameen, Tyeb Mehta’s Celebration (which became the first painting to sell at a record over-Rs 1 crore price at auction) and Santiniketan, which are triptychs, F N Souza’s Birth which at Rs 10.5 crore set a record as that artist’s highest grosser when it was picked up at an auction by Tina Ambani — and you can see that one thing they have in common is size.

While a large size has the possibility of being dramatic, for an artist a massive canvas becomes more challenging to execute because it is easier to spot flaws on that scale. It is a reason artists treat large paintings with more than just caution. For them, these are imbued with immense possibilities, not least of which is the tendency to layer much more, tell more than just one story, offer up simultaneous possibilities in content, or medium, or style, and achieve a more dramatic impact in the bargain.

The point here, though, is not so much what artists prefer as what collectors want. Most collectors begin timidly, choosing small works as a way of testing the waters. They may graduate to slightly larger, but still safe-sized works as a measure of their growing confidence, and because such works are easier to hang at home, or in the office. But if the argument of investor returns has any merit — and today, it’s an inescapable part of buying art — then it is also true that while you can manage mostly modest returns on smaller works, it is the larger works that will return better gains.

Does this posit the old argument of art being priced by the square foot — a process that had become almost a norm a few years ago, but which seems to be a little more tentative now — as a measure of price? Expectedly, large canvases will cost more than smaller ones, but this cannot be compared on the basis of square foot to square foot, largely because price is a measure of merit. And there is little gainsaying that the larger canvases — Souza’s other masterpiece, Death of a Pope in the Jehangir Nicholson collection, at over six feet, is among his larger works — are better able to collate the strengths of an artist.

What is interesting for the collector-investor is that returns on a large canvas beat most percentage-based norms — if the average-sized work by a master has grown by 10 per cent in a certain time period, a much larger-sized work would possibly return twice, even three times as much in the same period. This has been reiterated in auctions. Larger works come with built-in monumentality. If Souza’s Birth combines most elements of his oeuvre — nude, still-life, landscape, the church and a self-portrait — in one iconic work, or a Tyeb Mehta Celebration has a large number of figures in a bacchanalian frenzy instead of his usually dramatic solo entities, it is because the breadth of the canvas allows so much more than smaller works.

Imagine a Shibu Natesan work on a smaller scale and you know the eye will not be as trapped by it. A Jittish Kallat Public Notice 2 currently on show at The Saatchi gallery in London, or N S Harsha’s Nations displayed at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in its inaugural show, would not have the impact if they had been smaller. At the recent Krishen Khann retrospective, it was his largest works that caught the eye, and The Storyteller would have had less resonance had the painting been any smaller. Shahzia Sikander’s Veil ‘n Trail which makes absorbing viewing because of its size, allows the artist the freedom to combine elements of her oeuvre, both the miniature tradition which she contemporarises, as well as the calligraphy that she contextualises.

Subodh Gupta would not have the same appeal were his installations Hungry God or Spill miniaturised. Even upcoming artists Thukral & Tagra have cottoned on that scale gives them more room to play. That some of these works may be considered institutional because of their size, or sometimes content, is a whole new argument.

These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation the writer is associated with.

kishoresingh_22@hotmail.com