Scale to Size: An Introduction

Kee, Joan; Lugli, Emanuele

doi:10.1111/1467-8365.12148

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…As Joan Kee and Emanuele Lugli poignantly argue, scale can be understood as "the relationship between the actual physical magnitude of a thing and the way that magnitude is represented." 21 Scale and its manipulation can effectively displace us and transform how one relates to the world at large. Miniature objects such as the Freer icon are mesmerizing in that they compel us to gaze and interact with them closely and at length.…”

Section: Tactility and Intimacy: The Scalar Uses Of Portable Iconsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Portable Faith: Toward a Non-Site-Specific History of Buddhist Art in Japan

Chan

2023

Ars Orientalis

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From small-scale shrines to handheld icons and votive tablets, portability has long factored into the design and reception of Buddhist art. This article charts the uses and design of portable objects that are as instrumental and effective as their monumental counterparts in disseminating Buddhism in Japan. The article first examines the circulation of miniature icons that served as diplomatic gifts in the sixth and seventh centuries. It then turns to figurative plaques from Tang-dynasty China (618–907) that were modified for votive and architectural uses in early Japan. Lastly, the article examines the reasons underlying the enduring popularity of portable shrines in the archipelago. In sum, this article asks: What factors determined the size, scale, and materiality of Buddhist art? More importantly, how does the case of the portable speak to the discipline of Buddhist art that often preoccupies itself with the monumental and the site-specific?

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Section: Tactility and Intimacy: The Scalar Uses Of Portable Iconsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Portable Faith: Toward a Non-Site-Specific History of Buddhist Art in Japan

Chan

2023

Ars Orientalis

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“…Is size objective because it inheres in the object or because it is standardized, maintained by cultural hegemony and by systems that outlast the individual encounter? 31 Is scale subjective because it is perceived and contingent, or because it assumes a perceiving subject? If 'subjective' really just means 'contingently comparative', what or who gets factored into the comparison?…”

Section: Scale Makes the Manmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scale of the Nation: Alberto Giacometti's Miniature Monument

Fiduccia¹

2022

Art History

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In 1939, Alberto Giacometti proposed an unusual work for the Swiss National Exhibition: a tiny head placed on a wide pedestal, which gave rise to dramatic scalar effects. This essay places this little‐known episode at the origin of Giacometti's post‐war experiments with scale, and argues that those experiments emerged out of a historical context – Switzerland's tense negotiation of national identity in the 1930s – in which monumental forms of sculpture could no longer fulfil their political functions. By untethering the bigness of a monument from its scale, Giacometti's little head disclosed scale's more profound social operation: to formalize and embody our historical practices of engaging with vast structures, including the political structure of the nation. This alignment of aesthetic and political scale suggests how a new phenomenological account of modern sculpture, indebted to Jean‐Paul Sartre rather than Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, calls into question modernism's supposed negation of the monument.

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Visualizing Scale: Inducing Transformations in Perception through Art and Science

DiCaglio,

Tromble

2024

Arts

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In order for scientists and technologists to describe many of their objects, they must observe at a scale that exceeds typical human experience. Atoms and ecologies, microbes and galaxies all exist at scales that require retroactively reconstructing a picture (whether rendered visually, through an alternative visualization, or simply pieced together as a description) of what human perceptual apparatus usually does not observe. Scale is also central to the production of artwork that uses changes in scale to help us examine the world differently, disorient our normalized ways of experiencing, and direct us to new objects and new relations. This article examines these problems of scale as they are shared between art and science, analyzing contemporary artists whose works highlight core aspects of scale. In examining these artworks together, we demonstrate that scale presents one way of clarifying when and how science runs us into basic questions at the core of many artistic practices.

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Scale to Size: An Introduction

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

Portable Faith: Toward a Non-Site-Specific History of Buddhist Art in Japan

Portable Faith: Toward a Non-Site-Specific History of Buddhist Art in Japan

Scale of the Nation: Alberto Giacometti's Miniature Monument

Visualizing Scale: Inducing Transformations in Perception through Art and Science

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