Notes
When scale and proportion are greatly increased the results can be impressive, giving a work commanding space or fantastic implications. Rene Magritte’s painting Personal Values constructs a room with objects whose proportions are so out of whack that it becomes an ironic play on how we view everyday items in our lives.
American sculptor Claes Oldenburg and his wife Coosje van Bruggen create works of common objects at enormous scales. Their Stake Hitch reaches a total height of over 53 feet and links two floors of the Dallas Museum of Art. As big as it is, the work retains a comic and playful character, given in part to its gigantic size.
A good example of this is Michelangelo’s sculptural masterpiece ‘Pieta’ from 1499 (below). Here Mary cradles her dead son, the two figures forming a stable triangular composition. Michelangelo sculpts Mary to a slightly larger scale than the dead Christ to give the central figure more significance, both visually and psychologically.
Weimar Germany--the period during the two world wars--was a time of political upheaval and severe post war problems. This included dealing with monumental losses in human life, economic turmoil, labor strikes, the abdication of the Kaiser, shaky allegiance to the new Republic, a strict postwar Treaty with the Allies, lack of unity, and twenty different coalition governments. These problems and the lack of solid political ledership led to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party.
Good Proportion
There are several ways for achieving good proportion: 1. Place together elements which are similar in character or have some feature in common. 2. Create major and minor areas in the design, as equal parts can quickly become monotonous and boring. However, the differences in size must not be so great as to make the parts appear unrelated and therefore, out of harmony with each other. 3. Arrangement of space should be in such a way that the eye does not perceive a standard mathematical
American sculptor Claes Oldenburg and his wife Coosje van Bruggen create works of common objects at enormous scales. Their Stake Hitch reaches a total height of over 53 feet and links two floors of the Dallas Museum of Art. As big as it is, the work retains a comic and playful character, given in part to its gigantic size.
A good example of this is Michelangelo’s sculptural masterpiece ‘Pieta’ from 1499 (below). Here Mary cradles her dead son, the two figures forming a stable triangular composition. Michelangelo sculpts Mary to a slightly larger scale than the dead Christ to give the central figure more significance, both visually and psychologically.
Weimar Germany--the period during the two world wars--was a time of political upheaval and severe post war problems. This included dealing with monumental losses in human life, economic turmoil, labor strikes, the abdication of the Kaiser, shaky allegiance to the new Republic, a strict postwar Treaty with the Allies, lack of unity, and twenty different coalition governments. These problems and the lack of solid political ledership led to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party.
Good Proportion
There are several ways for achieving good proportion: 1. Place together elements which are similar in character or have some feature in common. 2. Create major and minor areas in the design, as equal parts can quickly become monotonous and boring. However, the differences in size must not be so great as to make the parts appear unrelated and therefore, out of harmony with each other. 3. Arrangement of space should be in such a way that the eye does not perceive a standard mathematical