sculptural preferences

["Clive Murray-White" <clivemw@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Dear Norman,

You can always be relied on to ask great questions!

Why large in preference to small? or why do we have preferences for certain
sizes?

 From my perspective there are three distinct sizes for sculpture, small
which , if you think about it, relates almost exclusively to our hands, it
is always interesting to try to define the point where small finishes, ie,
what is the biggest thing that you still call small and what is the smallest
thing that you call big?

I mention that because there's a sort of no man's land between small and
large because large is experienced in a bodily way. Similarly there is a
muddy area between large and what I call phenomena, those things that are
designed to relate to landscape, large buildings etc.

Just as intriguing are the questions that run along the line of why does a
stone sculpture that is half the size of a steel one get called huge whilst
the steel one isn't thought of as being particularly big. Material substance
obviously has a huge bearing on perceived size.

One of the things I frequently noticed when I was teaching was that students
quite often chose to make their works in what I would call the no man's land
gaps between each of the distinct scales and therefore suffered the
consequences of confusing their audiences.

Both "small" and extremely large have very serious problems because they
both limit the way that humans can relate to them, small is fairly obvious
but very big is not quite so clear, my guess is that because they relate to
things much bigger than us they do not really relate to humans, and, because
they don't relate to us they have a kind of alienating effect on us.

The bodily sized sculpture offers us by far the greatest opportunity to
relate to it, it also allows the sculptor to make the greatest range of
gestures, surfaces and forms etc.

Just to put all this in perspective a museum recently asked me to consider
making an absolutely massive version of my sculpture. My marble heads. This
causes huge problems because any stone head much smaller than Mt Rushmore
isn't really that big, any head much bigger than one that you could relate
to in a bodily way will automatically make your viewer think of Mt Rushmore
so how do you approach the problem?

My inclination is to agree to make something that is just about at the limit
of what I feel a human being could genuinely relate to and stick well within
my preferred middle category.

Best regards
Clive Murray-White

Web: www.cowwarr.com