Nicole Junkermann on Scale and How We Stand Back
Every work has a distance it was made to be met from. Finding it is half the pleasure, and most rooms make it harder than it needs to be.
The first question a room asks is not what to look at. It is where to stand.
Scale is the part of looking most easily mislaid, because a photograph flattens it and a screen removes it altogether. Nicole Junkermann finds that the same work can change character twice in ten paces, and that the change is information rather than an accident of the room.
The distance a work was made for
Almost everything was made with a viewing distance in mind, whether or not anybody ever wrote it down. Something built for the far wall of a long room expects to be met from across that room. Something intended to be held at arm's length feels shouted at from six paces and confiding from one. The work does not announce any of this. It simply rewards the right distance and withholds from the wrong one.
Walking it rather than guessing
The practical version is unglamorous. A viewer who comes close enough for the surface to be legible, then moves back slowly until the whole thing resolves, then returns, has usually seen more than one who found a spot and stayed in it. The second pass is where most of the noticing happens, which is the same reason an early and quiet hour is worth so much more than a crowded one.
Rooms that help and rooms that do not
A room can give a work the distance it needs or take it away. Narrow spaces force proximity on things that were built to be met from far off. Crowds do the same thing more politely. Low ceilings compress work that wanted air above it. None of this is a complaint, since the alternative to a busy room is usually no room at all, but it does explain why the same work can look thin in one building and formidable in another.
Scale is not size
Large is not the same as grand and small is not the same as modest. Some of the most expansive things ever made are the size of a book, and some very large surfaces are quiet almost to the point of vanishing. Scale is a relationship between the work, the body in front of it and the space in between, which is why it travels so badly in reproduction and why seeing work outside the obvious places so often unsettles an opinion formed from pictures.
Why it is worth the paces
Because standing in the right place costs nothing, can be repeated, and returns a kind of information that no amount of reading supplies. The same thinking runs through conservation as a form of attention, and the shorter notes collect the smaller observations that never grow into an essay.
Large is not the same as grand, and small is not the same as modest.
Frequently asked questions
What does scale mean here?
The relationship between a work, the person standing in front of it and the distance between them. It is not the same as physical size, and it changes as the viewer moves.
Why does scale disappear in photographs?
A reproduction fixes one distance and one framing for everybody. The information that comes from moving closer and further away is simply not present, which is why a familiar image can still surprise in a room.
Does a crowded room ruin a work?
No, but it can remove the distance the work was made for. A busy room is still better than no room, and the same work is often worth meeting again when the space is quieter.
