Is bigger the better for collectors?

Is bigger the better, asks The Business Standard art columnist Kishore Singh in a recent essay who notes that there’s something to do with scale, which challenges an artist.

According to him, no matter how exquisite some of the small works might be the best works are their grandest, most representative and hence priciest when they are also the largest.” Sighting some of India’s seminal art works like Husain’s ‘Battle of Ganga and Jamuna’, Tyeb Mehta’s ‘Celebration’ (It was the first painting to fetch a record over-Rs 1 crore price tag at auction) and ‘Santiniketan’, Souza’s ‘Birth’ (which again set a record as the late artist’s highest grosser after it was picked up for Rs 10.5 crore at an auction). This goes to show that size does matter.

The writer notes: “A large size has the possibility of being dramatic, for an artist a large canvas becomes far more challenging to execute since it is easier to spot flaws on that scale. Artists hence treat large paintings with more than just caution. These are imbued with immense possibilities, and offer simultaneous possibilities in content, or style, or medium, and achieve a much more dramatic impact in the bargain.”

The point is not so much what they prefer as what really collectors want. Most of them (collectors) to begin with, choose small works to test the waters). They then graduate to slightly larger, or safe-sized works. But if the argument of investor returns, an inescapable part of buying art, is considered, it’s also true that even while you can get modest returns on smaller works, the larger works will return better gains.

The art expert asks: “Does this posit the old argument of art being priced by the square foot as a measure of price? Expectedly, large ones will cost more than smaller canvases. But this cannot be compared on the basis of square foot to square foot, largely because price is a measure of merit. There’s little gainsaying that the former are better able to collate the strengths of an artist.”