Abstract

Art

Until largeness of scale became a commonplace of painting in the past few decades, the selection of a canvas of more than ordinary size was a declaration on the artist's part of the intended importance of the work. Knowing, for example, that the painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," was in some unanticipatable way to change the course of painting, Picasso purchased for its execution an especially large and fine piece of canvas, and even had it relined. French painter Henri Matisse's famous painting "Harmony in Red," is a domestic interior in which a pattern of blue vines and baskets of flowers chases across the crimson-cinnabar tablecloth and up the walls decorated with the same brilliant red. The size of Matisse's painting might seem on the face of it to have little internally to do with the work's domestic content.