The measure of great art

Matt Gray

To make the relationships among the elements of an artwork seem logical, an artist must take proportion into account. Artists adjust the size of shapes in a picture intuitively, until they fit together in a way that makes visual sense. Forms in the foreground will generally be larger than forms in the background, and their relative sizes usually reflect how they appear to us in real life. But artists can also choose to ignore real-life proportions, in order to emphasize certain areas or ideas in their work. By controlling the relative scale of pictorial elements, artists can draw our attention to those areas of the work they consider most significant.

Extreme measures
In Matt Gray's Cowboy, the silhouette of the cowboy is dwarfed by the lit sky behind him. Imagine this photograph if the artist had cropped out the huge sky — the point of the piece would be very different. As it is, the image emphasizes the vastness of the landscape and the heroic struggle of the lone cowboy.

It's all relative
One concern in determining proportion is the artwork's scale, or how large it is. Our intuitive yardstick is our body — we think of an artwork as large or small relative to our height. Our assessment of an artwork's scale affects how we relate to it. For example, a portrait the size of your head may seem much less intimate when enlarged to the size of your full body.

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