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Dr. Seema Bawa, in a catalogue essay for the show ‘Does Size Matter’ curated by Bhavna Kakar, argues that the value of a work of art should not be counted as the prices for real estate are estimated and size is not the only determinant factor.

Does Size Matter? Is a million dollar question; not only in the mundane sphere but also in contemporary Indian art world where a painter’s worth is calculated by the rate at which per square inch of his or her painting sells. Thus, in the commercial realm it would appear that size is of paramount importance in the sale of a work of art. There seem to be parallels in approach and functioning of the real estate market and the art market where the value of a particular piece is determined by the location/ the artist’s reputation multiplied by the size of the plot/ the canvas. Perhaps this is one way of empirically determining and evaluating art, but it is certainly not the best way because size does not determine the intrinsic worth of the artist or his/her work. Unlike a plot of land the production of art involves a creative process that makes it a good or bad piece of art, a process that is not dependant on size but on its inner spirit.

This show, Does Size Matter seeks to break the myth that big alone is beautiful in art. All the paintings on show are in small format; some painted within or inspired by the traditions of Indian and European miniatures and others using a post-modernist perspective in terms of technique and form.

Whatever be the painterly convention used, a work of art is complete when the composition and the thematic are in harmony. The scale of a painting is inherent within its conception; a small painting in the hands of men like Samuel Cooper in the 17th century became more closely allied to contemporary oil paintings to the extent that some miniatures were actually made in oil colours on metal. He regarded the miniature as a painting and not as a drawing or a goldsmith work *1, which is the reason why he used light and shade. Walpole is reputed to have said that if one used a magnifying glass to expand Coopers’s work to the scale of Vandyck they would appear to have been painted for that proportion.

In fact, big format easel paintings are part of early modern European artistic practice that has been imported into India with other aspects of colonial culture. In the ancient Indian painterly tradition murals were either painted, as at Ajanta and on temple walls and ceilings or on a long horizontal page of a palm leaf folio in Indian tradition, be it Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina, where the illustrations were small and square. In medieval Indian miniature tradition, the skill of the artist was gauged by his ability to reduce the macrocosm onto a small piece of wasli, or handmade paper. He painted the universe in a dimunitized form. These works were small in format, usually the size of a book (which could vary in size), on paper and closely related to the literary narrative. *2

Though artists such as Manjit Bawa and Siddhartha have experimented with the miniature format, making smaller version of their paintings or through the use of mineral colouors, Manisha Gera Baswani is probably the only contemporary Indian artist who has continued the miniature tradition using handmade wasli and shiksi in folio sized formats. She consistently implants herself within this tradition through technique and material though the thematic is in keeping with modern and post-modern ideological and artistic trends.  Mughal and Pahari paintings inspire the colours and alamkara or decorative forms in Manisha’s work; the alamkaras and colours are innovatively placed within the compositions. In King Size, The blue of the sky and the yellow of apparel of a Mughal miniature are placed in an internal arch or a shirt front overlaid with repetitive Elvis images.

Jignasha Ojha is another artist whose work is inspired by the conventions of miniature paintings.  The perspective is taken from sub Mughal schools such as the Basholi School, especially in relation to the depiction of building. The decorative elements, framing, composition and presentation in her paintings such as Fusion are reminiscent of miniatures. Tarun Chowdhary deconstructs and reassembles architecture taken from Mughal and Rajput miniatures. However the lack of fixed perspective harks back to Jain miniature tradition. Trees, camels, and, cars are arranged as symbolic motifs around the buildings. His use of primary colours embodies the Indian landscape.
 
Forms in Anjana Mehra’s painting are somewhat abstract but have a reference to past painterly experience of the Orient and to the contemporary material world. Anant Joshi   decentres the focal point and moves it to the periphery within a somewhat miniaturist format

However, an artist is not necessarily a miniaturist if he or she paints on a small format.  All genres of painting are effective in this size; be it figurative, abstract, narrative and non-narrative art . 

Minimalism is one genre that is well suited to smaller spaces, here the artist can convey much with a few lines or brush strokes, as has been demonstrated by the stark and essential works by Yashwant Deshmukh. He uses only lines juxtaposed with sparse volume of a monotonal colour filling, leaving large negative spaces.

Many artists have utilized the potential of blank or white surface. Ajay Dahandre places his objects in the centre and leaves the rest of the surface virgin, giving his architectonic forms room to expand and gives an impression of movement. Heeral Trivedi and Banoj Mohanty also use the blank surface as an envelope that cradles the figures or as a backdrop that enhance the forms. The blank surface is not empty rather it is loaded with symbolic presences and absences that are also compositionally very significant.

Artists such as Pravin Kedar, Seema Ghuryya, Meenal Damani and  Pooja Iranna prefer not to load a small surface with colours, instead they paint in monochromatic or in analogous hues. The use of texture and tones are noteworthy elements in their paintings, which give the composition variation, volume and luminosity.  It also provides ample scope for experimentation as is seen in the wax and watercolour paintings by Pooja Iranna where she has used a 7inch by 7inch surface to create forms that have certain monumentality and seem to be illuminated from within. Vibha Galhotra uses photographic imagery in gray and black tones where a hint of colour appears like a stab wound or a ribbon of hope in bleak urbanscapes and skyscapes

Smaller formats have been used in landscape and abstract genres with considerable effectiveness.  Prabhakar Kolte is one contemporary Indian artist who in his works using small surface area through non referential abstraction explores colour and its multifarious potentialities. The colours in his works whether it be primary or mixed are fresh and the composition, even though appearing to be random, allows the negative spaces to illumine the painting. Arindam Chatterjee attempts to abstract form into colour in his works.

Narrative, linear and non linear, have traditionally been represented in synoptic, mono-scenic, conflated and continuous techniques on small surfaces. Manjunath Kamath uses the four inch by four inch space to paint a series of short fables that may be read in conjunction as a story or as individual images. The flat blue background of gouache on paper with a single figure on it reminds one of manuscript illumination in the medieval period. Viraj Naik on the other hand uses caricatured figures to tell his mythological stories, where the concept of the myth is derived from classical and Indian sources but the worldview and its visual interpretation is unique to the artist.
        
Reference to another ancient source of myth, history and art is embedded in a diminutive book  create on board painted by Thukral & Tagra titled David and Goliath where each leaf has a painted image and a label text.  The images are derived from digital, decorative, pop, calendar and photographic art as if being a microcosm of the collective experience of mankind that no single discourse can exhaust. The one inch square book is also in tradition of creating miniscule Qurans and Bibles that were valued not only for their religious substance but also for their artistic appeal given that they were written in calligraphic hand sometimes accompanied by tiny illustrations.        

The organic wholeness of a work of art is not predicated on size alone. Artistic creativity and conception reveals itself through the discourse of multiple genres, where the discourse of size is inherent in the creation, and is not imposed or separated from it. A work of art is small or large because the artist believes that this is the scale in which he can best express that particular artistic vision. It is complete and valid in itself, without magnification and amplification just as a raga may be rendered in its vistaar over a long time or may be expressed within two minutes. The intrinsic value of the singer or the song is in the singing and not in length of performance just as in art; the created space is the ultimate test of the artist’s skill and vision.  

*1. In Europe, a miniature was a painting in the little, usually a portrait, executed in gouache or watercolor. In the miniatures of the 16th century were executed in the body colour on playing cards or on vellum which was the material used by book illuminators. This type of portrait, with its allegories and symbolism is a direct descendant of manuscript illumination. This is exemplified in the works of Nicholas Hilliard who was a goldsmith by profession, thus he conceived his miniatures as jewels to be held in the hand and Issac Oliver who branched off towards history painting, It is in the 18th century that the whole character of this genre of painting changed with the introduction an use of ivory as a ground and support, thus a white ground could be used in conjunction with transparent watercolour to paint landscapes as was done by Cosway.

*2 . Milo Cleveland Beach, The New Cambridge History of India: Mughal And Rajput Painting, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, p.1