Running Head: FEELING SMALL: SCALE AND PROPORTION IN ART 1

Feeling Small: Scale and Proportion in Art

Richard Gist

Ivy Tech Community College

FEELING SMALL: SCALE AND PROPORTION IN ART 2

In 1991 The Nelson-Atkins Museum contacted Claes Oldenburg to create a sculpture for

their museum. Originally Oldenburg and Bruggen wanted to create feathers scattered over the

lawn of The Nelson-Atkins Museum. After reviewing an aerial photograph of how the land

looked, they changed their minds. They pictured the museum itself being a badminton net, the

lawn being the playing field, and therefore came up with the shuttlecocks.

Walking up the path to an enormous limestone building you notice a few pieces of art

strategically placed throughout the grounds along the pathways. But you cannot help to notice

the large “birdies” that seem randomly placed through the lawn areas. It is most definitely

intriguing. At the normal size of a shuttlecock (or birdie) one would not notice or even see it

lying in the lawn from a distance of more than twenty feet or so. Yet, I can see multiple

shuttlecocks from a distance of much more than twenty feet away.

Your typical shuttlecock weighs approximately five grams and is seventy millimeters

long by twenty-eight millimeters wide on one end and approximately sixty-three millimeters on

the other end. Comparably, a shuttlecock weights about twice as much as a ping pong ball or

1/11th of the weight of a golf ball. While the size of a shuttlecock is comparable to the average

human hand; which is about eighty millimeters wide and one-hundred-eighty millimeters long.

So, your everyday shuttlecock can fit in the palm of the average human’s hand and is hard to see

from a distance of twenty feet or more. Not these shuttlecocks I am seeing at the Nelson-Atkins

Museum.

At nearly eighteen feet tall, sixteen feet wide, and weighing an amazing fifty-five

hundred pounds; proportionally these shuttlecocks are nearly seventy-two times taller and four

hundred ninety-eight thousand nine hundred fifty-one (498,951) times heavier than a real-life

usable shuttlecock. On this scale if a giant were to be playing badminton with these shuttlecocks,
FEELING SMALL: SCALE AND PROPORTION IN ART 3

the giant would be approximately fifty feet tall. And would weigh six hundred eight-three

thousand five hundred (683,500) pounds.

I am beginning to feel intimidated by these shuttlecocks and the players that would use

them. The sheer size of one compared to my own stature is enough to send a person into a panic

attack thinking “what if this was real?” I am also beginning to laugh some. The thought of a

person having the idea to create a giant shuttlecock is comical. The artists could have created

nearly anything they wanted. Which brings me to my next train of thought, “why a shuttlecock”?

What was the importance of a shuttlecock to these artists?

Witnessing things some might consider odd make my brain start asking questions. Like,

I wonder how big the court would be or the net would be in this scale? If we used the

measurements of the heights of the shuttlecock, we come up with a court that is one thousand

four hundred forty feet (1440) long by three thousand one hundred sixty-eight (3168) feet wide;

in case you were wondering.

I’ve used the terms proportion and scale throughout this essay. Proportion and scale are

key elements in art. They give details for artwork that helps a person visualize the piece. Scale is

used to help give size to an object in relation to another object. In this essay you’ve read how I

used the scale of the shuttlecock compared to a human hand and a golf ball. Proportion is very

similar to scale, but usually refers to the size of part of an object compared to another. Earlier I

described the proportion of the Shuttlecock to a real shuttlecock, and even described how large a

person might need to be to play a game of badminton with the shuttlecocks on the lawn of The

Nelson-Atkins Museum.
FEELING SMALL: SCALE AND PROPORTION IN ART 4

Beauty. That’s what I think of after taking a closer look at The Shuttlecock in the lawn

of The Nelson-Atkins Museum. In the normal scale, the shuttlecock loses the beauty shown in

this piece of art. The details lose their sparkle when they are unable to be analyzed by the naked

eye. The size of the Shuttlecocks gives the viewer the opportunity to see, in detail how a real one

looks. The size of the Shuttlecocks gives a sense of intimacy just as the Ancient Greek sculptors

were able to communicate in their smaller scale art.

FEELING SMALL: SCALE AND PROPORTION IN ART 5

References

Wpadminskhdev. (2015, March 17). Court & Field Dimension Diagrams in 3D, History,

Rules. Retrieved from https://sportsknowhow.com/badminton/dimensions/badminton-court-

dimensions.html

(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.officialbadminton.com/making_birdies.php

Downsized: Small-Scale Sculpture by Contemporary Artists. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://brucemuseum.org/site/exhibitions_detail/downsized-small-scale-sculpture-by-

contemporary-artists