DAY 69

ARTISTIC ODDITIES

The Largest of the Large

PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF SIZE

What’s the biggest work of art you’ve ever seen? Whatever it was, it probably doesn’t compare to any of the works that follow.

The world’s largest print photograph was created inside an airplane hanger that had been converted to a gigantic camera obscura (page 36). The final print measured roughly 32 × 111 feet.

Stepping things up a notch, a group of 25 Iranian artists created the world’s largest piece of sand art by designing a Persian carpet made up of 70 different types of sand, measuring almost 40,000 square feet.¹¹

Then, at just over twice that size, Swedish artist David Aberg used more than 100 tons of paint to create his 86,000 square-foot Mother Earth, which is one of the largest single-artist paintings in the world.¹²

Finally, perhaps the largest piece of art in the world is Australian artist Ando’s Mundi Man, a face etched into the Mundi Mundi plains in New South Wales (page 285).

One thing is for sure: Until someone figures out how to use the whole earth as a canvas, people will continually be pushing the boundaries of what we consider “large” art. —GRG