16 Impossibly Large Works of Art

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16 Impossibly Large Works of Art

Is bigger always better? Not necessarily. With things like bruises, cow turds and explosions, bigger can absolutely mean worse. But with art? It’s hard to say. Impossible massiveness feels like it has to come at a cost — a huge piece of art has by its very nature been poured over less and obsessed over less than something small but honed to perfection.

But there’s something inherently pleasing about anything honkin’ massive. Like, even if it’s a bit shitty, if something’s enormous enough, it’s still impressive. If someone does a painting a mile long that absolutely sucks, there’s still something to it — it’s better, by sheer dint of bigness, than an equally suck-ass painting on a piece of paper. That’s just inarguably true.

Some art sets out to be enormous as its main reason for being, while other stuff just keeps on going because its artist simply doesn’t stop. Either way, there’s something self-indulgent and masturbatory once things go beyond a certain reasonable bigness — particularly in the case of item #1 on the list…

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The 600-Year Organ Recital

CRACKED John Cage's composition Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) is currently being played on an organ in Halberstadt, Germany, in a performance set to finish in the year 2640. The longest version completed so far took 16 hours.

Source 

The Month-Long Documentary

CRACKED The Swedish film Logistics follows the production of a pedometer in reverse, going from the filmmakers' home of Stockholm to, eventually, a factory in Shenzen. It's 51,420 minutes long - that's 857 hours or 35 days and 17 hours.

Source 

Sitting Down, For Ages, For Art

CRACKED Performance artist Marina Abramović is famous for endurance-based works. Her 2010 work The Artist Is Present involved sitting still for 736 and a half hours over several months maintaining eye contact with thousands of people as they sat opposite her.

Source / MoMA 

A Half-Court by One Artist

CRACKED Indian artist Sarans К.К. holds the Guinness World Record for the largest oil painting by a single artist, for his 1,800-square-foot portrait of three of the UAE's leaders.

Source 

Artwork for Aliens

CRACKED The mysterious Nazca Lines in Peru, a series of enormous geoglyphs dug into the desert floor, cover 19 square miles and are best seen from above (while pre-dating flight by over a thousand years).

Source 

Marcel’s Monstrous Modernist Masterpiece

CRACKED - en PROUST mill - um - PROUST OUST PROUST Asf Auf ALT Auf Auf Aut M der Suche der Such der Suche Soche der Suche - nach der nach der : IS der nack des verlaneces foreven verlorenen verbaccoen Zeis Ze Zeit Zn' . 2 MY antes verinteses Zeit GEI veriorenes Zeit form HO Die Entflohene Axi des Suche Back and sestorazes Lest Auf des Serha aach des Auf des Suche mach der vestorenen Zeit AUF des Suche nach der verlorenes Zeit Die wiedergefundene Zeit Aut Die Gefangene Sodom und Gomorra KY MARCEL PROUST MARCEL PROUST MARCEL PROUST MARCEL

Source 

The Ever-Growing, Neverending Fanfic Leviathan

CRACKED The Loud House: Revamped is a giant, sprawling work of crossover fanfiction, over 17 million words and counting, featuring My Little Pony, anime characters and a lot of swearing.

Source / Nick 

The World-Sized Photo of a City

CRACKED H . In 2018, 55,000 photos taken from a telecom tower in Kuala Lumpur were digitally stitched together in a panorama resulting in a colossal 846-gigapixel, 360-degree image of the city that's a lot of fun to play around with.

Source 

The Mall-Sized Sculpture

CRACKED Taking 50 years to complete and costing $40 million, Michael Heizer's sculpture City is a whopper - a quarter-mile wide and five times as long, deep in the Nevada desert. Inspired by ancient Yucatan architecture, it allows a maximum of six visitors a day.

Source / NY Times 

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