NOTES FROM THE FIELD: Detail.

The article discusses the importance of scale as an artistic device, noting that artworks are scaled according to a predetermined rule or a standard of judgment. The relationship between an artistic work's capacity to communicate a specific agenda and the way it uses scale is discussed. The author pays special attention to the social and political implications of the scale used in art through examples of 20th-century Chinese paintings, with particular focus paid to a large painting depicting Mount Yandang by the artist Pan Tianshou.