> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Weekend Words: Bigness
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-bigness/
- Published: 2012-12-02T15:00:32.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:36:00.000Z
- Description: With the announcement this week that Christo plans to build the world's largest sculpture, “The Mastaba of Abu Dhabi," at 492 feet high with a base measuring 984 by 738 feet, Weekend Words turns to bigness.
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Opinion, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

![Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, "Playing at Giants"](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2012/11/goyagigantes.jpg)

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, “Playing at Giants” (1791–92). Oil on canvas, 137 x 104 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid. (image via Web Gallery of Art)

*An exquisite corpse of apposite quotes from the Hyperallergic Weekend Editors.*

With the announcement this week that Christo plans to build the [world’s largest sculpture](https://hyperallergic.com/is-the-worlds-largest-permanent-sculpture-a-monument-to-our-times/), “The Mastaba of Abu Dhabi,” at 492 feet high with a base measuring 984 by 738 feet, Weekend Words turns to bigness:

> “It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven.”  
>  
> **—E.M. Forster**

> “I’d rather die enormous than live dormant.”  
>  
> **—Jay-Z**

> “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).”  
>  
> **—Walt Whitman**