MONUMENTAL: A Private Collection of Immense Canvases

Thirty kilometers beyond Basel's industrial periphery, where the Rhine curves toward the German border, a converted aircraft hangar houses what may be the world's most ambitious collection of oversized paintings. Known simply as "Le Dépôt" among the select circle of curators, collectors, and scholars who receive its coveted invitations, this facility represents the culmination of pharmaceutical heiress Margot Kellner's forty-year obsession with what she terms "paintings that exceed human scale." The collection's 127 works, ranging from a recently discovered Tintoretto panorama measuring eighteen by forty-three feet to Helen Frankenthaler's monumental "Cascade" series, which required the construction of custom viewing platforms, transforms the act of looking at art into something closer to architectural inhabitation.

The hangar's cavernous interior, retrofitted with museum-grade climate control and specialized hanging systems capable of supporting canvases weighing several tons, creates an environment where traditional gallery viewing becomes impossible. Visitors must navigate the space with the deliberation of pilgrims, their peripheral vision constantly engaged by paintings that extend beyond the boundaries of comfortable human sight. The psychological effect recalls the spatial disorientation documented in studies of cathedral interiors, where architectural scale induces what environmental psychologists term "contemplative vertigo"—a state in which normal spatial orientation gives way to a more diffuse, embodied form of attention.

Kellner's acquisition strategy has focused specifically on works that challenge conventional exhibition infrastructure. The centerpiece of the collection, Anselm Kiefer's "Quaternität," stretches across eighty linear feet and incorporates not only paint and canvas but embedded fragments of concrete, steel, and charred wood that bring its total weight to nearly four tons. The work exists in permanent installation, its surface visible only through a series of elevated walkways that allow viewers to appreciate sections of the composition while never achieving a totalizing view. This enforced fragmentation reflects Kiefer's intention to create what he has described as "paintings that cannot be possessed by sight," works that resist the collecting impulse through their sheer physical intractability.

The historical precedent for such ambitious scale reaches back to the panoramic battle scenes of the late Renaissance, particularly the lost works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's follower, Bartholomeus Spranger, whose "The Siege of Vienna" reportedly required an entire wall of the Hofburg Palace for proper display. More directly relevant to Kellner's collection are the environmental paintings of the 1960s and 70s, when artists like Robert Irwin and Michael Heizer began investigating the boundaries between painting and installation. Le Dépôt houses three works from Irwin's "Spatial Relations" series, gossamer canvases that extend across entire walls in barely perceptible gradations of color, creating what the artist termed "conditional paintings"—works whose visibility depends entirely on the viewer's position and the quality of available light.

Conservation challenges presented by these oversized works have led to innovations in museum science that extend far beyond traditional painting preservation. Le Dépôt's custom storage systems, developed in partnership with the Getty Conservation Institute, employ hydraulic platforms that can rotate massive canvases for examination while minimizing stress on their structural supports. Climate control operates at micro-levels, with individual works monitored for temperature and humidity variations that might cause expansion or contraction in their oversized formats. The facility's most ambitious preservation project involves Cy Twombly's "Mediterranean Light," a series of seventeen interconnected canvases that together form a single composition spanning 200 feet. The work's wax and oil-based surface requires specialized lighting that prevents heat accumulation while maintaining the luminous quality essential to Twombly's intended effect.

The experiential dimension of encountering paintings at this scale fundamentally alters the relationship between viewer and artwork. Traditional art historical methodologies, built around the assumption of discrete, observable objects, prove inadequate when confronted with works that exist primarily as environmental conditions. Visitors to Le Dépôt often report a disorienting sense of being "inside" the paintings rather than before them, as their peripheral vision becomes filled with color and form that extends far beyond their focal attention. This immersive quality connects Kellner's collection to the phenomenological investigations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose writings on embodied perception anticipated many of the spatial strategies employed by large-scale painters.

The collection's most controversial acquisition, a recently attributed Caravaggio workshop piece titled "The Calling of Saint Matthew (Expanded)," measures twelve by twenty-four feet and has sparked debate among scholars about the historical existence of such monumentally scaled Baroque paintings. X-ray analysis reveals that the work was indeed created using period-appropriate materials and techniques, yet its scale exceeds any documented Caravaggio-related work by a factor of four. This anomaly has led some art historians to propose that the painting represents a lost tradition of large-format religious works, possibly commissioned for temporary installations during major feast days, then hidden or destroyed as architectural tastes shifted toward more intimate devotional spaces.

Le Dépôt's invitation-only access policy reflects not merely collector exclusivity but practical necessity. The physical and psychological demands of viewing paintings at this scale require preparation and guidance that traditional museum visits cannot accommodate. Visitors receive detailed orientations on spatial navigation and viewing techniques, learning to appreciate artworks that cannot be apprehended through conventional looking. This ritualized approach to spectatorship transforms each visit into something resembling a performance, where the act of viewing becomes as carefully choreographed as the placement of the works themselves.

In an art world increasingly dominated by portable, reproducible media, Kellner's commitment to paintings that resist transportation and documentation represents a radical assertion of painting's material specificity. These works exist fully only in their designated space, accessible to those willing to make the pilgrimage to their remote location, embodying a vision of art that insists on presence, duration, and the irreplaceable experience of being overwhelmed by human creation operating at inhuman scale.