Abstract
Maps, mapping and the visual arts have long been related disciplines, each offering distinct means and methods of recognizing and depicting space while sharing an implicit assumption of the importance of doing so. During the first half of the last century, these distinctions were paramount, and visual art became ever more abstract and distant from representation in any form. But since the 1970s those distinctions—like boundaries of many types—have become porous and blured as artists sought to re-engage visual representation. This is the time period in which artists revived their historic efforts to describe place, space and our experiences within it but needed to find new visual strategies that acknowledged the power of abstraction while clearly referencing the real. This search led many artists to embrace the abstractions of cartography, and the communicative power of mapping strategies, finding in maps and mapping not only a means of representating the real but also tools with which to expand the boundaries of where and when visual art could be experienced. This chapter, written by a practicing artist , focuses on two and three-dimensional visual art in order to provide a concise introduction to this change. It provides an overview of the key exhibitions, curators, writers and artists who pioneered this shift in visual art thinking and practice in the latter part of the last century—often noted as the shift from Modernism to Post-modernism . Three contemporary artists whose work represents distinct approaches to this newly charted interdisciplinary waters are discussed and future directions in this arena are charted via suggested readings.
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Key Readings
Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (1995). The post-colonial studies reader. London: Routledge. The themes and issues raised by post-colonial theory inform much of the newest interdisciplinary work done between geography, cartography and the arts. For those not familiar with the core texts of this body of thought, this reader offers an excellent guide, especially Part IV: Postmodernism and post-colonialism and Part XII: Place.
Berwick, C. (2010). Remaking the map. ARTnews, 109(9) 100–103. This review in the October 2010 issue of ARTnews is an excellent, concise introduction to some central projects and artists engaged in what Berwick describes as radical cartography. She defines radical, or counter cartography as “the new field … populated by geographers, cartographers, artists and designers who want to convey the kinds of information usually omitted in conventional maps.”(100). Included in her overview are An Atlas of Radical Cartography from 2007, works by the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and writer Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City and The Lost World projects among others.
Smith, T. (2011). Contemporary art: World currents. London: Prentice Hall. This text picks up the story of the evolution of art making in the West where my chapter leaves off. Smith’s discussion of contemporary art making in a global context is an excellent example of scholarship informed but not confined by post-colonial theory. Part Three, titled “Contemporary Concerns” is especially relevant in discussing works that further the issues outlined in this chapter.
Thompson, N. (2008a). Experimental geography. Brooklyn: Melville House. This exhibition catalog provides information about a number of art works, artists and art/geographer teams working in the field and essays by artist/scholars such as Trevor Paglen. The entries concerning the Center for Land Use Interpretation and The Center for Urban Pedagogy are especially pertinent.
Wood, D. (2010a). Rethinking the power of maps. New York: Guilford Press. As the title implies, this work is not a revised edition of Wood’s 1992 Power of Maps, but rather a continuation of the ideas stated there. Wood’s thesis in this volume is that “Maps are engines that convert social into social space, social order, knowledge” (Wood 2010: 6; emphasis in the original). Part Two of the text is devoted to counter-mapping.
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Cabeen, L. (2017). Maps, Mapping and the Visual Arts. In: Brunn, S., Dodge, M. (eds) Mapping Across Academia. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1011-2_17
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