It is an imaginative piece that provides a metaphor for the abstract nature of mapping itself. This is also one of the fundamental aspects of map design – to create a product whose design is implicit rather than explicit, allowing the reader to understand the meaning without having to work hard – so Johns' painting can be seen as linking fine art and cartography together. The artist wanted to use an image that viewers knew so well that they simply ‘saw’ it without having to look at or examine it in depth. Johns puts the art squarely into cartography with Map, which develops his use of easily recognizable images by using the map of the United States in a colourful celebration of both the country and the map itself. We start today, with Jasper Johns and his 1961 painting called, what else, Map. In the run up to its publication we’ll be bringing you a selection of them. Such questions have long preoccupied visual artists as well as cartographers and the new book contains many thought-provoking responses to and developments of map-making by artists from Jasper Johns to Grayson Perry. Maps have always been used for artistic purposes because the shapes of the familiar lend themselves well to artistic expression and reimagination. Many of the maps in our new book, Map Exploring the World highlight this aesthetic and design element, and we think the pairings prompt new consideration of, and conclusions about, precisely what makes an abstract rendering into a map. Maps have been used in many ways over the years - not just as analytical tools to get you from A to B (without going via C - wherever the hell that is). One of our favourite applications of the map is the artistic one - where its used as a form of expressive visual art that has both cultural and political purposes, often with deep aesthetic underpinnings. In a new series we take a look at the ones featured in the new book Map Exploring the World Maya Lin, Alighiero Boetti, Leonardo da Vinci, Olafur Eliasson and Ai Weiwei - great artists who've also created great maps. Much has been written about the eternal striving of the artist to reproduce the wondrous visions in his brain.Map 1961 - Jasper Johns - as featured in Map Exploring the World The Art of the Map - Jasper Johns Thus the cliché that the artist is never satisfied with his work, that it never turns out to be what he "had in mind." The usual explanation for this state of affairs assumes that imagination has a richness beyond what the fingersĬan actually perform, and so disappointment inevitably follows. The idea of following a process in artistic creation makes people uneasy the idea of a struggle - birth pangs - is much more acceptable. Where accidents along the way are incorporated. The artist does not seem to be struggling to bring forth a preexisting vision, but rather is engaged in a process where the outcome may or may not conform to the initial idea, and Some observers are put off by ideas such as these. It sometimes happens that something unexpected occurs - the paint may run - but then I see that it has happened, and I have the choice to paint it again or not.Īnd if I don't, then the appearance of that element in the painting is no accident." Johns' own view is not so no-minded:"There are no accidents in my work. This idea that youĬontrol what you do not control may at first seem surprising. and there is a persistent theme in modern art, a theme of using chance events, which the viewing public has often mistrusted.ĭuchamp, who employed chance in his working method, once said: "Your chance is not the same as my chance." He meant that the outcome of probability events is actually an expression of the artist's subconscious. In ordinary life, such drips usually imply a mistake, or sloppy Paint drips are prominent feature of this MAP they are much more striking than in previous paintings, and remind us of the role of accident in the creation of his work. The previous year, Rauschenberg had given Johns a schematic American map of the sort used in a school notebook, and Johns had painted over it he used those The large MAP represents an addition to Jasper Johns repertoire of imagery.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |