The Map as Art
Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography

Katharine Harmon
With essays by Gayle Clemans
Princeton Architectural Press, 2009
Hardcover, 256 pages
ISBN 978-1-56898-762-0
$45.00

Maps can be simple tools, comfortable in their familiar form. Or maps can lead to different destinations: places turned upside down or inside out, territories riddled with marks understood only by their maker, landscapes connected more to the interior mind than the exterior world. These are the domains of artists' maps, that happy combination of information and illusion that flourishes in basement studios and downtown galleries alike. It is little surprise that, in an era of globalized politics, culture, and ecology, contemporary artists are drawn to maps to express their visions. Using paint, salt, souvenir tea towels, or their own bodies, map artists explore a world free of geographical constraints.

Katharine Harmon, author of You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, collects map-related artistic visions in The Map as Art. The book is filled with 250 colorful works by well-known artists—such as Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel, Olafur Eliasson, William Kentridge, and Vik Muniz—and many more less-familiar artists for whom maps are the inspiration for creating art. Essays by Gayle Clemans bring an in-depth look into the artists' maps of Joyce Kozloff, Landon Mackenzie, Ingrid Calame, Guillermo Kuitca, and Maya Lin. Together the beautiful reproductions and telling commentary make this an essential volume for anyone open to exploring a new path.

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View sample spreads from The Map As Art

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