Maps, Mapping and the Visual Arts

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.