The Klencke Atlas, 1660, pictured with Tom Harper, Curator of Antiquarian Mapping © The British Library Board
Exhibition: Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art, British Library, London, until September 19 2010
If this exhibition only proves one thing it is that a maps tell us far more than a route from A to B. Magnificent Maps is compelling from the outset and uses one hundred maps selected from the British Library’s collection of over four million works.
The curators, Peter Barber and Tom Harper spent over a year narrowing down their choices to reflect the wonder and myriad reasons for the creation of a map.
The exhibition has been cleverly designed to demonstrate the contexts in which the maps were made. The works are ordered though a series of rooms that recreate the different atmospheres in which the maps would originally have been seen.
Barber comments on the function of maps, explaining, ‘The traditional map still exists, but now it is disguised as art’. Whilst cartography might once have been a way of illustrating the important people, theology, or harvest potential of a region, it is not uncommon or unfounded in 2010 to assume that maps are simply a tool of navigation.
Nova Illustrissimi Principatus Pomeranie Descriptio by Erhard Lubin, 1618. © 2010 The British Library Board
In the age of Google Maps it is a heartening notion to see how artists like Grayson Perry (Map of Nowhere, 2008) use an artistic cartographic style to make sense of a consistently unexplored region - the self.
A grand room for hanging maps was the Audience Chamber, where guests would have been received in state. William Frazer’s awesome The Fra Mauro World Map of c.1450 shows a copy of a map that was commissioned by the Portuguese to show their colonisation in Africa. It was then copied by the East India Company to show their perceived dominance over Asia and what they considered to be the legacy of the British Empire, the Portuguese colonies.
The Cabinet of Curiosities is a space where only those most intimately connected to the host would witness the splendour of the most personal maps. Two maps inspire awe with their scale.
‘The Klenke Atlas’ (c.1660) is the largest book in the world and taller than the average adult. Within its enormous pages lie not only maps, but illustrations of important people alive at the time of Charles II, the recipient of the book.
Maps at the time sought to act as much as a navigational tool as an encyclopaedia of knowledge; repositories of all there was to be known. At the opposite end of the scale is a minute book, presented to Queen Mary for her doll’s house. It shows only maps of the British Empire, inspiring a sense of patriotism through cartography in even the youngest of patrons.
Confiance – ses Amputations se Poursuivent, 1944. © 2010 The British Library Board
Patriotism and propaganda continues in the next room, The Street. Winston Churchill is protrayed as a giant octopus in Confiance - ses Amputations se Poursuivant, spreading his giant tentacles over Europe during the Second World War. It is savage and mocking. Maps like these acted as a simple way for countries to demonstrate political power to the ordinary man in a literal sense.
With maps, there is purpose and reasoning behind their existence. A map of Ireland demonstrating where its borders and castles lie is not a navigational device, but a warning. It is a clear statement of its own power to resist potential invasion.
Stephen Walter's map The Island might be a map of London, but it is his London, his jokes and his knowledge. It is a spinning compass, navigating a route through his memory as much as it is a route on a page.
A series of events will be running in conjunction with the exhibition and for more information go to the British Library website.
