Earth-mapping

by Casey, Edward S.

• ISBN13: 9780816643332
• ISBN10: 0816643334
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-03-03
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

Dutch world maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with their decorative pictures and elaborate typography, stand in sharp contrast to the wholly practical maps of today, which emphasize precise detail and consistent scale. Art, since the Impressionist period, has seemingly moved in the opposite direction, toward a less realistic interpretation of the world around us. Edward S. Casey demonstrates that the disciplines of mapping and painting, long thought to have diverged, are again intersecting. Earth-Mapping describes the ways in which artists of the last half century have incorporated ingenious mapping techniques into their art works. Beginning with a reassessment of the pioneering earth art of Robert Smithson in the 1960s and 1970s, Casey follows Smithson's legacy in the works of Sandy Gellis, Margot McLean, and Michelle Stuart. He also explores the visions of the earth found in the abstract paintings of Richard Diebenkorn, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Eve Ingalls, and Dan Rice. Focusing on forms of mapping that depart radically from conventional cartography - particularly "mapping with/in," being with or in a place, and "mapping out," communicating that experience of connection with others Casey - shows how earth art and abstract painting respectively reshape our landscape and our view of it, drawing us in from our bird's-eye view of the grid of highways and roads. In these works, we come to see the earth as it is sensed, remembered, and reshaped by artists as they explore the effect of the landscape on humans and the human effect on the landscape, and as they demand a response to the changing world around us.

Author Biography

Edward S. Casey is leading professor in the philosophy department at SUNY-Stony Brook.  He is author of numerous books on the importance of place in human lives, including Getting Back into Place:  Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (1993), The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (1997), and Representing Place:  Landscape Painting and Maps (2002).

Table of Contents

Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Prologue: Mapping It Out with/in the Earth	xiii
Part I. Earth Works That Map
Mapping with Earth Works: Robert Smithson on the Site	3	(24)
Memorial Mapping of the Land: Materiality in the Work of Margot McLean	27	(14)
Mapping Down in Space and Time: Sandy Gellis Collecting Traces	41	(16)
Plotting and Charting the Path: Voyaging to the Ends of the Earth with Michelle Stuart	57	(50)
Concluding Reflections to Part I	91	(16)
Part II. Mapping the Landscape in Paintings
Getting Oriented to the Earth: Eve Ingalls Bringing Line and Paint to Bear	107	(16)
Maps and Fields: Jasper Johns and Richard Diebenkorn on Icons and the Land	123	(16)
Absorptive versus Cartographic Mapping: Willem de Kooning on Bodies Moving in the Landscape	139	(14)
Locating the General in the Earth Itself: Dan Rice on Biding Time in Place	153	(22)
Last Thoughts on Part II	167	(8)
Epilogue: Wherefore Earth-Mapping?	175	(18)
Notes	193	(34)
Permissions	227	(2)
Index	229