Académique Documents
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Culture Documents
Denis Cosgrove is Alexander von Huniboldt professor of geography, at tbe University of California Los Angeles.
Correspondence to: Dr D. Cosgrove. Department of Geography, UCLA, 1 i70 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los
Angetfs. CA 90095. USA. Tel: (1) 310 825 1912. E-mail: <cosgrove@geog.ucla.edu>.
Routledge
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d'oiseau (1956) (Fig. 1). The totalizing and commanding vision of the city that Peltier's pictorial
maps offered derived in part from aerial photography, whose relationship with pictorial mapping
is consider in greater detail below. Pictorial maps
perfectly captured the distanciated spatial vision of
mid-century urban planning in European cities
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D. Cosgrove
Gy Debod, 'Situationist Map of Paris Using G. P.llier's 1956 Vue de Paris a vol d'oiseau'. in Guide psychoseographique de Paris:
Discours sur les passions de I'amour {Denmark, The Imagitiist Bauhaiis, 1957). Debord's dust jacket for the book illustrates the
concept of the derive as a mode of experiencing the city iniimately Irom below. The mastering perspective of the bird's eye
view is broken inid arbitrary fragments representing districis lo be walked and in which encounters mighl take place. The
red arrows connecting these spaces represent taxi rides or other less intimate connections across urban space.
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Lilla LoCto and William Oulcault, 'Imag. of the artists* scanned bodies as globe gores'. 122 x 244cni, chromogenic print
from Sclfportrait.ntap (2000). This is just one of a series of images in which ihe New York artists juxtapose the ])onraii and
the nude using siatc-of-the-art computer lethnology to create images derived fniin iliree-dimcnsional digiial scans of iheir
bodies. The skin appears stripped from the body and flatiencd into a iwci-diniensiunal surface using convcnlionai
cartographic projections. As a solid object, ihe surface of the human body, like tbat of the globe, cannot be represented in
two dimensions without distoniim. Apianusil BL3cy 17-98. (Reproduced with permission of ihe artists.)
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Rlh Watson. Take Heat (1998), gold CIHUDKU. wrapping paper and nicial pins. 160 cm diameter. This is one of a number of
Watson's projects in which she draws upon and reworks the long emblematic tradition of the global cordiform projeciion
which associates it with memory, iove and harmony on eanh. Using (he gold foil from chocolate wrappers, she plays upon
ihe associations between chocolate and love, to be sure, bul in a more critical mode, memory of the product as a colonial
plantation crop. By projeaing from ihc South Pole she also disrupis the eurocentrism of conventional world mapping.
Image courtesy the arlisi and Christciiurch Art Gallery-Te Puna O Waiwhetu. (Reprodticed with permission of tlie artist.)
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Kalhy Prendergast, Lost, detail of ihc western United States from her Atlas of the Emotions (1999). Digital print. Original
image 84 x 1 32fm. Prendergast's m,ip of the United States highlights place-natnes containing the word 'Lost'. The image
ses both ihc familiaity and th. authority of the topographicdl map to challenge our understanding of place-names as
cartographical markers of meaning. Not only does it upset 'official' hierarchies of place in maps, bui also culonialisi's
assumptions aboui cotitrol over the spaces of exploration. (Reproduced with permission of the artist.)
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Detail from Charles Owens: Will Hitler drive into Spain in new thrsi aisTied al Gibaliar?'. from ih. Los Angeles Times, 28
December. 1942. The map is reproduced in full in Plate 5. Owetjs's dramatic charcoal sketch of a German air attack over the Rock of
Gibraltar recalls Hollywood storyboard and later comic strip illustrations.
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tnt3nfltlrrimrf * MOMV.DC
\:
IcrCharles Owens, Tokyo: heari of Japan and No.l Pacific largei', Los Angeles Times. 11 December 1944. Owens retains Ihe
cving global horizon .ven for such a detailed map as this on of central Tokyo, illustraling ihe American bombing of the
Japanese capital. Districis and streets are illustrated, and the map suggests ihai the Flying Fortresses are targeting
'govemmeni operated war industries' raiher than fire bombing dvilian districts as was oflen the case. The intrusion of ihe
battle scene inio the map is typical of Ovvens's most dramatic war images.
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Charles Owens, 'Have yo seen iht- Piiind..ies National Monument?' Los Angeles Times. Atiio Secdoii. 1..1929. This composite
image illustating a 'nov.i Southland motor trip' was one of scores that Owens prochiced for the newspaper's leisure and
auio sections between 1920 and 1940. The Pinnaties National Monument, in the Sierras east nf San Francisco was newly
accessible to Los Angeles car drivers by a scenic route of some 312 miles. Owens used sketches and photographic and lext
inserts overlain on his bird's-eye map to illustrate the road journey.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES
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and Cortietl D. K. Yce, Plantejaments I objectius d'una incomplete but substantial colleaiim of 120 of the
histbria universal de la cartografia I Approaches and Challenges
original maps is held In the Young Research Library at
in a World-Wide Hisiory of Cartography (Barcelona. Instiiui Universily of California Los Angeles, and a selection of
Canograficde Catalimya, 2001), 91-109.
others, in a poor state of preservation, is kept in ihe Times
offices in downtown Los Angeles.
30. Stephen Bann, 'The map as an index of the real:
land an and the authentication of travel'. Imago Mundi 46
40. Denis Cosgrove, Apollo's Eye (Baltimore, The Johns
(1994): 9-18.
Hopkins University Press, 2001), 243-48.
31. <www.Pdnceton.edu/kurgan/spot/kosovo/htm>.
41. A familiar example is the opening frames of the
194! film Casablanca.
32. Catherine Nash. 'Mapping emotion', Environmeni
and Planning D: Society and Space 16 (1998): 1-9.
42. Evidence of the complex interaction hetween war,
33. John Pickles, 'Tcxls, hermeneutics and propaganda
cartography and art is found also in the biography of
maps', in Writing Worlds: Discourse. Text and Metaphor in theconceptual artist Douglas Huebler discussed earlier.
Representation of Landacape. ed. T. J. Barnes and J. S. Huebler worked as an iittelligetice officer in the Pacific
Duncan (London, Routledge, 1992), 193-230.
theatre, flying sorties and using maps to plot the success
of homhing missions.
34. Mark Monmonicr, Maps with the News (Chicago,
Chicago University Press, 1989), 14.
43. Los Angeles Times. 4 March 1958.
35. Susan Schulten, The Geographical Imagination in
44. Owens's capacity to recreate landscapes from
America. 188(1-1950 (Chicago, University of Chicago
memory gave him an early reputation as a young reporter
Press. 2001), 214-28. Richard Edcs Harrison, Look at the
when he illustrated the San Francisco earthquake for a
World: The Fortune World Atlas for World Strategy (NewNew York newspaper with a piaorial map of the city
York, Fortune, 1944); Susan Schulten, 'Richard Edes
based on wire reports and his personal knowledge alone.
Harrison and the challenge to American cartography'.
45. John Ott, 'Landscapes of consumption: auto tourism
Imago Mundi 50 (1998): 174-88.
and visual culture in California, 1920-1940', in Reading
36. Harrison, in his introduction lo Look at the World (see
California. Art. Image. Identity, ed. Stephanie Barron et al.
note 35), is specific ahout the significance of his project as
(Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000), 51-67,
a eontrihiition lo democratic cilizen^hip.
ref. on 52. For len months in 1923 and again in 1927,
37. Walter Ristow, 'Journalistic cartography', Surveying
Owens's California landscapes and desert scenes were
and Planning 10 (1957): 369-90. Ristow was a close friend
reproduced in full colour on the front cover of Touring
of Richard Edcs Harrison and his arguments about
Topics, ihc monthly magazine of the Automobile Club of
newspaper cartography have the eifect of enhancing ihe
Souiheni California.
significance of Harrison's work. Risiow's paper has been a
46. Manin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in
principal source for the more recent reviews of 20thTwentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley, University of
century popular cartography hy Monmonier and
California Press, 1993), is the originator of this phrase
Schuiten.
which suggests ihe close conneclion between ways of
38. Charles Owens, who is ihe principal subjeci of this
seeing and representing space and broader cultural shifts.
study, worked between 1910 and 1912 for the New York
47. Ott, 'Landscapes of consumption' (see noie 45),
Herald and cJther New York newspapers and after that at
notes 35 and 56,
the Los Angeles Examiner before joining the Los Angeles
48. Los Angeles Times. 20 May 1934.
Times in 1918, where he stayed until his retirement in
49. The photograph and map were published in the Los
1952. Howard Burke is known only for his work as staff
Angeles Times on 1 January 1929. The Spence archive of
artist at the San Francisco Examiner, where he was active in aerial photographs is currently housed at the Geography
the same mid-century years as Owens.
Department of UCLA, It consists of some 100,000
photographic negatives and printed images.
39. The full series of maps is noi known and does not
appear in the microfilm version of Los Angeles Times. An
50. Ladies' Home Journal, July 1930: 51-53.
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D. Cosgrove
zwischen Kunst und Kartographif bcschranken sich aber weiterhin uberwiegend auf altere Karten. Dabei
wird eine kritische Prufung der Interdependenz von Kunst und Kariographie im 20. Jahrhundert vermieden
und weiterhin der Eindruck vermittelt, diese entwickelten sich in der modernen Zeit vollig unabhangig. Im
voriiegenden Beiirag schlagt der Autorbasierend auf theoretischen Arbeilen auf dem Gebiet der science
studies und unter Berticksichtigung der Loslosung der modernen Kunst von der Asthetikvor, dass der
Komplex Kunst und Kartographie im 20. Jahrhundert vor allem anhand der Prozesse der Kanenherstellung
untersucht werden sollte und weniger anhand der Karten selbst. Ein Uberblick iiber die Stromungen der
modernen Kunsl und die Analyse einzelner Kunstwerke lasst eine kontinuierliche, wenn auch kritische
Beschaftigung der Avantgarde-Kiinstler mit der Kartographie erkennen. Daruber hinaus legt auch die
Untersuchung popularerer Zeitungsiilustrationen, die im Kontext mit der ausgepragt modernen visuellen
Kultur von Los Angeles in der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts entstanden, eine enge Verbindung zwischen der
Moderne, der Kunst und der Kartographie nahe.
Modernidad, arte y cartografia en el sigh XX
Aunque la historia de la cartografia se ha librado de inoperantes debates sobre el estaius cientifico y artistico
de los mapas, las deliberaciones sobre la relation entre arte y cartografia se han centrado principalmente en
los mapas historicos, evitando un examen critico del arte y la dencia en la cartografia del siglo XX, y dejando
intacta la impresion de que seguian distintos caminos en la epoca moderna. En csie ankulo he dibujado un
trabajo teorico en science studies y tomado en cuenta la separacion entre el arte modemo y la estetica para
sugerir que la investigacion sobre el arte y la cartografia en el siglo XX debe centrarse en las practicas
cartograficas mas que en los mapas en si. Un repaso sumario a los moviniientos arti'sticos y a algunos trabajos
seleccionados, indica un continuado, aunque cn'tico, compromiso de los artistas de vanguardia con la
cartografia; el examen de los mas populares periodicos de arte, producidos en el contexto de la cultura visual
moderna de la miiad del siglo XX en Los Angeles, indica una conexion muy cercana entre modernidad, arte y
cartografia
Author's Postscript
Sarah Bendall {'Draft Town Maps for John Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britairte', Imago Mundi, 54