Magnificent Maps at the British Library

Magnificent Maps at the British Library

29 April, 2010
by: Tom Jeffreys

A major exhibition of maps opens at the British Library - it's completely brilliant, and completely free.

There's something strangely fascinating about maps, I think. When I was a kid, I used to draw endless maps of imaginary towns, cities and entire countries. Fictional past battles were carefully charted, boundaries rigorously delineated, mountains, forests, roads and rivers all positioned with due consideration. These were acts not just of childish creativity, but also of documentation, ownership and control. Basically I love maps. So you can understand how delighted I was to hear about The British Library's latest exhibition, Magnificent Maps - Power, Propaganda and Art. And interestingly, the same unconscious thought-processes that drove my own map-making desires seem not to be unique.

The first thing to note about this exhibition is that it is emphatically not a history lesson. It is not a chronological exploration of developments in cartographic technique, nor is it a history of world powers that simply uses maps as a means of telling a story. Arranged thematically according to how the maps may have been displayed when first produced, Magnificent Maps primarily asks two questions – What is a map? And what do maps do?

One tends to think of maps as things that serve a fairly basic purpose – to help one get from A to B. But as the examples on display at the British Library demonstrate, this is often the last thing on the mind of the map-maker. Take for example the world atlas of 1660 – standing taller than a fully grown adult, it's to this day the largest atlas ever made. Nearby in a glass cabinet is the world's smallest atlas – you can hardly read any of it. Or take perhaps Jacopo de Barbara's famous map of Venice from 1500. Sprawlingly wonderful, it's still the largest woodcut map ever created, so large in fact, as one of the helpful curators informs me, that they needed to construct a new paper mill in order to print it.

In short, these are not maps; they're works of art. And sumptuously beautiful many of them are too. One room of the exhibition is entitled The Audience Chamber, the aim of such a room being, according to the spiel, to “impress and overawe”, and boy, does it achieve that. So much magical detail is on show throughout the exhibition – bright colours, golds, tapestry, depictions of gods and plants and architecture. A 1708 map of Ireland – all rich flamingo pinks, crimson, jade, pine and emerald – is particularly exquisite, as is Henry Pelham's map of 1777. Utilising engraving and the newly perfected process of aquatinting, it's elegant, refined and really rather beautiful.

But the works on show are not simply decorative. There are some serious agendas here. A 1647 Dutch map of Brazil – complete with sanitised depictions of local life – aims to convey the 'civilising' effects of colonisation, whilst a 1687-8 map functions as proof of the purchase of land in Pennsylvania. Another demonstrates the power of religion in the Seville of the 1600s – apart from the river, the churches are the only buildings named. Maps are used to flatter kings, intimidate dukes, celebrate victories, fight elections, advertise products, and outline political objectives. I particularly like a seventeenth century Dutch map depicting a Europe free from national rivalries, and one dating from 1940 that seems to be claiming that drinking tea will win the war.

Maps convey power, knowledge, wealth, taste, ownership, influence and vision. They impose ideology – be it religious, scientific or nationalistic. If something has been mapped then it's been understood and appropriated – conquering is just the next logical step. In a way it's already happened. 

But there's also a sense that there's something validating about the documentation process. The first thing I look for in any relevant map is where I live or places I've visited. It's somehow pleasurable to see my parents' Buckinghamshire village on a tapestry dating back to 1590, and there's a certain charm in seeing Shoreditch, Brick Lane and Spittle Field in a 1682 map of Charles II's London.

In this regard I love contemporary artist Stephen Walter's work The Island. It's an incredibly detailed, intensely personal map of the capital – closely attuned to the specifics of local personality. London here is ironically self-sufficient and insular, surrounded by such 'exotic' or 'primitive' backwaters as the Bay of Rickmansworth, The Surrey Seas and Theyden Buoys.

What this wonderful exhibition makes abundantly clear is that a map is never just a map. There is, by necessity, always a process of selection involved, a process that involves various choices. And as soon as choice is involved, in floods a host of other issues – purpose, context, politics, personality... But there's also beauty here, and great imaginative power – not just from the map-makers, but also from the British Library for putting on this remarkable show.

Magnificent Maps - Power, Propaganda and Art is at the British Library from 30th April to 19th September 2010.

Click here to see all London exhibitions.
Click here for things to do in London.

Return to Spoonfed's London Art homepage.

Image credits, top to bottom: DIOGO HOMEM, A Chart of the Mediterranean Sea, 1570 (British Library); MACDONALD GILL, Tea Revives the World, 1940 (British Library Board); STEPHEN WALTER, detail from The Island, 2008 (British Library Board)

Tom Jeffreys