The British Library's Magnificent Maps exhibition is full of cartographical treasures, not least the 14th Century Mappa Mundi from Ebstorf, Lower Saxony and Grayson Perry's creepy reinterpretation of the same. Historian Marcia Kupfer will tonight (6.30pm) give an historical overview of such maps, with comments from Perry. Former Python and medieval enthusiast Terry Jones will also be on hand to introduce the talk, which will be held in the BL's conference centre. Tickets (£7.50) are still available, possibly thanks to this worldbeating piece of impenetrable artspeak, which must have put a few people off an otherwise fascinating event:
Inspired by the Ebstorf Map which it utterly transforms, Grayson Perry’s Map of Nowhere (2008) activates and therefore makes salient key artistic principles that inform the early 14th-century work. Notwithstanding the unbridgeable divide between the contemporary and medieval images, notwithstanding their visual and cultural incommensurability, the former might be said to incarnate the unconscious of the latter.
We might just submit this horrendous paragraph to the Golden Bull awards.
