The Map and The Territory
Day #35 of Hilma af Klint and the Imaginary Possible
A map is not the same the actual territory or landscape it represents.
A map is conceptual. It provides an way to see and imagine something you cannot possibly take in or traverse all at once.
A map is a grand overview, that shows you some elements of the terrain you will likely encounter.
From the perspective of a map, with your destination in sight, you can see many different routes to take.
To actually travel, however, requires you traverse the territory.
Unlike a map, the actual territory brings you face to face with limitations, obstacles, and the reality of your own limitations which affect how you get from here to there.
When you travel, you will encounter things, people, places opportunities, ways of being, smells, sounds, textures that a map cannot possibly contain.
Your mindset and habitual ways of perceiving are perhaps one of the most important features of how you actually move in the world and what you do with the obstacles in you path.
Maps simplify.
Actual landscapes are messy, and sensual and are filled with unexpected adventures and challenges.
Hilma af Klint came from a family of mapmakers.
Her own paintings to me are like map. Some have called her a cartographer of the spirit for she in her paintings she attempts to map the unseen spiritual world.
But its important in understand her work, or the work of any artist, that it wasn’t just conceptual.
To make art, is to traverse the territory with whatever means you have available, with your history, your experiences, your perceptions.
Hilma af Klint, in her paintings did both. She made the map and though her dedication and impressive artistic output, she traversed it too.
P.S.
Here is a painting that I did that is an example of the difference between the concept and the actuality. It is imperfect in every way. I could have corrected it to fit more of the ideal, but I decided not to, as this was a more true version of what I was able to paint in that moment.
