Skip to content
Jeremy Anderson's Topographical Map Drawings

Thinking of Jeremy Anderson's topographical map drawings, such as this one, from 1964.



While Anderson found inspiration in the ancient civilizations and their artifacts, the map drawings he started in the 1960s laid out his personal mythologies. By mixing the evocative imagery of his sculpture with verbal and visual puns, he was literally mapping out abstract ideas on art, theology and language. Anderson volleys with established ideologies with text such as ‘Stations of the Crocks, very symbolic, very full.’



“Art is perhaps the only instance where seemingly unrelated ideas are completely related and accepted without the slightest feeling that they have been pounded into shape by an ideology.” Anderson, 1968

 

caption:

Jeremy Anderson, “Map #17 (Stations of the Crocks),” 1964. Watercolor, graphite and ink on paper, 27 1/2 × 25 1/2 inches. Yale University Art Gallery Collection

Jeremy Anderson, Map #17 (Stations of the Crocks), 1964. Watercolor, pencil, ink on paper, 27 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches.

Collection Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.

Jeremy Anderson, Map #17 (Stations of the Crocks), 1964. Watercolor, pencil, ink on paper, 27 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches.

Collection Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.

While Anderson found inspiration in the ancient civilizations and their artifacts, the map drawings he started in the 1960s laid out his personal mythologies. By mixing the evocative imagery of his sculpture with verbal and visual puns, he was literally mapping out abstract ideas on art, theology and language. Anderson volleys with established ideologies with text such as ‘Stations of the Crocks, very symbolic, very full.’

“Art is perhaps the only instance where seemingly unrelated ideas are completely related and accepted without the slightest feeling that they have been pounded into shape by an ideology.” Anderson, 1968