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A review, headed 'Dreams and desires at sea', by Ian Thomson of the
latest historical work - Venetian navigators - of the Italian historian
and journalist, Andrea di Robilant, is in the paper The Independent
(London) of today (Friday, 25 March 2011). The colour-illustrated review
covers the top half of p.27 in the 'arts & books' [NB lower case!]
supplement. According to publisher Faber's website the book's ISBN is 97
8057 1243 778 (hardback).
And now your attention is got(ten) I can mention - for the mathematical
projection- and wider culturally- inclined readers [!] - an interesting
annual (2010) review of culture in the UK: 'How the map of our culture
was redrawn' by Tom Sutcliffe. This appeared in The Independent ('The
arts' section), Friday 24 December 2010, across pp.20-21. It began (and
ended) thus:-
"How do you best map the cultural year? The conventional way is a kind
of aesthetic Mercator projection, in which the irregular realities of
the arts are smoothed out on to a single flat plane. Some of the
resulting realms and territories are very large. Film has a landmass all
to itself and Theatre and Books command imperial stretches of space.
And, just as a Mercator projection stretches and squeezes in variable
ways, the act of year-end summary means that some regions loomlarger in
diagrammatic form than is consistent with their heft in the real world.
[. . .]
The Mercator projection isn't how any human can see the world, though,
which is viewed more intimately, and through various filters of memory
and prejudice. The way we actually look back on the cultural year is
more like that famous Saul Steinberg drawing of the average New Yorker's
perception of the world: in which 9th and 10th Avenue fill over half of
the perspective, with a thin strip of the United States just over the
Hudson River, and Japan and Russia just visible on the far horizon. [. .
.]
Who won the Turner Prize? Sorry, it doesn't seem to be marked on this
map at all."
Francis Herbert (your independent cultural advisor)
[email protected]
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