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Still not feeling it? Well, don't be alarmed. We're now offering prints of Turner's Cartography of Love -- love may be a many-splendored thing, but that means it's also really complicated and difficult. It needs its own damned map.
These prints are 13 x 9" and printed on fine art paper.
I know what you're thinking: What is thought behind James Turner's giant Map of Humanity, the art poster that, for about four frustrating hours, brought SLG's website to a crashing crash?
Lucky for you, James was kind enough to share his thoughts with a blog called The Map Room back in 2003, and I thought I'd share it.
Lucky for you, James was kind enough to share his thoughts with a blog called The Map Room back in 2003, and I thought I'd share it.
Map of Humanity
Maps organize information. They pinpoint geographic locations relative to each other. The Map of Humanity also organizes information, but instead of doing it geographically, the map organizes the locations on the basis of moral, emotional, and cultural significance.
From the mythical cradle of human thought in the Garden of Eden, to the farthest reaches of human imagination, the map plots out mankind’s achievements, trials, and tribulations throughout history. We have constructed a world made up of our own actions and beliefs, as much as the one formed by the land we live on. The map of humanity is formed by our thought, our feelings, our dreams, and our nightmares.
The continents of this restructuring rest upon the sea of the unconscious, the stormy basis of our thought. The land that emerges from it is broken into three main continents, each related to an aspect of the human mind: superego, ego, and id.
The superego is dominated by our higher aspirations. It is our moral centre, where our sense of compassion, love, and virtue reside. Hope, family, kindness, and beauty dwell here amongst the peaceful fields and tranquil cities.
The ego is dominated by reason, rational thought, and order. It is the land of science, where nature is harnessed by the human mind; and order and reason hold sway over emotion and passion.
The id is the dark continent, dominated by our primitive, animalistic urges. Here hate, greed, avarice, lust, and bigotry run rampant, and war devolves into atrocity. This is the world of our making, carved out of our actions, built upon the collective achievements of the human race.
It is an attempt to map the last six thousand years of human history and thought upon a theoretical geography to discover a sense of what kind of civilization humanity has attained. And like the geography of human nations, it is in constant flux, changing and growing as long as mankind walks the face of the earth.
It took over a year to research, continues to expand as I add new places, took 5 months to build, has thousands of locations based on history and fiction. Mammoth project, at least for me. I’m trying to get the thing published but publishers are not cooperating. The struggle continues!
A couple of people have been confused as to why the Bay of Cardigan is off the cast of Lust and Hedonism. "Cardigans aren't sexy, har har," they yuck. To that, I say, for god's sake, people, this is the Internet. You can figure this out. Look up Bay of Cardigan in Wikipedia and follow a link to another Wikipedia article found there. Then verify what you find from outside sources if you want to be safe. You will find the mythical background and it will all fall into place.
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This is astounding and frustrating: Links to James Turner's Map of Humanity (blogged about here) are turning up all over the actual map -- blogs, Digg and sites in Russian and Arabic are pointing to our website. Meanwhile, here at SLG headquarters, we're like characters in a commercial for a server company because the traffic has crashed our website.
"The links are coming in from everywhere! Digg! Some Russian blog! The orders are going to be through the roof!"
"But our server's down! Our site won't load! The orders can't come through!"
"Oh, if only we'd called Nev-R-Crash Web Hosting!"
It's the Russians that are really killing us. There sure are a lot of them! Who knew? Incidentally, Moscow is the capital of Tyranny on the Map of Humanity that you could order if our site weren't down.
So sorry about the inconvenience, everyone. The company that hosts our site is trying to resolve the problem now. In the meantime, we're going to put the poster up on Amazon.con and eBay (links to come -- check back at this post), and you can also order one from us by calling 1-877-754-7877.
One of the many new offerings on at www.slgcomic.com is this Map of Humanity art print by James Turner, creator of Rex Libris. This map represents one of those rare instances when the phrase "Must be seen to be believed" legitimately applies. It's
Click on the link to be taken to our site, where you can get a bigger view of this impressive work.
