Paula Scher Makes Enormous Maps That Are Only Sort of Right

By Steven Heller

Oct 20 2011, 11:02 AM ET

A partner in the design firm Pentagram, Scher started painting maps because it forces her to have patience, a trait she lacks in daily life

Who among you does not find comfort in maps? They are the most authoritative of the genus

information graphicus

. They are to be trusted. They must be trusted. Yet the foreword to a new book published this week,

Paula Scher MAPS: Paintings, Installations, Drawings and Prints

, is titled "All Maps Lie." And this coming from Scher herself, a map maven whose hand-painted extravaganzas are, it seems, celebrations of map veracity. I asked her how this contrary revelation could be true.
"My father invented a device called 'stereo templates' for the government which corrects the lens distortion in aerial photography. There would be no Google Maps today without that advancement," Scher proudly told me. Indeed, it was Marvin B. Scher who taught his impressionable daughter that all maps are distorted, not literal truth; that information changes based on the point of view of the mapmaker.
"My painted maps are opinionated, biased, erroneous, and, also, sort of right," Scher admits. I have a lithograph of her world map -- a birthday gift from the artist -- with handwritten names of every possible macro and micro landmass, framed in my office. I stare at it often, admiring the craft but also thinking about the ports-of-call where I could be. The obsessive details are unfailingly seductive. Nonetheless, they're only sort of right. Why, then, devote so much time to them?
"The process of painting these maps is time consuming and sometimes mindless," Scher says. "It's a good respite for me until I realize I may be going a little crazy. Adding the details forces me to have patience, a trait I lack in my daily life."
Before tackling maps, Scher, who is a partner in the design firm Pentagram and creator of many familiar New York graphic and environmental design icons (think The Public Theater), did watercolors of flowers as a respite from her design work. It was then that she started seeing maps as the foundation of a new art.
"I had been painting small-scale opinionated maps for about five years," Scher explained. "They were political. Sometimes I was hired as an illustrator to make them. I was also invited to exhibit them. A collector of world paintings [Marvin and Ruth Sackner] bought South America. That encouraged me. At some point after that, I realized they would work better on an enormous scale. At first I didn't think I had the energy to accomplish it with the same detail and density."
In those earliest maps one sees traces of the primitive painter Howard Finster, who captured a rural vernacular on canvas. Was Finster -- or any other primitive -- the inspiration for these maps?
"When you hand-draw typography, it looks like Finster or other primitive artists," Scher says. "Because of the complications of the paintings and the patterns they create, some people have commented that they remind them of aboriginal art. There is this primitive quality to them, but I wouldn't describe them as primitive."
In fact, it would be naïve to call them primitive. Scher knows exactly what she's doing, and each stage of development has become more sophisticated than the last. Her new book is a testament to that. Arguably, she prefigured the current trend in artful data visualization. She is often associated with -- even considered a precursor of -- this "movement."

"I have been obsessed with charts, graphs, diagrams, and maps for thirty years and have used them as a form of satire and social comment in my design work," Scher says. "The Data-Vis movement is different. Initially, charts, graphs, diagrams, and maps existed in support of an article to emphasize a point, so the authorship was clear. In the current Data-Vis craze, information exists as an end in and of itself. It's not ironic or satirical. It is supposed to look scientific, as if a computer mechanically selected the data. The last line of an article I wrote about Faux Info says, 'the information does your thinking for you and you don't have to think at all.' I may be a precursor of that, but I hope not."

Stories in the news often inspire Scher's maps. But she also takes requests (i.e. commissions). "I have been extremely gratified by people's response to them," she says. "It inspires me to make more. Also, there is nothing like the deadline of an exihbit to force me to make them. I guess, the more I show them, get commissions. or sell them, the more they are a vocation."
Scher adds, "there is no grand plan" for the future. But does she see maps in her future, when she's done designing for a living? "The painting began as an antidote to design," she says. "Design happens quickly on a computer and the painting is laborious. Design is social. Painting is isolating. Design has a purpose. Art has no purpose. I can't imagine one without the other."
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폴 랜드 옹도 그랬고, 폴라 셰어도 역시 그림을 그린다. 실무를 하다 보면 다들 그렇게 되는 게 어찌 보면 당연하단 생각도 든다.

디자인은 분명 내가 하지만 결국 남 위해 만드는 것이고, 그림은 정말 나만을 위해, 내 맘대로 하는 것이니까...

시간도 오래 걸리고 손도 많이 가지만, 결과물이 컴퓨터에서처럼 완벽하게 딱 떨어지게 나오지도 않지만,

그래도 손으로 했기에 더 정이 간다는 ㅎㅎㅎ 폴라 셰어는 항상 되게 분명하고 시원시원하다.

항상 자기가 뭘 하고 있는지, 뭘 해야 하는지 분명히 알고 있는게 다른 사람들한테도 분명히 보이도록 행동하고 말한다.

한마디로 무쟈게 당당하다는 거...ㅋㅋㅋ Pentagram에서 내 과제에 도움 되라고 Michael Bierut 불러다가

나 혼자 앉혀놓고 디자인 컨퍼런스에서 했던 프리젠테이션을 그대로 해줬던 게 십여 년이 지났지만 지금까지도

인상적으로 기억에 남음. 그런 걸 잊어버리면 절대 안 되겄지? ㅎㅎㅎ 디자인 전공학생에게 그런 황홀경은 정말 흔치 않다는 거.

디자인이 좋아서 전공은 했지만 실무환경은 참 나와 안 맞았음. 역시 난 이기적이야...ㅋㅋ