the greycat blog

The new Edward Said mural (dedicated last week: for earlier posts see ‘What would Edward Said have said?’ and ‘That mural again’) is, to be fair, no uglier than the other murals decorating the Cesar Chavez Student Center at San Francisco State University. You can read all about them here on the Student Center website.

A little detail of the Malcolm X mural caught my eye. To quote the Student Center’s description: ‘An image of the continent of Africa engulfing the United States is shown in between the images of Malcolm, and is based on the Mercator projection, which conveyed the relative size of Africa compared to the U.S.’ This is bizarrely wrong. Leaving aside the question of what exactly pointing out that Africa is bigger than the United States is supposed to prove, the muralists seem to have their cartography confused.

The world map on the mural does not use the Mercator projection. If it did, the effect would be precisely the opposite of that claimed: America would be made to appear disproportionately large compared to Africa, as Mercator maps distort land area so that the further you get from the equator the larger places appear. The map on the mural appears to use the Peters projection, which sought to overcome this distortion, and, supposedly, also serve the cause of global social justice by removing the Mercator map’s supposed bias towards the rich North American and Eurasian countries. In the mural, however, this projection is used with one significant alteration: Africa is grossly distorted to appear much larger than it ought to be, even by the standards of the Peters version. The United States, by contrast, is left at its (relatively smaller) correct size. The three images below show the results clearly: from top to bottom, Mercator, Peters, Malcolm X mural.

So, in the name of correcting an alleged distortion that didn’t suit their ideological position the makers of the mural deliberately introduced another that does, while claiming that their distortion was not a distortion.

Edward Said is in good company here.

[Map images from here (Mercator) and here (Peters); mural detail taken from here.]

The Edward Said mural at San Francisco State University (see earlier post) has been unveiled. Apparently this crass piece of kitsch with its clutter of leadenly literal imagery ‘honors Palestine’ and ‘celebrates the struggles of the Palestinian people’. The Party for Socialism and Liberation says so, anyway. Cinnamon Stillwell begs to differ: read her critique at Campus Watch.

A detailed description of the mural can be found here, at this likeable blog. Marvel at how the artists have cleverly symbolized Said’s contribution to learning through his books by depicting … his books.

[UPDATE 9 November 2007: Cinnamon Stillwell further considers the Edward Said mural, and the Said phenomenon more generally, here. Highly recommended reading.]

Alas for the late Edward W. Said. His critics have been harsh with him over the years, and that is to be expected. But just look at what his friends and admirers have done to him:

Designing this thing took over two years, apparently; one feels a certain admiration for those responsible, for it surely takes skills of a rare order to work so long upon a project that means so much to you and end up with something that fails so comprehensively on so many levels. Admittedly, murals are rarely great art, but they can at least occasionally attain directness, clarity, vigour and - not least - visual appeal. This object manages to possess none of these qualities, and to miss out on many more. It is everything one might expect when hearing the term ‘Palestinian Cultural Mural’, and less.

A group called the General Union of Palestine Students is responsible for the thing, which is going to be inaugurated on 2 November 2007 at San Francisco State University. A page on the university web site, headed ‘Palestinain [sic] Mural Honoring Professor Edward Said’, includes a truly vast un-resized image of the mural (2800 x 2116 pixels squashed into 543 x 327 pixels, forsooth) and goes on to threaten a day-long celebration including ‘Native American Dance’ and ‘Arab-American hip hop’ to accompany the inauguration.

Edward Said, who, whatever view one takes of his politics and his scholarship, was a great aesthete with a fine critical judgement in artistic matters, must be spinning like a wind turbine in his grave.

[Found via Solomonia, to whom due acknowledgement and thanks.]