Label Text"We have to act as if the map is the world because
we can never get to the world itself, all we can
really know is the map. We understand the world
by making gestalts of the available information
which we then believe are true, but this truth is
inevitably a fiction because it's constructed by
human beings. You can never get to the thing in
itself; in so many of my stories, someone is trying to
get to something and never does."
Vernon Fisher
Fisher frequently uses maps or globes in his art as metaphors for life's mysterious journey or the ongoing human quest for knowledge and understanding about the world we occupy. In this example, he has painted a globe with the image of a woman swimming westward across the Pacific Ocean, heading towards Australia. As is characteristic of Fisher's narratives, the storyline is never literal, only suggested. In this instance, one might interpret the woman's journey as a heroic act, although we will never know if she will reach her destination.
The imagery also recalls a favorite theme in the paintings of the Surrealist artist Max Ernst and the Bay Area Figurative School painter Joan Brown. Ernst used the phrase "blind swimmer" in some of his titles as a metaphor for one who approaches life with an open mind, never knowing what may lie ahead, but always welcoming the adventure. Brown also saw the subject as symbolic of life's path. She was a distance swimmer and documented this in several self-portraits.
(David Rubin, Label Text 2007)
This resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
