Hasta La Ideas

The latest cover for the London Underground’s pocket tube map has been created by US artist, Barbara Kruger. Good to see CR’s offices residing somewhere between Power and Perfection…

Kruger’s effort, Untitled (Tube Map), follows that of 12 other artists, including Cornelia Parker, Richard Long, Liam Gillick and David Shrigley, who have created the cover design for the pocket-sized version of the iconic tube system map.

The words that Kruger chose to replace the more familiar station names with apparently relate to her experience of that particular part of the city. Westminster is Reason, for example, while Regent’s Park is Memory.

While previous artists have subverted the map design more radically (see Parker’s ink blot, or Shrigley’s messy ball of lines), Kruger’s take has more in common with Simon Patterson’s artwork, The Great Bear, detail here, where he replaced the station names with well-known cultural figures.

The new pocket maps will be available from tube stations from May 21. The maps, incidentally, have one of the largest print runs for any organisation in Europe: 15m are printed each year.

More on the LU’s Art of the Underground projects, here.