To make Map of an Englishman, Grayson Perry used the traditional printmaking techniques of etching and photogravure and borrowed the style and lettering of 16th- and 17th-century cartography. But instead of locations, his map depicts behaviors and psychological states, including bodies of water named Psychopath and Delirium and landmarks named Happiness, Cliché, Spit, and Bad Manners. Its central landforms resemble the left and right halves of the brain. Perry explained that he “tended to put the darker, more subconscious things on the bottom right, because that’s where they are in the brain.”
Perry incorporates humor and irony into his work to critique accepted social and cultural norms. Map of an Englishman could be interpreted as both a universal and specific representation of identity: “A lot of people think it’s generally like an Englishman,” the artist has said. “It is an Englishman. It is me.”
