A MAP TO PARADISE (October 29, 2000)

Peter Greenaway’s installation in the undercroft of the Ljubljana Castle is quite pleasing to behold. It consists of ten arrays of objects—shoelaces, buckles, pencils, letters, gold rings, feathers, and the like—hung from the crusty walls of a magnificent carriageway and entrance to the main courtyard. Lengths of reinforcing steel bars painted orange and stuck into the ancient walls at odd angles complete the so-called palimpsest. Contemporary kitsch. On the way out, I picked up a publication purporting to explain the project, “A Map to Paradise,” in both Slovene and English. The author’s text is nothing if not hilarious. He sets out by dissolving the notion of a map, for everything can be a map, and then he dissolves the notion of paradise, for there is nothing but paradise. He proceeds by enumerating his ten arrays—sorry, maps. Predictably, he ends up by inviting us to provide our own reading of paradise, which, on his evidence, is suspiciously like hell. Quintessential Greenaway—the insufferable peddler of enigmatic enigmas, puzzling puzzles, and questionable questions.