The Guardian has published a modern-day version of the Bayeux tapestry, created by cartoonist Edith Pritchett, alongside a review of the original artwork by art critic Jonathan Jones. Both approaches found the 11th-century embroidery strikingly pertinent to today's world.
Pritchett was asked by her editors on the Guardian's Saturday magazine to draw a contemporary take on the medieval masterpiece, which is currently on public display in the UK for the first time since its creation. Her updated version was included as a pullout poster in the print edition and published as a scrollable digital feature.
Modern Battles Replace Medieval Conquest
While the original tapestry tells the story of the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England in 1066, Pritchett's version depicts today's battles with online trolls, social media addiction, the manosphere, AI agents, and a natural world ravaged by fossil fuels. Her work aims to show how different components of today's dystopia amplify each other.
"I decided on the main topics such as techno-feudalism, the climate crisis, the super-rich, Elon Musk, the online swirling vortex of hatred," says Pritchett, "then I tried to work out how to piece it together into a kind of flowing narrative."
Jones, who reviewed the actual artwork at the British Museum, said he generally avoids grafting contemporary issues onto historic works of art. "Yet when I saw it, my genuine visceral response was to see some of those parallels," he says. "There is real horror in it – the horror of war – and it really did strike me very freshly."
Reimagining a Treasured Artwork
Pritchett admitted to feeling unnerved by the prospect of updating the tapestry. "I depressed myself by looking at the tapestry online and thinking about how beautiful and amazing it is. I thought, 'Oh no, I'm going to do this cheap rip-off of it'," she says. Despite this, she felt inspired by the challenge, picking out things that could be represented in an immediate visual language. For instance, AI agents are depicted as retro-looking robots, though she had to omit datacentres as they were not visually engaging.
The prominence of tech titans in her version proved prescient: last week, the Guardian revealed that tech billionaire Peter Thiel had been granted a private viewing of the tapestry at the British Museum ahead of the British and French heads of state.
Jones explained his approach to viewing the exhibition: "I have a fairly visual mind and when I go to an exhibition I avoid reading captions and text as much as possible," he says. "If you focus on the visual experience, what you see is fresh and raw – you're not seeing it through other people's words."
Borders Reveal the Vibes
The original artwork stretches to 68.3 metres long, and Jones described the experience of viewing it as almost cinematic. His eyes were drawn to the intricate borders above and below the main narrative, which feature images of animals and symbolic portents. "So this felt like a whole multifaceted world that aspires to take in the whole of creation," he says.
Pritchett used the borders to show how today's dystopian tendencies work in tandem. "For instance, I drew an incel narrative along the bottom border," she says, pointing to images of red and blue pills beneath a scene about the manosphere. Other details include a bitcoin symbol beneath a superyacht, wall-mounted mirrors reflecting social media-induced misery, and dead animals above an oil rig, while other animals succumb to phone addiction and grapple with four-legged AI robots.
Pritchett refrained from illustrating some horrifying consequences of today's dynamics, such as droughts, wildfires, and armed conflict, because she didn't want to be reductive. "As an illustrator, you want to have a visual shorthand for things you're trying to represent, but you also want to give them dignity," she says.
Despite the horrors depicted in the original, Jones was surprised by the levity of some panels. "The surreal and comedy aspects were surprising. It felt more contemporary than I thought it would be. It was more raw and shocking as well as funnier," he says. He agreed that the tapestry's visual storytelling format feels timely: "You could say its time has come because we're more visual," he says.
Building a digital version of Pritchett's illustration presented challenges for the Guardian's design team. "How do you show readers details in wide images when we're all looking at these little vertical screens without chopping them up or pinching and zooming?" explains Tara Herman, the Guardian's executive editor for design. The team's solution was an interactive format combining vertical scrolling with horizontal viewing. "Our interactive format is an attempt to emulate the experience of being in a gallery where you're taking your turn looking at a picture and pausing to take in different details," she says.
