Mar 2, 2008

Obsessive charting: finally cool?


I first saw New York-based artist Andrew Kuo's work last Fall. He's gained apt recognition for the obsessive charts he creates to analyze concerts in the New York Times' music section (above image from NYT). Being a big fan of chart-art (and having that slightly obsessive gene myself) I nearly fell over when I saw his level of skill. For years I had been secretly creating my own obsessive charts (both pie and bar) chronicling U.S. Presidents (it's literally what I do with my free time: deal with it). I'm certainly not at Kuo's level by any means, but during the 2004 election I had come up with an idea that I wanted to paint a canvas that would look like something inspired by Frank Stella but actually be a graph charting the Presidents. Still with me? Last night I recreated it digitally (see above). The yellow blocks on top represent George Washington's two terms, followed by John Adams, all the way down to the eight blue blocks on the bottom right that represent George W. Bush's 8 years in office. The diagonals represent assassinations, deaths in office, and Nixon's resignation—which helps to navigate the image a bit. To your right is a photo where you can sort of see the corner of my 2004 painting that didn't really turn out despite my precise measuring and taping.

4 comments:

Scott Bulger Photography said...

Very cool observations. I really dig the translation from years in office to the color coded graph/painting.

Unknown said...

AWESOME

Anonymous said...

That is oustanding!

Sasha said...

this is very cool. thanks for the post. the charting and visualization of the prez terms is really neat!