Arists, their lifespans, and their most productive times

dataviz
data art
storytelling

Creating storytelling data art about artists - how meta.

Author
Affiliation

Cara Thompson

Building Stories with Data

Published

January 12, 2021

My contribution to #TidyTuesday, 2021 week 3, using data from Tate.

A visualisation using a mostly horizontal curved lined to represent each of the artists in the dataset. The lines are a dark green, and the background colour is beige, imitating aged art card. The text reads: Ebbs and Flows: Each line in this graph represents an artist born in the United Kingdom whose art is owned by Tate or jointly owned with the National Galleries of Scotland. As each artist's age increases along the x axis, the variation in the height of their line along the y axis represents the proportion of their artwork created at that age that is included in this collection. The greater the number of pieces of art by the artist are included in this collection, the darker the shadow under the line that represents them and their work.

This was my first time using:

More on the data art side than the informative side but the full picture still shows the story I hoped for.

Full code here.

And here’s the making of. One where the original idea made it through to the final version.

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Citation

For attribution, please cite this work as:
Thompson, Cara. 2021. “Arists, Their Lifespans, and Their Most Productive Times.” January 12, 2021. https://www.cararthompson.com/posts/2021-01-12-tidy-tuesday-tate-artists-visualisation.