Doodlers-in-Chief doodle-doo

Some of our U.S. Presidents, like Dwight Eisenhower, were fairly good artists. Others simply preferred to doodle. The creators of Cabinet magazine have spent years scouring archives and libraries across America in creating the new book Presidential Doodles: Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles & Scrawls from the Oval Office. They have unearthed hundreds of presidential doodles and present the finest examples of the genre in the volume. Historian David Greenberg sets these images in context and explains what they reveal about the inner lives of our commanders in chief.

Additional information about the book can be found on the site of the CBS Sunday Morning television program, in the article Drawings By Commanders In Chief May Hint At Their Thoughts. It's interesting to learn that Presidents Carter and Ford were not doodlers, and Nixon was a "disappointing doodler."

The book's accompanying website PresidentialDoodles.com offers doodles from the book, a "who did the doodle" quiz, and additional resources - including links to many of the presidential libaries or other libraries with presidential collections. You can even send a doodle e-card to a friend.

Cabinet is a quarterly magazine of art and culture that confounds expectations of what is typically meant by the words "art," "culture," and "magazine." Like the seventeenth century cabinet of curiosities to which its name alludes, Cabinet focuses on the margins of culture. Playful and serious, exuberant and committed, Cabinet features the work of artists, writers, historians, scientists, and much more.

©2006 Jeff Fisher LogoMotives