John F. Kennedy
Even presidents of the United States are doodlers — some good and some not so good.
And what they doodled often reflected what they liked.
The Founding Fathers doodled, and so did Andrew Jackson. Benjamin Harrison accomplished almost nothing during his time in the White House, but he left behind some impressive doodles.
Herbert Hoover
But it is during the 20th century — as pens improved, paper became cheaper, and meetings got longer — that the presidential doodle truly came into its own.
Theodore Roosevelt doodled animals and children, while Dwight Eisenhower doodled weapons and self-portraits. FDR doodled gunboats, and JFK doodled sailboats.
Ronald Reagan favored cowboys and football players.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
To coincide with The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum’s current “Extreme Drawing” exhibitions, a sampling of Oval Office doodles culled from various presidential archives will be shown on Saturday, Aug. 10, at 2 p.m. when the editor-in-chief of Cabinet magazine discusses “Presidential Doodles.”
Sina Najafi will tell how these “highly revealing scribbles are not just evidence of a powerful man’s wandering mind, but reflective of the era in which they were produced.”
Extreme Drawing, on view through Aug. 25, features contemporary artists who push the boundaries of drawing, the most direct and universal means of visual expression. The series of exhibitions focuses on artists whose practice has taken the pursuit of drawing to extremes, addressing issues of scale, material, content, gesture, emotion, and individual circumstance.
The talk is free with the price of admission for non-members. For more information or to register to attend, visit aldrichart.org/events/?id=1722.
Lyndon B. Johnson