Skull With Cigarette, 2007 [based on a painting by Van Gogh]
72×98″
Depicts 200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months.
Photos: an ever closer look at the Skull portrait
The entire Skull (in the first photo) is composed of the elements in the last (cigarette packages). Here’s what the artist, Chris Jordan has to say about the work:
“Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics….Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.
This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs…. I hope to raise some questions about the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.”
