Artist of the Week: Amazing Excel Spreadsheet Art by Tatsuo Horiuchi

It can be argued that the true artist can make art with whatever tools he has. Singer and songwriter Tom Waits once said, “Some songs come out of the ground like a potato. Others you have to make from things you found, like your mother’s pool cue, your dad’s army buddies, your sister’s wristwatch… that type of thing. You’d be surprised what you can find if you’re, you know, resourceful.” This goes double for artist Tatsuo Horiuchi, a 74-year-old Japanese man who has found that he can make beautiful artwork using Microsoft Excel.

How Tatsuo Horiuchi Started Creating Art

“I never used Excel at work, but I saw other people making pretty graphs and thought, ‘I could probably draw with that. Graphics software is expensive, but Excel comes pre-installed in most computers, and it has more functions and is easier to use than [Microsoft] Paint,” says the Japanese man who started creating his artwork in 2000.

While most people look at Microsoft Excel and don’t see anything more than a tool to organize data and graph it (at best), Tatsuo Horiuchi saw an artistic medium. At the time, he was short of retirement and decided he needed a new challenge. So he got himself a computer with Microsoft Excel and started drawing with it.

Going around back to what we were saying in the first paragraph of this article, the tools at hand are not necessarily the right ones. The Japanese man just wanted a tool to draw, but solutions like Adobe Photoshop and the like proved too expensive, so he decided to work with Excel, which was much more affordable.

From this information, you may think that the artwork is data-driven and obtained through complex data manipulation. That isn’t at all true. The artwork is done using the Autoshape tool in Microsoft Excel and has nothing to do with graphs. Instead, you’ll be surprised to find that the Japanese man’s artwork is on par with the finest Japanese painting traditions, featuring the same complex yet simple landscapes and imagery.

Much like European artists like Claude Monet were taken with Eastern art in the 19th century, you too will fall in love with this updated variant of Eastern themes and style in the 21st century.

It took him about six years to hone his skills. During all this time, he never once realized that his use of the Autoshape tool in Excel was extraordinary. This only became apparent in 2006 when he entered an Excel Autoshape contest. The competition didn’t stand a snowflake’s chance in hell.

After getting first place in this competition, Tatsuo Horiuchi continued creating work using his trademark method. Not only that, but he has also created a series of art tutorials to teach newcomers his spreadsheet painting method, which is featured on his website. Unfortunately, these are only in Japanese to date, but we’re hopeful they will be translated sooner or later.

Tatsuo Horiuchis’s work with Excel reminds us of David Byrnes’s work with Microsoft PowerPoint as an art medium. Still, the two are worlds apart. While Byrne uses PowerPoint subversively in order to reclaim what is usually seen as a soulless, corporate tool, Horiuchis’ use of Microsoft Excel is without irony. The Japanese man uses the Autoshape tool honestly and with great virtuosity in order to create images in the best Eastern artistic traditions.

Not only is Tatsuo Horiuchis’ art visually similar to the old Japanese masters’, but the painstaking, roundabout method is also reminiscent of such fine Eastern artistic traditions like beautiful calligraphy, wherein the process is equally important as the art itself, which should the process be flawed in any small way, so will the final piece be flawed.

Here is some fantastic art by the artist Tatsuo Horiuchi

Conclusion

What’s truly interesting about this artist is that we’d probably never have heard of him if he had decided to spend the money on a copy of Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. What do you think? Did you like the above Tatsuo Horiuchi Excel art? Can you do artwork for this complex using nothing but Microsoft Excel?

Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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