Pictures unite!': how pop music fell in love with socialist infographics

"When Otto Neurath died in Oxford some 80 years ago, far away from his native Vienna, he was still finding his feet in exile. Like many a Jewish refugee, the economist, philosopher and sociologist had been interned as a suspected enemy alien on the Isle of Man, along with his third wife and close collaborator Marie Reidemeister, having chanced a last-minute life-saving escape from their interim hideout in the Netherlands across the Channel in a rickety boat in 1940."

"Thanks to Neurath's pioneering use of pictorial statistics or Isotypes as Reidemeister called them, an acronym for International System of Typographic Picture Education he left behind an enormous legacy in the arts and social sciences: it is the language through which we decode and analyse the modern world. But his lasting relevance would have been hard to predict at the time of his death at the age of 63. Neurath demanded his images show the most important thing about the object at first glance'"

"Neurath's visual autobiography had been shelved by his publishers, who probably failed to follow the ambitious arc of its title, From Hieroglyphics to Isotype. A graphic showing residential density in large cities, designed by Marie Reidemeister (later Neurath). Photograph: Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection, University of Reading Suggesting a civilisational peak being reached in his own creation, this tome which remained unpublished until 2010 outlined his democratising vision"

Otto Neurath died in Oxford in exile after fleeing Vienna and being interned as a suspected enemy alien on the Isle of Man with his wife and collaborator Marie Reidemeister following a perilous 1940 Channel crossing. He pioneered pictorial statistics, or Isotypes (International System of Typographic Picture Education), leaving a substantial legacy in the arts and social sciences as a visual language for decoding the modern world. He insisted that images show the most important feature at first glance. The Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics had limited impact in the UK. A visual autobiography titled From Hieroglyphics to Isotype was shelved and remained unpublished until 2010. The project embodied a democratising vision encapsulated in the slogan: Words divide, pictures unite, rooted in interwar Red Vienna and critical of profit-driven postwar Anglo-American pop culture.

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