"Word & Image" in Art, Life and Whatnot

The importance of word and image in the world of communication and design extends beyond what we think of when we see those two words juxtaposed.  "Word" and "Image", when seen together, might make you think of comic books, where the image and words are interlocked together in a harmonious relationship where the words and image by themselves work, but together, do what the other one cannot alone.

For example:

Our earliest recollection of word and images...

http://comics.com/peanuts/2010-06-06/

Peanuts is THE Number One Comic of all time, recognizable all over the world and across many generations.  Perhaps those of us born after the baby boomer age do not remember alot about World War II, and perhaps do not even remember ever reading Peanuts in the Sunday funnies ( the internet the source of news for most of this generation, has left the tradition of reading the Sunday funnies while eating breakfast is a huge question mark). We do, however recognize a phot of war when we see it.  and we do, however, recognize the cartoon in it's reverance to the photo.  But until we read "June 6, 1944- to Remember-", do the words become part of the image and are integral to the message.

Another example of words and images working together to convey a message:

A children's book, using words and pictures together to implant images and  begin the first, primary steps of word recognition.  Just the picture of the pipe is abstract to a child in their very first books, but, when reinforced with the parent reading the words in specific sentences? The concept becomes clear.

Rene Magritte, Belgian Surrealist, "The Treason of Images"

This painting, familiar by now to Design 001 students, confronts us with the image of a briar pipe.  We KNOW it to be a pipe, and yet, the words "This Is Not A Pipe", (in French) begs to differ.  It, in fact, is NOT a pipe, but the image of such and we have this see-saw experience of cognitive dissonance.  We know what the we see, and yet the words tell us that this is not what we see.  We must then come to new terms with what we see and what we know.

One of my favorite examples I have found of Word & Image in art:

This sculpture  is by the artist Jean-Luc Cornec is called Scheiterhaufen-Zungenbrecher, which means funeral pyre of tongue-twisters. courtesy of http://wordandimage.wordpress.com/, this sculpture is a literal example of "Word & Image".  The title of the piece alone lets us know exactly what we are dealing with, but there's the fact that the artist chose to use cursive words, which in their curvilinear forms are more complicated a font to read than, lets say, Franklin Gothic, a bold, san-serif font that is extremely easy to read.  That in itself reinforces the tongue-twister title.  Then, the artist Cornec throws into the colorful pile words that leave the human organ, the tongue, working overtime in their pronounciation.  Especially those of us who are native English speakers.  Go on, I dare YOU: try it, 3 times fast, "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz...(just kidding...that word isn't in there, which means "Cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law",  but I promise you that there are plenty others to choose from)

So, perhaps in art and comics, word and image are non-necessities....just yet another way to use a medium to cleverly speak in ways that perhaps one or the other , alone, cannot.
But, in advertising? Well, THAT's a WHOLE NEW BLOG....
http://nadjaon.blogspot.com/2010/11/words-images-in-advertising.html