Words are different from pictures, which might explain why they have different names.
Even though words and pictures may never fully combine, their mere frottage (in both senses of the word) can bring a new richness and multi-dimensionality to art.
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Verbal creation and visual creation each contribute different strengths and perspectives to their partnership. As Swinburne said,
Light is heard as music, music seen as light.
Through the centuries, illustration is the art form where words and pictures have interacted most closely. Traditionally, this meant words next to the picture, but still separate:
Comics integrated the words directly into the picture, sometimes with mixed results:
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| Word balloon competes with drawing (Neal Adams) |
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| MAD Magazine parody |
But over the years, artists have found interesting and engaging ways to combine visual thinking with verbal thinking. No one was better at it than the great Saul Steinberg:
Commercial artists who used words as graphic symbols became an inspiration for pop art.
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| Bob Peak employs words as design elements I do like the way Claes Oldenberg used words as graphic objects, obliterating the meaning of the words: |
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I've previously outraged readers by publicly admiring Cy Twombly's Orpheus, which-- unlike Oldenberg-- incorporates the meaning of the word, painting it in a way that evokes its rich content:
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| Orpheus by Cy Twombly |
Yessir, people have wrestled with cross breeding words and pictures in all sorts of ways:
But in my view, the marriage of words and pictures remains largely unconsummated in post modern conceptual art.
Famed artist Jenny Holzer places text side by side with images-- perhaps on a colored background or carved into a bench-- without ever combining or even juxtaposing their different characteristics. These words would fail as literature so Holzer seeks to find legitimacy by taking up residence in the less discriminating side of town: the visual arts.
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Holzer apparently believes that projecting boring platitudes on the side of a building transforms them into Art.
Similarly, many other contemporary artists who are incapable of doing the heavy lifting of combining words and pictures rely exclusively upon words (yet still hope to claim credit as visual artists):
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| Museum of Modern Art displays pages from the Montevideo phone book with the names of political victims. |
Apologists and pedants have attempted to justify this use of words as a substitute for pictures, claiming in learned treatises that words were simply a cool new form of visual art.
It may be that in the marriage of words and pictures, some people believe images are the weaker spouse and can be supplanted. Not me. Pictures preceded the written word and will be there at the end to receive it.
33 comments:
I’d once again encourage you to consider one of the very few sequential art-works that actually merit being referred to as a novel, namely Cerebus, by Dave Sim and Gerhard. There you’ll find the blurring of what is sign and what is symbol you’re looking for
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Postmodern Anonymouse
When I was a kid and discovered Will Eisner's The Spirit, one of the things I loved most was the typographical play on the titles of the first pages of each adventure. I think it's well worth a thorough study, if it doesn't already exist.
Here's a good summary:
https://www.djfood.org/will-eisners-spirit-title-pages/
"There you’ll find the blurring of what is sign and what is symbol you’re looking for"
What's the 'blurring' you speak of ? I haven't read it, but from what I've seen it has the usual mix of - word balloons, inner dialogue boxes and occasionally more elaborately drawn / rendered sound effect words - which are common to a lot of comic books / graphic novels.
The blurring occurs on several levels.
First, the "usual mix", as you put it, isn't at all that usual. In the usual mix, the delineation is usually clear. Words and images might interplay in traditional illustrative contexts, but they seldom meld. Word seem written and drawings seem drawn. There's visual hierarchy, and it is rarely challenged - often, seemingly, for fear of appearing too comicky.
Because in comics, in general, the words and images not only exist on the same plane, they interact and overflow into eachother. There aren't two tracks, one for sound and one for visuals, as in cinema. It's just one track, and everything exists equally on that track / plane. A person appearing to speak and the appearance of his words are made of the same stuff. This fundamental principle is often made unclear, sometimes by a production line (different people drawing and lettering the work) and sometimes by technology (typewritten or digitally overlaid fonts), partially undermining the very uniqueness of sequential art.
Still, this dissolving of artifical boundaries - as is at once the simply simple operation and unlimited potential of juxtaposition of images - is at the core of sequential art as an artform, or rather - a strategy, and I can think of no better instantiation of it that what can be found in Cerebus, where both the non-verbal and verbal characters are drawn and lettered by Sim.
It's an underrated work, though, so finding good examples is difficult. I might scan and share further examples later, but here are a few pages from the work, devoid of context, obviously:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ecq_pfWWoAIrk5b?format=jpg&name=medium
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcXsFCiXQAAR21s?format=jpg&name=medium
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Postmodern Anonymouse
What you’re describing is a version of what David called ‘employing words as design elements’ (in reference to the Bob Peak illustration).
Again, (and not wishing to undermine the work of Dave Sim) there are many much earlier examples (than Cerebus) of the dialogue or sound effects in a comic doing physical manifestations of the thing they’re describing, such as melting, or becoming 3-D and solid looking.
Also, I’ve seen and read several revues that agree that the high point of the series was in the collections ‘High Society’ up to ‘Minds’ and that the final third is undermined by the increasing use of large blocks of text which become a soapbox for Sim’s own beliefs on women and religion. Would you agree with that assessment ?
If considered as a story that also happens to be a work of sequential art , then yes, in the latter volumes the story falls apart. But if considered as a work of sequential art that also happens to include stories, the totality of the work is unsurpassed as an expression of precisely the uniqueness of the form. It isn’t always pretty, it isn’t as immediately graspable as lesser works like Maus or Persepolis or Watchmen, it’s more a monsterpiece than a masterpiece. But it might just be the the peak, a summing up of the form’s evolution and potential up until and including the point of its publication.
Everything in a work of visual art is a design element. But letters and words have a special status, they are usually read -only- as such. But when tapping into, either as maker or reader, sequential art as a strategy, this need not apply. Words regain some of their primal power, they become characters. Signs become symbols and symbols become signs. The artificial divide can be more easily crossed.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
Keith Arnatt's groaner of a wall sign (which made the first giant art survey book I ever purchased while Brangwyn, Mucha, Pyle, Sorolla, et al did not) Art and Egocentricity – a perlocutionary act? from 1971 is always worth rolling one's eyes to. A work for those who in high school found delight in both big words few know and self-referential statements - so why not combine the two for a great big whopper of a hoo-hah! (7 such people, over the years, have enjoined me to read the unfunny Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A relent I regret.)
The Neal Adams is an interesting experiment. He locates the balloon event at the origin of the turning action of the main head. The balloon event reads forward and faces forward and commands first attention. Then in following the action of the balloon tail with our eye rightward, the large male head is turned in the same rightward direction in train, particularly as a reactive comparison in coming away from the front-facing balloon. It is the equivalent of a camera movement doubling an action. I agree it draws attention to itself, but it was a noble aesthetic experiment. As opposed to various works of signage pretending to be art, which constitute the main body of your complaint.
Steinberg's Trash is one of my favorite cartoons. When I first saw it I probably laughed on and off for three days thinking about it. So many imbecilic creations garner such effusive praise, and not only from the paid hype men. And the ubiquity of such becomes dispiriting.
Of course not all overpraised trash are loud commercial affairs. Many such works are quiet, studious, highly sensitive but utterly vague pieces of crap; high-status tax-scam projection tests and pretentious twaddle of various sorts that certain types may read deeply into.
I agree! I also love the physicalized typography in The Spirit. And that link has one of my favorites - the tilted shot of the door with the cobwebbed branch and the spirit coming forward with the lantern. Almost everything that became EC comics's comical-horror style is in that one illo, yet its from a full decade earlier.
See all Eisner's Spirit Sunday Section splash pages here (click on images): https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=364161
By the way, in my previous comment, I somewhat forgot about the final part of the post. All I wanted to say is that I agree with David: the image will outlive the written word. A picture is ALWAYS worth a thousand words. Oh! And thanks, Kev Ferrara, for the link.
In Japanese there is an extremely robust system of onomatopoeia that ours lacks almost entirely.
There are in the Japanese language sounds for things that rattle as they roll (like a cart with a loose wheel), for things that rumble as they roll (like a boulder down a mountain), and for small objects that roll lightly (like a marble). These are common words, they can use them in conversation.
There are onomatopoeic words for the different sounds a mouth makes when chewing, whether the mouth is very full, opening and closing with a smack, devouring hungrily, nibbling, or tasting daintily.
There are also different onomatopoeic words for the sounds of footsteps. A brisk adult walk produces one accepted sound, while a child’s unsteady toddling produces another.
This is part of the difficulty of translating old haiku into English. Often the Japanese words themselves imply onomatopoeia, and to remove that makes the words seem a bit flat.
When Issa wrote, “Don’t swat it! / The fly rubs its hands, / rubs its feet,” the Japanese original carries sound effects in the rubbing of the hands and feet. That’s lost in English.
Manga translators run into the same problem. They have to invent new words to capture the sound, and the effect is always lost or weakened. What is the English onomatopoeia for a cicada? In Japanese, they know;
https://imgur.com/a/vhSqT1l
It is a shame, because Japanese onomatopoeia in manga is perhaps the most complete union of word and image we have: the written sound embodies a sensory reality, so that text and drawing both participate in perception itself. By contrast, the examples you included above employ words only as conceptual markers and gags, symbols pointing to ideas rather than carriers of sensation, leaving word and image still in entirely separate modes of existence.
That's a fascinating contribution, Richard. I would love to hear those Japanese words you refer to.
I take exception to the idea that English words lack onomatopoetic "almost entirely." I think maybe, due to over-familiarity, you're listening to your own language without really hearing it.
Wind and whisper. Clock and Trunk. Sticky, glue and adhesive. Gravel and grit. Pound and Punch. Rattle, Rasp, and Raucous.
Onomatopoeia, as a word itself, isn't sufficiently general to capture the poetic expressiveness of words like Lovely, Graceful and Beautiful. Atmosphere, murk, or Fog. Swiftness, speed, or alacrity.
And so on.
By the way, I think the first illustrator to make a big show of playing with the title/logo/masthead was Maxfield Parrish. His 4th of July cover of Collier's in 1906 is a pretty radical stride. Parrish 1906 4th of July Colliers (if this link doesn't work, because it goes to Facebook, good luck finding the image anywhere else.)
Another Maxfield Parrish "physicalization" of type from 1922.
Later, MAD magazine got in the act.
I've seen it well done in a way not discussed, but I CANNOT remember where. A science fiction short, I think. Instead of tossing in foreign words or phonetic representation of accents, the font changed drastically when different cultures spoke. Anyone else remember? (Not the old running joke in Keith Laumer's "Retief" stories in which the Translator always malfunctioned in a new way: That one's purely verbal. You kept thinking he'd run out of ways and repeat himself, but I don't believe he ever did.)
And I agree with what I understand to be the main point: relatively easy to put words in the art, and highly effective when well done--but very tricky to do it well.
Very OT @David Apatoff (since I don't know how to message you directly):
How about this? Worth a post? http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2025/08/full-house.html
Interesting: Kotzky - unlike Leonard Starr, one of my household deities - seems to create new, never-before-seen poses for each person in each panel. They are odd, vivid, warm, personal and appealing. Yet his basic visual solutions are very "comic booky", like what Wally Wood might have done - large object in foreground, cropped back of head etc. Starr is less creative in his posing, but he'd never use comic-book shortcuts - it's all there every time, he'll always do the full work.
And then, Kotzkys pencilling seems to have been extremely precise and detailed, yet his foreground inking (of faces, arms, hands, fabric folds etc) is often loose and impressionistic - expecially the virtuoso shading. With Starr, again, it's the other way around: posing and framing is loose and impressionistic, but the inking is as tight as can be, even though he can easily do impressionism when he wants to.
Kotzky is very good indeed.
I, too, am a big fan of those Will Eisner splash pages. In a similar vein, another joyful, creative example of the integration of word and image was Harvey Kurtzman's (teamed with Wally Wood) "Sound Effects" from MAD #20 ( https://from-dusk-till-drawn.com/2016/05/03/sound-effects-by-harvey-kurtzman-wlly-wood-usa-1955/#jp-carousel-552 ).
It's interesting that in the 1950s, New York Jewish cartoonists (Steinberg, Eisner, Kurtzman) all working in the "low" arts, incorporated words in their pictures. They did it in different, original ways but they all shared a wise guy, irreverent New York sense of humor.
Anonymous-- I think Kotzky's Apartment 3G was a terrific strip, especially in the 60s and early 70s. I've written about Kotzky here: https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2022/02/comic-strips-of-1960s-part-7-apartment.html. and if I had a better collection of originals to draw from, I probably would've written more.
I always figured it was shrewd of Kotzky to choose as his subject matter an apartment occupied by three gorgeous girls, not only because it guaranteed him an audience but it also allowed him to indulge his fashion designer drawing style.
I view Apt. 3G with a tinge of sadness because, after his peers all recognized that the soap opera strip game was over (smaller images, lower newspaper circulation, dumber audiences) and jumped ship, Apt. 3G struggled onward, first with Kotzky's son, then with a series of ghost artists. Leonard Starr bailed out in the 70s, followed by Stan Drake and John Prentice-- all estimable draftsmen. 3G finally crawled across the finish line in 2015.
Eisner's Spirit was the clear inspiration for Sound Effects.
Bong Bong
Click Clack Crash!
Bang Bang Eek!
Gasp!
A primer by Eisner on SOUND!
Is the phone book supposed to reference the Vietnam Vet Memorial? Is that supposed to make it good art?
Kev's term "Signage" is right. Pretentious talk about signage is still signage.
I guess if somebody puts a Stop sign in a gallery and calls it 'The Real Oil Crisis', it'll be an important work of art! These people who got control of the arts are some of dumbest people alive. But so self-flattering. They really think they're clever.
The Orpheus is obviously awful with no aesthetic value The "outrage" that you think your praise for it suffered is actually more like concern for your mental health. Unless you contend that it should get points since it puts people to sleep.
~ FV
FV-- the Vietnam Vet Memorial is redeemed, in my mind, by its beautiful, timeless design-- it's not just a list of names, it is engraved on somber black granite carved into the ground in a stately V shape, polished just enough that you can make out the reflection of your face as you look at the names of soldiers who sacrificed their lives. It is one of the most moving memorials in Washington (a city of memorials), and years later visitors walk away openly weeping from the experience. Tasteless committees have partially spoiled its grandeur by insisting that a realistic statue of heroic soldiers, accompanied by a great big flagpole be superimposed on the site. They even tried for white marble pillars because of course you can't have a memorial without white marble pillars
The phone book pages is just a typed, unimaginative, unaesthetic list to remind us of political oppression.
I appreciate the concern for my mental health, and there are indeed many reasons to question it, but I'd hate to think my inadequacies would stand in the way of people appreciating the lovely and profound Twombly Orpheus.
the lovely and profound Twombly Orpheus.
We know this isn't what you wanted. We know this is difficult. Interventions always are. Just know that we're all here for you and we believe in you, as you search your heart for a way out of this.
When you're ready to come to the light, rest assured; we'll all be here, ready and waiting.
>>>>>"But when tapping into, either as maker or reader, sequential art as a strategy, this need not apply. Words regain some of their primal power, they become characters."
?? You're literally referring to every logo on every comic book, and their title pages, and every sound effect, and the shape of every balloon, every insignia on a super-hero's chest, etc. Follow the hyperlinks in this thread for more.
The reason I never read Cerebus The Aardvark is because I couldn't sit through page after page of that dumb squishy aardvark character design. It's lazy and ugly. And the storytelling is very stagey and simple; also lazy-looking. I am amazed people actually read it.
?? You're literally referring to every logo on every comic book, and their title pages, and every sound effect, and the shape of every balloon, every insignia on a super-hero's chest, etc. Follow the hyperlinks in this thread for more.
No.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
>>>>No.
Then make yourself clear. (above comment was mine)
~ FV
Literally,
Just as there are no visual effects in yodeling, there are no sound effects in comics.
It’s an internalized convention, that’s all.
«In the beginning was the Word», says the Good Book.
«looped a flaw rotates forever unresolved», sings Ohgr of Skinny Puppy.
Other strategies might as well apply and be applied. Cerebus being (to my mind) a case in point.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
Wow, did you try to zing me by being literal about the word 'literal.' I guess Wally Wood's Sound Effects should be called Text Effects. Such a useful ego self-stroke - that has nothing to do with explaining your garbled notion that, "Words regain some of their primal power, they become characters."
And if you want to get technical word-boy, you yourself are misusing words. Since 'words' are the opposite of 'primal' given the meaning of the word primal. Grunts are primal.
If you're going to pose as an 'intellectual on the internet', you'll first need to offer falsifiable ideas, clear and understandable enough in conception and language to test. So what other "strategies" are you talking about in Cerebus?
Of course, if you dared to answer that question, it will be more plainly revealed that Laurence was correct in the first place. You're not saying anything new or interesting because you aren't actually insightful or clear of mind.
~ FV
No zings or boops or ka-pows intended. I’m gesturing towards a cultural convention of positioning the verbal content of an image as not only apart from but also superior to the pictoral content, and also towards a particular work of art as instantiating the essentially postmodern strategy of media creating and consumption that is the motor of sequential art.
The most? only? interesting thing you’ve contributed to this particular offshoot of this discussion, so far, is that you couldn't sit through page after page of that dumb squishy aardvark character design, which is on the level of not liking a piece of prose because you didn’t like the font. I’d rather you expand upon that than make childish demands.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
>>>>>>couldn't sit through page after page of that dumb squishy aardvark character design, which is on the level of not liking a piece of prose because you didn’t like the font.
Bad analogy as usual. It's on the level of not watching a ten-part fantasy movie because you find the lead actor badly miscast and annoying, the premise dumb, and you have better ways to spend your time.
>>>>"I’m gesturing towards a cultural convention of positioning the verbal content of an image as not only apart from but also superior to the pictoral content, and also towards a particular work of art as instantiating the essentially postmodern strategy of media creating and consumption that is the motor of sequential art."
Your mother is so proud of you. She even thinks that someday you might become a real boy.
Here’s a final suggestion: Run my initial post and correspondance with Laurence John through and AI, and ask it to explicate the argument for you as if you were an imbecile.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
>>>>>"ask it to explicate the argument for you"
What 'argument'? Banalities slathered in vacuous postmodern verbiage may impress mother, but in the real world, you're just a straining fraud. A lazy, cowardly dummy trying like mad to seem special on the internet.
Unless you are, in fact, an AI. As theorized. Which would explain both the incoherence and banality. But not the arrogance.
~ FV
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