Yea for paintings. Nay for cake.
Are pictures more powerful than words? It’s interesting how simplistic words and simplistic pictures evoke different feelings from people. No one hears the sentence and pays a second thought to a comment such as “I like cake.” It may warrant a “me too,” but not much after that. The same people may go to a museum the next day and analyze a painting that looks somewhat like this:
This painting looks almost as simple as the words “I like cake.” What makes this painting better than those words? We all know how great of an artist Mondrian, a major influence in the 20th century, was. Clearly, this is all just abstract. This painting doesn’t express anything physical. The indirect way of communication in pictures allow us to interpret them in a different way than our direct form of communication: words. A single picture, clearly, is not equivalent to one word, many words, or any fixed amount of words. Not even a thousand words. A picture is not words, but expression. It’s funny to think that many carry the thought that pictures are unintellectual (i.e. comics), but try so hard by trying to analyze all these, well, pictures. It’s easy to cram in a numerous amount of meanings in a picture. And to be honest, it’s easy to make up a bunch of random meanings on the spot. Words can also carry different meanings, although it requires, in my opinion, much more effort and arrangement because words are direct.
I agree with your stance that pictures are expressions and that words take much more effort to put them together. And I really like how you started your blog with "I like cake." And I like how you brought the painting of Mondrian. And after reading "Show and Tell", I do think pictures are intellectual and analyzing them are also hard like in Maus.
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