a picture as they say is worth a thousand words variations of the sentiment echo down through the
wisdom of the ages 14th century artist scholar and inventor Leonardo da Vinci writes a poet's
pen will be worn out their tongue parched with thirst and their body overcome by sleep
and hunger before they can describe with words what a painter is able to show you in an instant
French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with the maxim a good sketch is better than a
long speech and 19th century Russian writer Yvonne turgenev writes the drawing shows me
at one glance what might be spread over 10 pages in a book but what does the saying
actually mean and could it possibly even be true does it even make sense foreign
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maybe it sounds like I'm being a little pedantic here but I can't help but wonder is a picture
really worth a thousand words for the last century artists Scholars philosophers advertisers data
analysts mathematicians and computer scientists have given their spins on the old adage
advertising executive Fred Bernard writes in a 1927 car tire ad one look is worth a thousand
words Irish novelist BM Croaker writes one look is worth a ton of letters newspaper editor Arthur
Brisbane writes a picture is worth Ten Thousand Words and data analyst eres Lieberman Aiden says
in a 2011 talk a picture is worth 500 billion words amusingly visual programmer Alan Blackwell
titles his research paper correction a picture is worth 84.1 words obviously these types of
arguments are fun but kind of ridiculous how many words exactly is a picture worth a thousand eighty
four point one five hundred billion say we assume that a picture is in fact worth a thousand words
then as computer scientist John McCarthy spoofs 1001 words is worth more than a picture would
that also mean that 500 000 words is worth half a picture what even is have a picture
it's kind of like that old riddle where you can't dig half a hole out of all the expert opinions on
the subject I think perhaps German filmmaker Vim vendors comes closest to hitting the nail on the
head as vendor says whoever came up first with that saying a picture is worth a thousand words
didn't understand the first thing about either one words and pictures can't really be compared
like numbers or weights on a scale to come to any meaningful answer to the question is a picture
worth a thousand words I think we need to discard the question of greater or lesser is or is not how
much or how many and start by asking why why words why am I speaking to you right now and why are you
listening why do we write and read what others have written if a picture really is as they say
worth a thousand times more than a word why didn't human ancestors just stick to gesturing and making
cave paintings on the wall logically there must have been some need for speech in writing that
prompted you to create it right something words could do at least sometimes better than pictures
some value some comparative worth speaking of which I'm reminded of an old Chinese story
a long long time ago there was an idol little boy who didn't know how to write
Desiring him to learn his father hired a teacher to instruct him in the way of the ink brush
on the first day his teacher taught him just one word the Chinese character for one which is
written like this on the second day he learned the character too and on the third surprise surprise
he learned the character three the boy feeling that writing was too easy told his father that he
now knew how to write then his father asked him to write something for him the character ten thousand
he stayed in his writing room working from morning to dusk at night his father went to check on him
amazed that he still hadn't finished he found the boy who had eventually discarded his brush using a
comb dipped in ink to draw lines father lamented the boy when he saw him why did it have to be
ten thousand for context this is the Chinese character for four five six and ten thousand
if the boy had just studied a little bit more he would have realized that the pictorial pattern
he took for granted does not in fact extend forever three written Strokes were all that
was required from him and not the unreasonable demand of ten thousand drawings words in a way
are double dealers words are words but especially when written down they are kind of pictures too
simplified abstract pictures that can be painted on a page to convey a certain meaning one of the
places this is most apparent is in the evolution of Chinese writing take a look at the evolution of
the character for I fire Mountain do you notice anything Chinese characters are words yet they
began as pictographs that evolved from actual pictures as they changed over the course of early
history we see a trend of simplification pictures becoming simpler more compact more efficient
pictures becoming words the value the worth of the words I think lies in efficiency efficiency is the
answer to the question why words why do we have words because they as a medium unlock shortcuts
Pathways to communication that were closed to us before they allow us to travel distances that we
never would have been able to otherwise a picture could be worth a thousand words but an efficient
word is worth a thousand pictures the Chinese character for ten thousand is in fact worth ten
thousand pictures in that sense efficiency is freedom and freedom is expressive power
that picture is worth a thousand words they say humorous Leo rosten answers then paint me
the Gettysburg Address while drawing ten thousand lines is arduous it can at least be done whereas
trying to convey such an abstract intellectual and exact thing is the Gettysburg Address using only
shapes and colors would be absolutely unreasonable inefficient to the point of impossibility sure it
might be done eventually by a species of creatures that lived a million years and had unlimited
buckets of paint but text in cases such as this is just infinitely more effective than paintings
a word infinitely more worthwhile than a thousand pictures yet as much as I would like to claim
efficiency as a unique superiority of language the same argument can easily be turned the other way
around imagine trying to write a Jackson Pollock painting Giuseppe akambalda's vertumness Van
Gogh's starry night pictures are defeated where words are more efficient but words fall flat when
a picture is more efficient the choice between pictures and words depends entirely on what it
is you want to use them to convey according to the thinking of 20th century poet Ezra pound
every impression that arises to the human mind has its most appropriate method of expression as pound
writes every concept every emotion presents itself to the Vivid Consciousness in some primary form it
belongs to the art of this form if sound to music if formed words to literature the image to poetry
form to design color and position to painting form and design in three planes to sculpture movement
to the dance or to the rhythm of music or a versus words pictures music film sculpture dance the
relative worth of artistic mediums is impossible to compare the question of worth when it comes
to mediums according to pound is not about one medium versus another worth is rather measured on
a case-by-case basis by how well how efficiently your concept or idea inhabits its given medium
as pound says the work of art which is most worthwhile is the work which would need a
hundred works of any other kind of art to explain it a fine statue is the core of a hundred poems a
fine poem is the core of Symphonies there is music which would need a hundred paintings to express it
you could take a hundred paintings of a sculpture from all different angles and put them side by
side yes you've arguably captured the sculpture in another form but it's lost its intensity its point
you can try to capture a great picture in a thousand words or capture great words in
a thousand pictures you can try to paint the Gettysburg Address you could try to describe
Mozart's Requiem in words but it would be a pale shadow of what it should truly be certain things
according to pound belong truly to different proper modes of expression and I think he's
right given its proper form a thing is most able to efficiently most intensely Express itself
so is a picture worth a thousand words you might as well ask if a thousand architectural angles
is worth one musical note a thousand steps in a dance is worth a single stroke of calligraphy
artistic mediums can't absolutely be compared there's no objective basis for that juxtaposition
still I too kind of think there's an explicit answer to this question no a picture is not worth
a thousand words because a picture that is worth a thousand words would be worth more than a thousand
words which I think is the idea the old adage is almost trying to convey in a clumsy vague way
an efficient picture is better than any number of deluded words a good poem is better than any
number of tedious pictures what's important is not the supremacy of one medium or another but
the idea that the first prerequisite of great art is that the natural Bend of the artist's ideas and
the medium used to express them match up an idea that wants to be a picture needs to be a picture
an idea that wants to be words needs to be words and for my painters who don't write and my writers
who don't paint well within disciplines there are many mediums your ideas could inhabit as well if
you're a writer do you know if your idea should be a novel a short story an essay sonnet or haiku
I believe that every concept and idea has its primary most freeing form and to the patient
attentive artist I think if you listen very carefully your art will give you a hint as to
what it would prefer to be of course what it means to be an artist is sort of changing isn't it with
the Advent of AI generated art we have emerging mediums that we've never even dreamed of before
that are bound to speak in very different ways than the art forms we're used to it's honestly a
little scary it can sort of feel like the future of art is about to leave you behind which is why
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