Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

"Imagery" examines the juxtaposition of words and imagery. After the 16th century, artists depended on expressions, postures, and backdrops to put across their ideas. Inscriptions reappear in 18th-century broadsheets, and as artists tell stories to mass audiences, they use boxes to arrange complex thoughts, sounds, actions, and ideas. The sequential artist and the reader must share life experiences for communication to occur.

Letters are symbols devised from familiar objects, then abstracted. Asian pictographs weld pure visual imagery and "uniform derivative" symbols. Calligraphy symbols are rendered with beauty, rhythm, and individuality. It is analogous to changes in inflection and sound levels in speech.

The "codification" of expression becomes an alphabet bringing out deeper meanings and complexities. Stories can be told through imagery alone. This is illustrated by the Spirit story "Hoagy the Yogi, Part 2" (1947). Postcards hold the whole together through changes of...