A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

No matter how many words are out there. No matter how thick your dictionary is. Now matter what you say. Nothing will ever say as much than a photograph, or an image, a picture, a symbol.

Made popular by the band Bread's song, the idiom "A picture paints a thousand words" has only one meaning, a picture tells a thousand stories, and the reason why? Probably because a picture is open to more interpretation than words. Words are pretty direct, they mean what they mean (No means no for example -- remember this!) but when they form a thought or a sentence, that's just the time where it gets pretty interesting. BUT a picture, just a plain picture could be a symbol to one thing. That's why visual arts (paintings, drawings, illustration) is very interesting, because it allows us to gives us our own meaning to it. The artist may have another interpretation of it, and you/we as the public/part of the public may give another. Let us take Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci for an example.

MONA LISA. A simple caption would have sufficed.

For years and years, a painting of a woman for which they said to be named Lisa del Giocondo has been boggling the minds of artists all over the world. It has been and continues to be the greatest mystery of the art world. Who this woman is, why is she positioned like that, what is hiding behind her mysterious smile, and what is his part in da Vinci's life for her to be painted by him (Oh, and of course WHERE IS THIS WOMAN'S EYEBROWS?)

Different artists (and of course the public) have different interpretation of the said painting. Many have even said that Mona Lisa and da Vinci are basically one, even creating evidences of said theory. The smile, which seems to be innocent and inviting, has kept everybody thinking. There are a lot of theories surrounding this painting and the woman behind it. There is also a theory that she was an alien that came from Jupiter (that one I totally made up heehee)

Mona Lisa has been regarded as the  "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world." (accdg. my friend Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). This strongly supports the idiom "a picture paints a thousand words." Many people have made a lot of literary works, piece of art, that centers around their own interpretation of the painting of Ms. del Giocondo.