Text and image

Abstract

Interdisciplinary studies on ‘Text and Image’, which began in the 1970s, have now taken on a position of some importance. They pick up and develop those theories which, from the 15th to the 17th centuries, considered the association of the arts in terms of the Horatian ‘Ut pictura poesis’. These studies, however, confront a major theoretical difficulty, inherent in the retention of Euclidean categories in our conception of vision and painting. A comparison with cultures in which the ideogram flourishes—in particular those of China and Japan—should allow this difficulty to be resolved.