Proverbs in Visual Form
From ancient times, people around the world have recorded proverbs in visual form. This has been done in two ways. First, proverbs have been written to be displayed, oftentimes in a decorative manner, such as on pottery, cross-stitch, murals, kangas (East African women's wraps), and quilts.
Secondly, proverbs have often been visually depicted in a variety of media, including paintings, etchings, and sculpture. Jakob Jordaens painted a plaque with a proverb about drunkeness above a drunk man wearing a crown, titled The King Drinks. Probably the most famous examples of depicting proverbs are the different versions of the paintings Netherlandish Proverbs by the father and son Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Younger, the proverbial meanings of these paintings being the subject of a 2004 conference, which led to a published volume of studies (Mieder 2004a). Another famous painting depicting some proverbs and also idioms (leading to a series of additional paintings) is Proverbidioms by T. E. Breitenbach. Corey Barksdale has even produced a book of paintings with specific proverbs and pithy quotations. The British artist Chris Gollon has painted a major work entitled "Big Fish Eat Little Fish]", a title echoing Bruegel's painting Big Fishes Eat Little Fishes.
Sometimes well-known proverbs are pictured on objects, without a text actually quoting the proverb, such as the three wise monkeys who remind us "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil". When the proverb is well known, viewers are able to recognize the proverb and understand the image appropriately.
A bibliography on proverbs in visual form has been prepared by Mieder and Sobieski (1999).
In an abstract non-representational visual work, sculptor Mark di Suvero has created a sculpture titled "Proverb", which is located in Dallas, TX, near the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.
Some artists have used proverbs and anti-proverbs for titles of their paintings, alluding to a proverb rather than picturing it. For example, Vivienne LeWitt painted a piece titled "If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?", which shows neither foot nor shoe, but a woman counting her money as she contemplates different options when buying vegetables.
Read more about this topic: Proverb
Famous quotes containing the words proverbs, visual and/or form:
“For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, and he shows no restraint when he takes revenge. He will accept no compensation, and refuses a bribe no matter how great.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 6:34-35.
“Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)