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Throughout history, groups and individuals have sought not only to maintain control over their own lives, but also to assert their power over the lives of others. Visual art has played an important role in documenting such conflict and resistance. It also has served as a means for expressing personal views on politics, war, social inequities, and the human condition.

From the earliest times, people have found sustenance and solace, challenge and mystery in the natural world. From representations of animal and vegetable life to landscapes and earthworks, art has been a means by which humans have expressed their awe of, communion with, dependence on, and isolation from nature. Of course, art is never a mere transcription of reality. Every rendering of the natural world is, ultimately, a construction, in which nature is translated through the filter of our own interests, values, and desires.

Images and words are symbols that both denote actual things, like people, objects, and places, and connote more abstract ideas, feelings, concepts, and theories. Given this shared function, it makes sense that the boundaries between words and images often overlap and that the two are so frequently juxtaposed. Since the dawn of civilization the relationship between written words and pictures has been manipulated to communicate ideas.