This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Humanities  • Humanities, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Joaquín Torres-García (1874-1949), Composicion Universal, 1933, Uruguayan. Oil on masonite. 74.9 x 54.6 cm. Courtesy of the Snite Museum of Art (http://www.nd.edu/~sniteart/), Notre Dame, Indiana; bequest of Miss May E. Walter, 1994.024.006. Joaquín Torres-García © 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, New York/VEGAP, Madrid, Spain.

As refrigerator doors in countless kitchens attest, children think in images long before they think in words. So, apparently, do civilizations. The image of the animal, for example, appeared on the wall of the cave long before its name appeared in the library. To the Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García (1874-1949), the image was at the center of all human communication. The language of pictures was a universal language that could be comprehended by all because its vocabulary was drawn from the common symbols of the human unconscious.

Before Torres-García could develop his new language, however, his life had to pass through . . . [Full Text of this Article]

M. Therese Southgate, MD

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?