ABSTRACT
Carlo Severi (2007) has rightly observed that, over a history much longer than that of cinema, both combinations of images and composed images have constituted another way of constructing meaning as complex, rich, and often just as narrative as combinations of letters or sound. This is what is often referred to today as “visual thought” or, as Francastel (1967) puts it, “figurative thought.” It is a system of meaning specific to images, or their association, which owes nothing to the logic of writing. This form of thought has no need to be absorbed or circumvented by the same media which offer the largest choice of different images, with all their combinations and declinations.
