Text with Pictures

A ramble through the art museums this week reminded me of an urge I experienced at one time to create a series of paintings with accompanying text. I don't recall if the picture was to illustrate the text or the text to explain the picture. Either way, this notion now feels to me fundamentally wrong. I'm thinking that if a picture needs a verbal description to be understood, then the artist has failed, but it doesn't seem so much that the reverse is true. Why is this? An illustration can illuminate, deepen, clarify. Does this mean the writer has failed? Maybe. When an artist takes inspiration from text, though, is it reasonable to expect the resulting art to be a "readable" message all by itself ... or, if you will, just pleasing to view without needing to know the passage that prompted it? Am I a victim of my own fuzzy thinking?