People use art to depict stories from myth, legend, religion, history, and literature. These stories can vary in their content. People also use art to depict narratives about their everyday life activities. Unlike classic art, this type of art has a time dimension to describe the sequence of events in the story. The narrative purpose of art is very important. Unlike reading words to understand a story, narrative art gives a more rich experience and promotes an individual’s imagination of the story as the famous saying goes: an image is worth a thousand words. Visuals are also easier to remember for people which helps them retain the story. Narrative art is also more practical than verbal storytelling because people can preserve the story and pass it through generations using art. 
There is no such thing as narrative art. Pictoral artists merely show images through painting, sculpture, and other visual means. They do not narrate stories. To say that an artist narrates a story is a figure of speech because painters and artists do not tell, they show. They can only imply meaning and order of events through audience interpretations of these visulas. The only direct action artists do is showing images. Painters generally are less concerned with the chronological order of events but in their spatial arrangement. Art does not serve the purpose of narration.