The phrase "mere illustration" is grammatically correct and can be used in written English.
It means an example or visual representation that is used to clarify or demonstrate a point, without necessarily being the main focus of the sentence or argument. Here is an example of its usage: "The professor provided a few mere illustrations to help us understand the complex concept."
Its music, though illustrative, is more than mere illustration.
Mr. Burns and his crew haven't used the more than 500 pieces they selected as mere illustration or background.
But most of her links go beyond mere illustration to enhance, expand or even subvert the meaning of a highlighted word.
Hannah is a mere illustration of the fact that rape exists, that it occurs physically, and that it is spiritually destructive.
At the service in Newtown, Conn., we heard a president sure-footed in invoking faith as an antidote and using Scripture not as a mere illustration but as the core of his argument.
Callot's work was often decorative and manneristic; but, at his best, as in the series The Miseries and Misfortunes of War (1632 33), he transcended mere illustration and achieved powerful images of universal significance.
Neither do the other characters, who speak in a lofty idealistic manner, and whose lives, cut short by war or Communism, are mere illustrations of the brutality of Bulgarian history.
But if there are writers who have misunderstood certain works of Picasso's as mere illustrations of Surrealist ideas, Richardson perhaps exaggerates the stand-alone power of this great man's imagination.
Organized by a fairly heavy-hitting troika, consisting of Tom Eccles, the director of the Bard Center Lynne Cookee, the longtime curator at the Dia Art Foundation; and the artist Josiah McElheny, the exhibition often teeters on the brink of extreme curatorial pretentiousness and occasionally tips over, reducing the art on view to mere illustrations of agendas, or even space fillers.
Though working outside the studio system and seeming to offer an alternative aesthetic, Hammer pushes every button as knowingly as a Hollywood player: each piece of his script fits as if in a mosaic; the portentous, artificially moody images serve as mere illustrations; and he gets his immensely sympathetic cast of nonactors to emote like pros.
Instead, take a cue from the cast-plaster threesome in George Segal's "Walk, Don't Walk" and linger, letting each room unfold on its own terms, unfettered by the kind of curatorial grandstanding that can reduce even great works of art to mere illustrations.
