Expression of the Content
Expression of the Content
The other half of a work is the “Expression of the Content.” The Content’s Expression involves how the work is made or presented. A style contributes to a work’s Expression. The artist cannot Express a work’s Content without giving it form;[i] in fact, “only form produces aesthetic response.”[ii]
A work’s form articulates its Content.
Visual artist, Ben Shahn (1898-1969), speaking to a Harvard audience about “form,” said, “Form is the shape of content.”[iii] I like another thing Shahn said in his talk to his audience:
“Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material, or the impinging of mind upon material. They stem out of the human wish to formulate ideas, to recreate them into entities, so that meanings will not depart fitfully as they do from the mind, so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.
I do not at all hold that the mere presence of content, of subject matter, the intention to say something, magically guarantees the emergence of such content into successful form. Not at all! How often indeed does the intent bellow of industrial power turn to a falsetto on the saving bank walls! How often does the intended lofty angel’s choir for the downtown church come off resembling somehow a sorority pillow fight?” [iv] (italics mine)
The forms are the structures, the mold, shaping an idea’s information. Our ideas come out of a chaotic void; as thoughts arise, we shape, define, organize, and focus them into a Content.
There is no perfect form-ideal. A form’s significance is seen through how it gives the desired Expression to an idea.
A form must communicate a Content clearly or unintended meanings emerge, like poorly portrayed angels are seen as a sorority in a pillow fight. This shows a work’s execution (craftsmanship) is, also, part of its Expression.
[i] Barsam, Richard, Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film, 2nd Edition, p.4 “The relationship between form and content is a central concern in all art, and underlies our study of movies, too. At the most basic level, we might see content as the subject of an artwork and form as the means through which that subject is expressed.”
[ii] Martin, John, The Modern Dance, p. 68
[iii] Shahn, Ben, The Shape of Content, p. 53
[iv] ibid, p. 70