CompuServe Messages

Just for fun: Thinking about some of the images I've downloaded from the library recently started me thinking about the difference between "content" and "subject matter." Here is a succinct definition of the terms "content' and "subject matter" in book by Sylvan Barnet entitled: A SHORT GUIDE TO WIRITING ABOUT ART. "Before we go on to analyze some of the ways in which art communicates, we can take a moment to distinguish between the subject matter of a work and the content or meaning… "Something has already been said on iconology, the study of artistic images and the cultural thought and attitudes that they reflect. for example, two pictures of the same subject matter can show Christ's painful death (head drooping to one side, eyes closed, brows and mouth contorted, arms pulled into a V by the weight ofthe body, body twisted into an S shap); the other can show Christ's conquest of death (eyes open, face composed, arms horizontal, body relatively straight and self-possessed). The subject matter in both is the same – the Crucifixion – but the meaning or content is utterly different… "…the content, one might say, is the subject matter transformed or recreated or infused by intellect and feeling with meaning – in short, the content is a meaning made visible. This is what Henri Matisse was getting at when he said that drawing is "not an exercise of particular dexterity but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods." Now if I can only get that targa+ board to start working. (G) Carlton