Content - the subject matter of an artwork - is elucidated, or illuminated, or constrained or totally F'd up by the way an artist employs form. Form, which is all the physical aspects of an artwork (medium, color, structure, etc.), will determine if the content is communicated as the artist intends it to be. Or sometimes, on a tough day, just in some artistically acceptable manner. In the olden days, when content looked like reality, this was something a viewer was able to think about, to attempt to discern, to judge. It did not mean that the artist's intention was what the viewer actually saw. That is a totally different kettle of fish. But regardless of the viewer, it was a criterion of integrity for the artist.
Today, this has changed and become much more difficult. In much of abstraction, the boundaries between content and form have become substantially blurred....even in the mind of the artist, many of whom proceed in an essentially "contentless" fashion, or at least effectively so. In abstraction, what is the representation of an idea, after all? And even the abstraction of form has proceeded far past anything discernible, in most cases. So this traditional relationship, always so important for purposes of visual and philosophical clarity, not to mention the questions of integrity of meaning and intention, are today frequently absent.
Does this matter? I don't know that it does, from the perspective of a viewer. After all, a work of art either moves one or it doesn't. But for the artist? It certainly changes their practice. Is it better to simply go, without impediment or obligation to form? More emotive, certainly, more attention to structure, texture and color - the design elements, certainly. Does this potentially tap into something deeper? Or does it lose something deeper? Just what is it that the discipline of form adds??? I surely have no answers. But I have many questions.
<u>Direct characterization is also known as explicit characterization as it is a straightforward description of the character’s appearance or personality.</u> It means that the w<u>riter directly states how the character looks and acts</u>. For example, it can be “She was very tall and had brown hair” or “He was a loud, daring person”.
It is the opposite of indirect characterization, which means the writer tries to explain the character’s traits and personality through their actions, thoughts, responses, the way they dress, etc.
<u>To compare them in the example: direct characterization would be saying “She was very poor”. </u>Indirect characterization would be “She wore old clothes handed to her by her older sister. She could never afford to go with us to the cinema.”
The excerpt of the poem written by Alfred Noyes contain: A. characters, C. theme, and D. setting. <u>The first literary element:</u> characters, is present with the description of the <em>highwayman</em>, a man that enter an old inn wearing a french hat, lace at his chin, a coat, high boots and a pistol. There's another character presented in the excerpt, the landlord's daughter, a girl with black eyes and black long hair. Thus, the characters are the people presented on the poem. <u>The second literary element is the</u> theme: an unknown man enters and old inn and meets the owner's daughter, thus the theme is what the poem is talking about. <u>Finally </u>we have the setting: the description of the highway, the sky, the inn, all the description of the places, what surrounds the characters make up the setting of the poem.
