On 12/7/07, Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: with meaning occuring as a side effect of the expressive impulse.
> > ^^^^^ > CB: I'd go the other way around. The meaning and communication is > primary and the other stuff arise as a secondary accident of the > communication function. > > An emphasis on content is characteristic of the sort of artwork called tendentious. Meanwhile, it is precisely those works of art that result from exploration of the expressive potential of forms and materials that, ironically, communicate the most to audiences. One can, of course, take this process to a self-negating extreme -- to the extent that form, in the sense of an obsessive formalism, becomes the new content. Play that is no longer unselfconsciously useless and becomes programatically so ceases to be playful and becomes ostentation (or *dis*play). -- Sandwichman
