Form and Content

Form is the way a work of art looks. It includes all visual aspects of the work that can be isolated and described such as size, shape, materials, color, and composition. Content is what a work of art is about. For representational and abstract works, content begins with the objects or events the work depicts, its subject matter. As we experience how form and subject matter interact, we begin to interpret the work, and content shades into meaning. Two paintings by Henri Matisse allow us to explore the intimate relationship of form and content in art (2.24, 2.25). Both begin with the same subject matter, a piano lesson. Both are the same large size. They even depict the same young student, Matisses son Pierre, and are set in the same place, the Matisse family home, with the piano placed in front of a window looking out onto a garden. Yet their form clearly differs, and thus their content diverges as well. Piano Lesson (2.24) is abstract. Matisse takes his cue from the metronome, the pyramidal form that sits on the piano. A metronome is a device that disciplines musicians as they practice by beating steady time. The wind-up type Matisse depicts has a slender wand that ticks as it sways back and forth like a windshield wiper. The boy is concentrating so hard that his 36
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face is disappearing into this ticking. He is concentrating so hard that almost everything around him is vanishing into grayness. Outdoors, the garden has been abstracted into a green wedgeeven nature obeys the metronome! On the piano a candle burns low, suggesting that many hours have passed. In the background a woman sits on a stool, her head turned toward the boy. She seems to be a teacher, and a severe one at that. Actually, she is a painting by Matisse hanging on the far wall. Nestled in the lower left corner is another work by Matisse, a small bronze gure of a nude woman. The boys muse and inspiration, perhaps, but also another work of art. Music Lesson (2.25) sets music in a social realm of family togetherness. Again Pierre practices, but he is not alone. His sister stands over his shoulder, watching him play. His older brother sits in a chair, reading, while out in the garden his mother works on a piece of sewing. Instead of a metronome on the piano there is an open violin case with a violin inside. Matisse played the violin, and this is his way of saying Im here too. The painting in the background is once again just a painting, its gold frame visible, while the bronze statue has moved outdoors into the garden, where it reclines by a little pond. The austere abstraction of Piano Lesson has blossomed here into a relaxed representational style of luscious colors and curves. We could summarize the difference in content by saying that Piano Lesson is about the discipline of music, its solitary and intellectual side; Music Lesson is about the pleasure of music, its social and sensuous side. Matisse has expressed each message through a different form; we in turn have interpreted the form to arrive at the content. We could say more about the form of Matisses paintings. For example, we could point out that they are made of oil paint applied with brushes to canvas stretched over a wooden frame. Yet these aspects of their form dont seem to change things one way or the other. Oil paint, brushes, and canvas had been the standard materials of European painting for centuries, and Matisse took them for grantedthey dont represent important choices he made. Similarly, Rodin probably took white marble and the technique of carving for granted

2.24 (left) Henri Matisse. Piano Lesson. 1916. Oil on canvas, 8'12" 6'1134".
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

2.25 (right) Henri Matisse. Music Lesson. 1917. Oil on canvas, 8'12" 6'7".
The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania.

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