Writing is an Art

To say that writing is an art form requires the reader to know what art is and the history of art, or at the very least, what the different styles of art represent.

Art has been assaulted by many to confine it into certain types or criteria while many have spent their lives liberating it from any such rules. Many in the past have experimented with colors, lines, shapes, and breaking art down to its most base form. In the end, anything can be called art, but it is up the individual viewer to classify it as good or bad art.



The same can be said for writing. Just as their are different styles of painting, there are different styles of writing. But unlike painting, the style of someone's writing cannot be so easily pointed out as in a painting with particular uses of lines or color. The closest analogy is the difference between Neo-Classicism or Realism and something approaching Abstract Expressionism. The rules of painting in the Neo-Classicism or Realism style allows the viewer to see the painting as a snapshot of history. This includes realistic portrayals of the human body and correct perspective of the surrounding area.

The further you go from this natural order, you are approaching abstract art. Writing follows the same pattern. There are set rules for the written language, and just as people scoffed at the painters of the 1800 and 1900s, people fault writers today for poor grammar or spelling.

This is not always the case, and often you will find books that are highly acclaimed or at the very least, popular. Even if the book has poor grammar written in the narrative, or the sentence structure is atrocious with run-on sentences, it is still viewed as a good book.

A book resembling that of Realism or Neo-Classicism would follow the rules of grammar and spelling. Anything that deviates from it is approaching abstract writing. This does not always mean that the writing is bad just as abstract painting is not always bad. To understand this, it is important to understand what Abstract painting is trying to achieve. Instead of a snapshot of a view or subject, Abstract painting uses color, shapes, and lines to convey feelings and emotions through the paint.

Abstract writing sometimes does this too. It will not follow the rules of proper grammar, but will follow its own style to convey the feelings and emotions behind the story being told. The feelings and emotions conveyed in such a way can trump the rules of grammar. This can explain why some books are not written well, yet people like them and recommend them.

So if anything can be art, just about anything can be writing. It is up to the individual reader to judge whether it is good or bad writing depending on their tastes. The way a sentence flows can just as eloquent as the brush strokes on a canvas, and the intricacies of how the book is written can determine whether a book is just as special as a painting from the Renaissance.

For me personally, I enjoy the realism of painting with a splash of Symbolism. The same can be true for writing. The more it confines to the rules of grammar, the more I like it. Just as paintings from before could assault your mind as something not natural, for me, writing with poor grammar assaults me with the feeling that something is not natural in the words. For each person that enjoys Raphael, there is another who enjoys Pollock.