Art or Work? Or Both?
Writing and reading has been a concrete foundation in our society. It’s been around since humans could communicate. Writing and reading are just forms of communication throughout history. Writing is to preserve what happened, and reading is to pass along the knowledge that humans have gained. The earliest form of writing and reading is the story of Beowulf, a tragic hero who fought for a foreigners land to save the village from on-going destruction of a monster. A classic fairytale that has been rewritten and rewritten and told a thousand different ways. Would you consider Beowulf to be a piece of art or work? What about the journals of Lewis and Clark’s expedition; do you consider those to be work or art?
It is a fine line between what is considered work and what is considered art, but if you look closely, there’s no line. Every piece of writing and reading a person does should be considered both. If someone is passionate about their story they are writing (given that should be a quality all good writers have) then their piece is considered art, but then again, they worked hard on their writing. If one believes passionately about something, then it’s going to take effort, take work, in order to make it art. Art just doesn’t come about with no reason or all willy-nilly. And the same goes for pieces of writing that are work. If a writer wrote a piece for his or her respective job, and granted they received compensation for it, then it is considered work; however, to the author it may seem not artistic, but to someone else, they may consider it to be beautiful, consider it to be artwork. Writing for a job, for work, doesn’t have to mean its boring and blunt. A research article on a possible cure for cancer was work for one scientist, but may be this beacon of hope for someone else, a beautiful reason to live.
Writing and reading do not have categories for work or art; they fall under both. Each piece of writing and reading can be both work and art. It just takes someone to see the effort and beauty in both sides of the piece.
