[purple, happy]
You know how sometimes you don’t want to keep consuming media after finding out who wrote it?
[blue, a finger raised]
Sure, people would say you’re having a hard time separating the art from the artist
[purple, distraught]
Well the other day I was reading this book called “Mein Kampf” which was alright, then I looked up the author’s bio on Wikipedia and… damn
[blue, blasé]
…
https://thebad.website/comic/advanced_media_literacy
Bruh. Not to defend that particular book, but non-fiction absolutely can be art.
Would you say a painting isn’t art if the painter painted a picture of something that actually exists, making it a non-fiction painting? Just because you’re describing the real world doesn’t mean it’s not art.
A painting of a real person is still to a degree fiction. It’s a facsimile of a real person. The subject is just as important as the skill when it comes to the actual worth of the piece. You can appreciate it for the technique and the skill being put on display while separating that from the artist itself.
Books on the other hand are a big harder to do in such a manner. You can appreciate a written work for its technical execution. But intrinsically a written work written as a non-fiction is going to be more linked to the actual invoked thought of the piece in the meaning of the piece than it is the actual technical execution of it.
So there’s less to separate from the artist.
Or more bluntly put, if a fascist draws a picture, that picture doesn’t inherently have to be fascist. But if a fascist writes a book about fascism from their own perspective and opinion that book’s fascist.
Are documentaries art? An aircraft service manual surely can’t be, what about a medical school book?
I draw the distinction between art and craft. One can be a craftsman, very skilled in the techniques of a process, without being an artist, a creator of expressive works. A woodworking craftsman can make perfectly dimensioned copies of a table, using great skill, and they might be beautiful, but unless they design the table they haven’t necessarily done anything artistic. In writing non-fiction, one can have great craft (making eloquent, precise, and concise word choices, making phrases that are memorable or entertaining without compromising verity, etc.) but being creative is the departure point from non-fiction. If you create facts and put them into your non-fiction, you, at best, are mistaken, but are likely simply falsifying evidence or lying.
Who said art is ‘creating facts’?
Take a personal memoir, for example. You don’t think that can be art?
No one said art is creating facts. Perhaps I was not clear.
A memoir can be written with great skill, craft, eloquence, sensitivity and/or care, but it cannot be an act of creation and a non-fiction work at the same time. If you write a memoir and are creating events, making them up, you are not writing non-fiction. If you write a memoir in which you have not created anything, simply reported the events, it is non-fiction, but not a creative work. It is productive, produces an artifact, not creative, creating something new.