Creative Writing as Fine Art
In every school where I have taught (with one notable exception) at both the college and high school levels, creative writing courses have been an integral part of the English Department. But what would happen if creative writing were to become a part of the fine arts curriculum along with theatre arts, visual arts, dance, and music? Why do so many teachers, instructors, professors and administrators insist on it being a wing of English/literary analysis programs? And why do so many English departments tolerate creative writing courses only if they include a significant degree of reading and analysis? This question goes hand in hand with why so many think “creative writing” in English courses should consist primarily of creative exercises designed to help students better analyze and understand literary texts.
The answer to these questions (and many adjacent concerns/questions) lies at the center of a central frustration I felt as a creative writing teacher lo these many years. I often would peruse course catalogs at the school where I was employed to find music and art and drama courses grounded solely in the creation of art….
This all came to a head a number of years ago when I was working to introduce a creative writing elective at the private high school where I was teaching. Having taught for a number of years at an arts magnet high school where students of creative writing were allowed to take the same “course” multiple times (they were thought of more as fine arts studio classes), I was hoping to introduce a partial-credit course that would mirror other fine arts electives already on the books at the school—jazz band, concert band, chorus, visual arts electives. This seemed the perfect home for my creative writing elective, which I conceived of as more fully embracing and mirroring the creative/performative nature of other fine arts electives.
Little did I know the kind of response I was about to unleash. Not only were administrators suspicious of an “English” course being offered as if it were a studio art course, the chair of the fine arts department was especially adamant that creative writing belongs wholly in the English department, and that it would only serve to draw students away from the other "real arts electives” (a not so subtle suggestion that a creative writing elective would be deemed far less demanding than other fine arts studio courses). Despite my arguments: “I have an M.F.A, you know, a Masters of Fine Arts…that what creative writers are asked to do has a lot more in common with what painters and musicians are doing than with courses that analyze and interpret literature…etc.,” an emphatic line in the sand had been drawn, and I had to settle for a far-less-than-perfect scheduling hack to get the course on the books at all. Furthermore, the administration would only approve of the class as a 1/4 credit course, the only course at the school giving so little credit, and I was subsequently limited to one 55 minute meeting a week squeezed between extra help and sports schedules at the end of the academic day….
A few words about why in an ideal world creative writing would be a welcome and vital part of secondary or higher education fine arts programs. I’ve taught at one school where this did occur (an arts magnet school with no academic courses; students came there midway through their school days from their regular schools to immerse themselves fully in the study and practice of the arts)—and there I saw first hand the dynamic effects of integrating creative writing with the other fine arts. The saxophonists and dancers and sculptors and poets all interacted socially, conversing regularly about their projects and accomplishments. Students regularly watched performances and exhibits by each division—theatre, music, creative writing, dance, studio art. For a few semesters, I teamed up with a painter teaching a course in narrative painting when I was teaching a course in flash fiction. My students shared stories with his students, inspiring their paintings, and his painters shared their work with my writers to inspire their stories. It was a beautiful thing.
Artists of all art forms have always congregated and learned from/gained inspiration from, and responded to other art forms. As a young writer living in Paris, Hemingway famously claimed, “I was learning something from the painting of Cézanne that made writing simple true sentences far from enough to make the stories have the dimensions that I was trying to put in them.” Many a poem is titled after a famous work of art: William Carlos Williams’s “Hunters in the Snow” from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s, Hunters in the Snow 1565, Wallace Stevens’s “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” after Picasso’s famous painting, “The Starry Night,” Anne Sexton’s poem from Van Gogh’s Starry Night, John Ashberry’s “Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” referencing Parmigianino’s 16th century work…. Likewise, painters have been inspired by writers and poets. Ophelia, by John Everett Millais, 1851, Titian’s Poesies, inspired by Ovid’s Metaphorphosis…. Musicians, too, often respond to other artists in their work: Debussy’s “La Mer” was inspired by the famous Japanese painting, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Seurat’s most famous example of pointillism, an image of Parisians gathered in a park along the Seine river, influenced Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George. Don McClean famously sang about Van Gogh’s Starry Night…. This list could go on and on (and I’d encourage you to add examples you know in the comments section below)—and of course there are numerous examples of artists influencing other artists in other mediums in more subtle, less direct but equally vital ways.
The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die….
From Anne Sexton’s “The Starry Night.”
Insisting that creative writers inhabit the same space as literary critics and literary historians demonstrates a misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of artistic expression. Certainly it is important to, as a fellow artist, read a lot to become a good poet, fiction or creative nonfiction writer, but it is not nearly as important to critique and analyze what you read as a student of literature. This, in fact, may well tarnish the power and mystery of creating artistic meaning out of words. If creative writing courses were to become housed in fine arts programs, a kind of simple magic may well start to occur, with student-artists of all mediums cross-pollinating ideas, invigorating, inspiring, learning from each other.
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We’ve had this conversation before, and here you have made your case eloquently, and my case too:) Truth be told, there is a fear in most academic institutions of blurring the lines between “serious “ quantifiable learning and creative exploration. Creativity usually gets the axe because it can’t be as clearly assessed and categorized. It’s a pity because the creative impulse is the most powerful force of mankind, even if its power sometimes terrifies and unsettles us.
A solid and persuasive argument for the benefit of the art of creative writing set in a constellation of fine arts. Well done.