Study guide: Exploring Identity Through Art and Literature

📋 Course Outline

1. Self-portraiture and the passage of time
2. Alter egos and gender performance
3. Autobiography and artistic formation
4. Fictional doubles and creative process

📖 1. Self-portraiture and the passage of time

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Self-portraiture: Self-portraiture is the use of one’s own body or image as both the subject and material of artwork.
• Passage of time: The passage of time is explored by showing oneself across different life stages rather than as a single fixed identity.
• Self as canvas: Self as canvas is the idea that the artist’s body or image becomes a surface for experimentation and representation.

📝 Essential Points

• David Hockney produced over three hundred drawn or photographic self-portraits across different stages of his life.
• Hockney’s self-portraits use self-studying to offer viewers an intellectual reflection on time.
• Leigh Bowery described himself as a blank canvas to be painted upon, framing performance self-staging as identity work.

💡 Memory Hook

Hockney paints time: same “self,” many stages, many portraits.

📖 2. Alter egos and gender performance

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Alter ego: An alter ego is a fictional or crafted persona through which an artist investigates aspects of their own identity.
• Dandyism: Dandyism is a 19th-century style of fashionable gentlemen tied to an artistic ideal of sophistication.
• Transvestism: Transvestism is the act of dressing in clothing associated with another gender, used here to question gendered self-representation.
• Performance art: Performance art is an art form presenting a situation to an audience, often involving the artist’s own presence and body.

📝 Essential Points

• In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Lord Henry Wotton is a witty, provocative character based on Wilde himself.
• Cindy Sherman’s strategy in Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980) deconstructs selfhood by disappearing into many female characters.
• Grayson Perry dresses his female alter ego Claire via cross-dressing in series of photographs and performances to distort his gendered image.
• Performance artists can stage situations for audiences, sometimes using their own body to make identity visible.

💡 Memory Hook

Dandyism = persona; Claire = cross-dress; performance = stage an identity.

📖 3. Autobiography and artistic formation

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Autobiographical enquiry: Autobiographical enquiry is using personal history to explain how life experiences shape artistic career and practice.
• Artistic formation: Artistic formation is the development of an artist’s craft and direction through formative influences and experiences.
• Political purpose of writing: Political purpose of writing is the idea that political events can motivate someone to write and define their goals as an author.

📝 Essential Points

• Eudora Welty’s One Writer's Beginnings (1984) links her childhood in the American South, her relationship with her father, and her taste for reading to her later desire to write.
• Orwell’s Why I Write (1946) presents political events—specifically the Spanish War—as one of the motives that led him to become a writer.
• Welty frames early relationships and reading as shaping the bond between upbringing and career as a writer.
• Orwell lists four great motives for writing, including the political one.

💡 Memory Hook

Welty = family + reading; Orwell = politics (Spanish War) motivates writing.

📖 4. Fictional doubles and creative process

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Fictional double: A fictional double is a constructed character or persona used to investigate an artist’s self and the making of art.
• Dedalus: Dedalus is James Joyce’s alter ego in his autobiographical novel, used to narrate growth into a major writer.
• Free indirect speech: Free indirect speech is a narrative technique that merges a character’s perspective with the surrounding narration.

📝 Essential Points

• James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) uses an alter ego, Dedalus, to tell his own story of becoming a writer.
• Both Dedalus and free indirect speech take an even more refined form in Joyce’s Ulysses (1922).
• Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry (1997) shows an artist figure whose life is told through multiple perspectives, linking love life to writings that affect “real life.”
• In Joyce, the fictional double (Dedalus) and the technique (free indirect speech) work together to portray the self-in-formation.

💡 Memory Hook

Joyce’s double (Dedalus) + technique (free indirect speech) = polished self as writer.

📅 Key Dates

1. 1977-1980Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills released across these years.
2. 1891The Picture of Dorian Gray.
3. 1984Eudora Welty’s One Writer's Beginnings.
4. 1946George Orwell’s Why I Write.
5. 1916James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
6. 1922James Joyce’s Ulysses.
7. 1997Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls & Confusions

1. Confusing self-portraiture (using one’s own image) with altering the self through disappearance into multiple characters.
2. Thinking alter egos are always identical to the artist rather than crafted personas that question identity.
3. Mixing up Welty’s autobiographical approach (childhood influences) with Orwell’s more political, motive-based explanation of writing.
4. Treating fictional doubles as only plot devices rather than tools for exploring artistic formation and creative technique.
5. Assuming gender performance is only about “cross-dressing” without its stated function of distorting and questioning gendered self-representation.
6. Forgetting that Dedalus and free indirect speech are both said to reach a more refined form in Ulysses.

✅ Exam Checklist

1. Explain how self-staging can function as both reflection on individuality and artwork material.
2. State David Hockney’s self-portrait count and how his portraits relate to the passage of time.
3. Describe Cindy Sherman’s method in Untitled Film Stills and what it does to the notion of the self.
4. Define what an alter ego is and give one example from Wilde, Perry, or Joyce.
5. Identify how Dorian Gray uses Lord Henry Wotton as a character based on Oscar Wilde and how this embodies dandyism.
6. Explain how Grayson Perry’s Claire and cross-dressing challenge traditional gendered self-representation.
7. Define performance art and link it to the artist’s presence and staging before an audience.
8. Summarize how Welty uses autobiography in One Writer's Beginnings to connect upbringing to career.
9. Summarize how Orwell in Why I Write uses political events (Spanish War) as a writing motive and recall that four motives are listed.
10. Explain how Joyce uses Dedalus and free indirect speech in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and how both are further refined in Ulysses.
11. Explain how Deconstructing Harry links an artist’s life and writing through multiple perspectives and feedback between “real life” and work.