This thesis examines John Ashbery's poem "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" and its revision of the traditional distinction between theory and poetry. Drawing a relationship between the poem's subject and the practices of postmodern theoretical discourse, the thesis posits the poem as an artifact of these changes. Creating a context for the poem, these developments not only inform the climate in which Ashbery's poem takes on significance, but, as well, explain the changing nature of literary study. Historical in its approach to the pressures and impulses within this climate of aesthetic production, the thesis traces the distinction between science and literature and how it has influenced the creation of the literary discipline. Demonstrating that the disciplinary study of literature has always been the subject of debate and discussion, it uses this understanding to place present disagreements about the need or usefulness of theory in the context of historical disagreements over the difference of literature from science or philosophy. Explaining that postmodern theory has largely worked to foreground the arbitrary nature of distinctions such as that between theory and poetry, the thesis elaborates on how poststructuralism undoes these distinctions to show how they are always the result of particular political and ideological views of representation. Using this critical insight, the thesis then reads closely the details of the poem's relationship to postmodern theory, how it works to undo the distinction between theory and poetry. Having undone this traditional distinction, however, leaves the poem in an ambivalent and unstable position. Since it passes between extant categorical definitions its own nature remains undecided and, thus, maintains an engagement with and resistance to tradition. It remains caught between the need for the aesthetic past and the need for a freedom from that past. Chapter four, therefore, explores this ambivalence, particularly as it relates to the inheritance of romanticism and modernism. Finally, in chapter five, the thesis revises the main critical perception of Ashbery as postmodern, making a case for his closer affiliation with a late version of modernism. Because of Ashbery's preoccupation with the aesthetic past, his use of the imagery, insights, and idealism of our aesthetic history, he appears to re-create a distinction between high and popular art that is more consonant with a version of modernism.

The thesis Mapping the Self-Portrait: Navigating Identity and Autobiography in Visual Art is a practical project. It explores the relationship between autobiography and self- portraiture, and how these notions of the self can be represented in visual art. The exhibition 360 Potential Truisms forms the major component in this thesis, and is accompanied by a written exegesis. This exegesis explores notions of the self-portrait and autobiography in relation to identity, with focus on a post-structural approach to fragmentation and movement. Artworks have been developed to reflect a shift towards an idea of the fragmented self, involving drawing, photography, and text to allow a constantly changing interpretation of self-portraiture.

Master of Letters (with Merit) / The objective of this paper is to examine the self-portrait paintings of Frida Kahlo and to explore the way in which they articulate a ‘self’ and ‘identity’ through creating an innovative feminine vocabulary. The aim of this creative research is to explore the way in which Frida Kahlo represented her sexual subjectivity in the body of self-portraits she produced in her short life time. The self-portraits, some of which were produced in a state of severe physical disability and chronic illness, were also created in the shadow of her famous partner- socialist Mexican muralist/ revolutionary Diego Rivera. An examination of the significant body of self-portrait paintings produced by Frida Kahlo, informed by her personal letters, poems, and photographs, broadens the conventional definitions of subjective self beyond the generic patterns of autobiographical narrative, characteristic of an inherently masculine Western ‘self’. In Kahlo’s self-portraits the representation of the urban Mexican proletarian woman-child draws stylistically from the domain of European self-portraiture, early studio photographic portraiture, and the biographical Mexican Catholic retablo art, with its indebtedness to the ancient Aztec Indian symbology of self.

Double Bind: Splitting identity and the body as an object is a research project consisting of studio-based practice presented mainly in video installation format. This work looks at hysterical symptoms as a performance of a body’s split identity. The project draws on the Lacanian theory of Mirror Stage which proposes that the self experienced by the subject, and the image of that self (represented in a mirror-like reflection, or an image) are different to each other, and the development of self-awareness as misrecognition of one’s self. As a conspicuous example of split body, Chapter One describes how the hysterical body, in clinical and artistic representation, is dissociated into multiple selves. In Chapter Two, I discuss some examples of contemporary performance artists who use themselves as subjects, but whose bodies become objects that do not portray the self. In the final chapter I explain how, in my video work, I objectify my own body and how I assess whether this is a mode of self-portraiture. / During the course of this research, I studied a wide range of medical resources and psychoanalytical literature, much of which employed visual illustration and documentation. For example, I have drawn inspiration from Jean-Martin Charcot’s photographic documents of female hysterics whom he treated as patients at the French hospital of La Salpêtrière in the late 19th century; in particular the figure of his most famous patient, known as Augustine. My research also involved studio-based investigation, such as experimentations with the performance of my own body in video format, and the contextual study of artistic and critical texts relating to contemporary media art. / The aim of this research is to demonstrate the ways in which my video performances split the body, creating an Other within one body that can be compared with the hysterical body of a patient, like Augustine, performing for her doctor. In this condition, I perform as the subject and the object of the gaze at the same time. My self-portrait is split in this way: it creates a body double, which I misrecognise as myself. But in doing so, I am both the director and the performer of the image. This is the double bind that my video work puts me into.

"Nach der Gründung der DDR war es eine Gruppe deutscher Antifaschisten, die an der Spitze der diplomatischen Missionen des neuen Staates auch einen neuen Typ deutscher Repräsentanten verkörperten. Fortan waren es nicht nur ehemalige Mitarbeiter des nationalsozialistischen AA, die nun für Bonn auf internationalem Parkett agierten, sondern angesehene Antifaschisten [...]"

L'objectif de ce mémoire est de répertorier différentes modalités de l'autoportrait photographique à partir de la production artistique des années 1960 à 1990. Évidemment, les catégories proposées ne sont représentatives que de l'une des multiples avenues empruntées par la photographie contemporaine et en ce sens, ces typologies ne doivent pas être considérées comme invariables. Elles visent à mettre en lumière une tendance dominante dans la pratique contemporaine, soit celle de ne plus privilégier la présence du visage lors de la création d'un autoportrait par l'emploi de procédés de masquage et de brouillage. Pour ce faire, nous avons remonté aux origines du portrait et de l'autoportrait dans l'histoire de l'art occidental en s'attardant, dans un premier temps, au médium de la peinture. En procédant de manière chronologique, il a été possible de mettre en évidence le lien étroit, pour ne pas dire intrinsèque, qui unissait ces deux genres avec le concept de ressemblance. Par la suite, nous nous sommes attardés à l'apparition de la photographie et à son incidence sur le développement du portrait et de l'autoportrait au XIXe et au XXe siècles. La mimésis, qui occupait jusqu'alors une place prépondérante dans le domaine de la peinture, s'est vue approprier par le médium photographique. Mais rapidement, parce que la photographie tentait au cours de cette période de définir sa pratique, l'idée de simplement copier les préceptes de la peinture semblait inconcevable pour certains photographes. Nombreux furent ceux qui se mirent à expérimenter avec les possibilités plastiques et techniques que leur offrait la photographie avec pour objectif de développer un langage proprement photographique. En dernière instance, il a été question de l'autoportrait dans le contexte de la production contemporaine avec la présentation de trois catégories d'esthétiques sous lesquelles ont pu être regroupés les autoportraits choisis comme corpus d'œuvres. La tendance dont rend compte ce mémoire ne doit pas signifier la mort de l'autoportrait, mais au contraire, elle doit plutôt être vue comme un moyen l'empêchant de trépasser. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Typologie, autoportrait, art contemporain, photographie.

Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat ès lettres--Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1996. / Bibliogr. p. 449-457. Index.

Thesis--Frankfurt am Main, 1975. / Cover title: Künstlerdenkmäler in Frankreich. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [27-61] (2d group)).

Marlene Dumas is known for her portraits and figurative paintings and drawings. This study focuses on three paintings by Dumas that reference male icons of art: Stern (2004), Ryman's Brides (1997), and Reinhardt's Daughter (1994). In referencing Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman and in the case of Stern, Gerhard Richter, Dumas engages with each artist and the history of painting in specific ways. As this thesis title indicates, I argue that Dumas uses artistic allusion pervasively throughout her oeuvre to conduct an intervention in painting. I propose that this interposition is a way to navigate and question the canon, while strengthening her agency as an artist. Concurrently, this practice by Dumas provides insights concerning the status of painting in a contemporary art scene where new media is progressively dominant. By unpacking this artistic referencing through titling, concept, and the process of painting, I will demonstrate the significance of it to her production. This analysis also functions as a commentary on the current state of painting and key aspects of its evolution over the last fifty years. I suggest that her use of incisive artistic reference interrogates power structures of the canon by disrupting boundaries, categories, and frames of enclosure. Her dialogue with art history ranges from homage and quotation to contestation and humorous exegesis. Dumas relies on photography including personal snapshots and images from news media as source material, but her painting process is transformative rather than mimetic. Her evocative and often provocative work is frequently discussed in terms of race, gender, and sexuality. I consider how Dumas explores socio-historical issues while creating a dialogue with art history. Dumas investigates the problem of how to paint and claim new territory in our high-tech age when painting is often deemed obsolete. This thesis topic is understudied in any depth and merits further inquiry. By examining how these paintings engage with specific artists within Modern and contemporary painting, I seek to make a new contribution to the literature on Marlene Dumas.

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