Restoring the position of theatrical functionality as either topic and trope within the aesthetics of self-representation, Staging the Artist questions how nineteenth-century French and Belgian artists self-consciously formed their identities via their paintings and writings. This emphasis on functionality makes it possible for a brand new knowing of the procedures of self-fashioning which underlie self-representation in notice and photo. Claire Moran bargains new interpretations of works by means of significant nineteenth-century figures akin to Paul Gauguin and Edgar Degas, and addresses the overlooked subject of the functionality of theatre within the improvement of recent visible artwork. Incarnating Baudelaire's metaphor of the artist as an actor ever-conscious of his function, the artists mentioned "Courbet, Ensor and Van Gogh, between others" hired theatre as either a thematic resource and formal notion of their portray, writings and social behaviour. Moran argues that what renders this visible, literary and social functionality smooth is its self-consciousness, which in flip serves as a version with which to problem pictorial conference. This ebook means that tracing smooth functionality and inventive identification to the 19th century offers a better knowing not just of the importance of theatre within the improvement of contemporary paintings, but in addition highlights the self-conscious staging inherent to trendy creative identity.