Vom Künstlerroman zum Kunstroman

How do novels and stories about fictional artists describe their art? This question leads to a completely new understanding of the history of the artist novel from its beginnings in late 18th c. German literature to its intercontinental present. The study reveals that this history has two distinct phases: a first phase in which artist novels were focussed on the personal predicaments of their protagonists but rarely described the paintings, writings, or compositions these artist figures produced, and a second phase that reverses this genre tradition. In the 1940s, authors like Nabokov and Mann re-invented the artist novel by giving detailed descriptions of imaginary oeuvres and letting the subject of the artist vanish behind the work.