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I will briefly discuss James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) as an example of the first category of artist, in self-imposed exile. In my thesis, I will first establish artists as outsiders and their inherently political role.

Why is it, then, that artists are presented in this way? I argue that artists are often presented as outsiders not only because of the stereotype of artists as creative geniuses, but because art and artists are inherently political, in that they pose challenges to existing power structures and dynamics.

This characterization often falls into two categories: either the artist self-identifies as an outsider, or the artist’s audiences push a sense of “outsiderness” onto the artist. Stereotypically, artists are misunderstood, neglected by the world around them, and isolated because they feel that others cannot possibly understand their experiences. When we think of artists, we often think of the tortured artist figure.