Image of a Man: An Introduction

An introduction to Keith Vaughan, his life and visual work, his journal, and the unifying theme of the self-/image of a man as it relates to painting, journal-writing, masculinity and desire. This introduction asserts that Vaughan’s journal should be considered as a major literary work and as Vaughan’s chief creative project, detailing the process of researching the Vaughan archives and working with the journal manuscripts whilst drawing on life-writing theory to argue for employing the approach of close literary critical analysis. It reflects upon the challenges of following the threads of social, political, and aesthetic debate that make Vaughan’s journal such a rich and complex text. Crucially, this introduction establishes the book’s key argument that the writing of journals and diaries should be considered as a means of literary self-construction, a process key to the making and re-making of identity and subjectivity. This introduction closes by outlining the contents of this book’s chapters, which are organised to explore how Vaughan wrote himself into roles or positions that would add another necessary facet to his developing identity: the conscientious objector to war and war-going masculinity; the detached and perceptive observer; the self-aware and self-critical intellectual; and the striving, perpetually unsatisfied artist.