From ancient times onward writers and orators have created and repeated specific biographical structures as a way to understand and explain the creative process of the artist. For example artists have often been described as natural prodigies within innate talents or as magical individuals possessing creative powers on par with the divine. This seminar will examine the role that biography plays in the assessment of visual art and the creative process over time and across European and, more specifically, American culture. We will read germinal historical texts as well as psychoanalytic and post-structuralist theories of creativity and authorship before turning our focus to popular and scholarly biographies of American artists, including dramatic films, television documentaries, and the phenomena of both the posthumous and the mid-career retrospective exhibition in America, in order to better understand how issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, and national identity effect the production of biographical structures.