Disability in Art History

• Historical Representations of Disability • “Freakshows,” Power, and Privilege

• Body, Performance, and the Posthuman

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas,1656.

• How much have we learned about the lives and impact of people with

disabilities throughout history?• Why might that be?

Historical Representations of Disability

Polykleitos, Doryphoros, marble copy of bronze original, c. 450–440 BCE. Old Market Woman, 150–100 BCE.

El Greco, The Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind, c. 1570.

Mosaic of Christ Healing the Lepers, Monreale Cathedral, Palermo, Italy, c. 1180s.

Crippled Child, Lutrell Psalter, 1325.

Man with crutches, Luttrell Psalter.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Beggars, 1568.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter and John Healing the Cripple at the Gate of the

Temple, 1659.

Francisco Goya, Beggars Who Get about on Their

Own in Bordeaux, 1824–27.

Théodore Géricault, A Woman Addicted to Gambling (L) and A Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy, A Kleptomaniac (R) from the series Portraits

of the Insane, 1822.

Lon Chaney as Quasimodo and Patsy Ruth Miller as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame,

1923.

Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick, Dr.

Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the

Bomb, 1964.

Francis Galton, composite portraits “Health, Disease, and Criminality,” (L) and “The Jewish Type” (R), published in The Photographic News, 1885.

“Freakshows,” Power, and Privilege

Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools, 1490–1500.

Albrecht Dürer, frontispiece to Sebastian Brant’s Ship of

Fools, 1490–1500.

Velázquez, Portrait of Sebastián de Morra, 1645.

Lavinia Fontana, Antonietta Gonzalez, 1656.

Phineas Taylor Barnum and The American Museum

Charles Eisenmann(1855–1927)

Eisenmann, Myrtle Corbin“The Four-Legged Woman,” c. 1880.

Eisenmann, Eli Bowen“The Legless Acrobat,” c. 1880.

Eisenmann, Charles B. Tripp“The Armless Wonder,” c. 1880.

Marion Post Wolcott, Plant City, Florida, Strawberry Festival and

Carnival, March 1939.Ben Shahn, Sideshow, County

Fair, Central Ohio, 1938.

Russell Lee, Untitled, Donaldsonville, Louisiana, 1938.

Reginald Marsh, Sideshow Sign at Coney Island, c. 1939.

Eudora Welty, Sideshow Banner, Mississippi State Fair, c. 1939.

Diane Arbus, A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, NY, 1970.

Arbus, Mexican Dwarf in his Hotel Room, New York City, 1970.

Arbus, Untitled, 1970–1.

Body, Performance, and the Posthuman

Otto Dix, War Cripples, 1920.

Dix, Scat Players, 1920.

Orlan, Self-Hybridizations, 1994–Present.

Stelarc, Third Arm, 1980–98.

Lisa Bufano, from Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement, 2013.

Matthew Barney with Aimee Mullins, Cremaster 3, 2002.

Mary Duffy, Performance, 1995.  Venus de Milo, 130–100 BCE.

Marc Quinn, Alison Lapper Pregnant, 2005.

Jake and Dinos Chapman, Übermensch (Portrait of Stephen Hawking), 1995.