Introduction 

The ableist discourse considers able bodies as the norm in society, indicating that people who have a disability must struggle to become normal. Disability is therefore defined as a mistake or a fault, rather than a human diversity; disability is seen as a “bad” thing that must be overcome or eradicated.

In this pedagogical dossier, you will look at examples of the disabled human body as it has been represented in art history. Through this dossier, you will explore the body in visual culture to uncover how bodily difference is and has been articulated physically and theoretically and demonstrates how disability can be defined as a cultural construction. Because this is a vast project, this sheet uses just a few artistic examples per theme.

To summarize, in this dossier, you will:

• Learn what it means to be human;
• Understand how the body is represented in visual culture;
• Find out how formations of disability are expressed regarding ideas of normality, hybridity, and/or anomaly.
• And more!

The theme

Background of the movement

Chronologically, “disability studies” arose in the mid-to-late 1980s, and “body art” started to be considered a category of contemporary art in the 1970s, but disabled bodies in art date back to at least the 1st century CE. Disability studies aim to present an alternate methodology and point of departure for the study of the body in art history. Through disability studies, we can understand and trace discrimination in Art History in favor of able-bodied people, also called “ableism”.

There are a series of examples and provocative questions that one might think and set to themselves when trying to understand a disability, for example:

• Can we compile a list of works that include representations of disability?
• How are people with disabilities portrayed in art?
• Are people with disabilities active participants in and creators of culture and media?

People with disabilities have not typically decided how they would be presented in art and literature, nor have they participated in the creation of the art objects in which they are portrayed. Artists and authors have used various disabilities to communicate ideas about evil, suffering, grace, and human nature and to support stereotypes about disability.

Disability is an idiosyncratic, corporeal, and multifaceted sociocultural construction. The representation of disabled bodies in art history demonstrates how art can support or subvert the construction and performance of normative values.

Historical Representations of Disability in Art History

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) recommended euthanasia for “deformed children,” writing, “Let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.” Although Hellenistic art comprises representations of “grotesques,” the elderly, and children, we cannot find many representations of people with disabilities in the Ancient world.

Christianity led to more interpretations of people with disabilities. In the New Testament, Jesus showed kindness and performed miracles to cure people who were blind and otherwise disabled. These miracles were often depicted in art, for example in El Greco’s The Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind (c. 1570). In that way again, disability was considered a situation to be cured, in order to permit the return to normality.

During the Protestant Reformation in 1517, persons with developmental disabilities were considered subhuman organisms. Martin Luther (1483–1546) condemned children and adults with cognitive disorders as “filled with Satan.”

In these times, many people with disabilities survived as mendicants, as pictured in The Beggars, by Pieter Bruegel (1568).

Christianity, then, often considered disability as either a sin on the part of people with disabilities or their families. Sometimes they were also seen as an act of God for some divine purpose. In the first case, people were punished and expelled from society. In the second case, they were seen as divine and considered holy. Perceived as sinners or saints, people with disabilities were usually kept separate from mainstream society and their disabilities were thought to serve some divine purpose.

Let’s take as examples Rembrandt’s Peter and John Healing the Cripple at the Gate of the Temple and Goya’s Beggars Who Get Around on Their Own in Bordeaux. Both artworks feature a man with a disability. In Rembrandt’s case, there are two other characters as well: St. Peter and St. John, who stand over the “cripple” (as people with disabilities were called in these times) with benevolence and authority. Goya’s drawing emphasises the individual who is disabled, a beggar in a wheelchair. The subject seems dirty and disheveled but also actively engaged in the world. Goya’s beggar looks out of the piece at the viewer and is portrayed as an active person, whereas Rembrandt’s cripple sits passively, his back to the viewer; he waits to be healed so that he can then take part in the world around him.

In the nineteenth century, the medical model of disability emerged, considering disability as an impairment, as something wrong with the body. Along with the rise of modern scientific medicine, doctors in the nineteenth century perceived disability as a “disease” and “injury”. Disability has become something that has to be healed by science. People with disabilities became patients needing to be cured. By defining people by their disabilities rather than as full human beings, the medical model fosters classifications, dependence on professional care, and often involves painful treatments.

The medical model sometimes led to Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is the idea that certain people become powerful in society because they are innately better. This idea helped to rationalize forced sterilizations, marriage restrictions, and the incarceration of individuals with developmental disabilities in institutions. These “creatures” or “ill people” often became subjects of artists and scientists who were interested in categorizing people by type and appearance.

Among the French Romantic painters, Théodore Géricault’s greatest achievements are his Portraits of the Insane. There were ten of them originally, but only five have survived: A Madwoman and Compulsive Gambler, A Kidnapper, A Demented Woman, A Kleptomaniac, and A Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Command. Here are some of them.

The terror of people with physical deformities became popular in the media, with figures such as Quasimodo, Dr. Strangelove, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman. Often people with disabilities were given roles of villains.

Stereotypes were strengthened through quasi-scientific theories like eugenics. During the “genetic scare” of the 1920s, people with developmental disabilities were believed to harm others. Eugenic research had a direct impact on positions and mindsets toward people with disabilities in Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany was accusing people with disabilities of wasting valuable resources. At the outbreak of World War II, Hitler ordered widespread “mercy killing” of the sick and disabled. The Nazi euthanasia program was instituted to eliminate “life unworthy of life”; over 200,000 people with disabilities were killed during the Holocaust.

The “Freakshow,” Power, and Privilege

During the fifteenth century, people with physical and mental disabilities were boarded onto ships and exhibited for money. Hieronymus Bosch’spaintingShip of Fools (1490–1500) depicts the lives of people with cognitive disabilities aboard such a ship.

During the Renaissance, Velázquez painted many portraits of dwarfs, including his Portrait of Sebastián de Morra (1645), which can be compared to the Italian painter Lavinia Fontana’s portrait of ten-year-old Antonietta Gonzalez (1595), whose father Pedro, “The Hairy Man from Munich,” was the first documented case of “werewolf syndrome” or hypertrichosis.

In 1841, P.T. Barnum’s American Museum opens. During the 1840s the term “freak” became a synonym for “a monstrosity, an abnormally developed individual of any species; a living curiosity exhibited in a show.” This definition owes its place in the English vernacular to Barnum and his American Museum (1841–65), which relied on sensational exhibits to draw crowds.

These kinds of exhibits started to be captured in the 1880s by photographers. Charles Eisenmann made cartes de visite, or calling cards, for the “freaks of Barnum’s American Museum”. He had his studio in New York’s Bowery district, close to Barnum’s American Museum. Barnum’s performers used the calling cards as marketing and promotional tools. Eisenmann also sold them as collectibles to people who often assembled them into albums. Here are some examples of his studio’s work.

Myrtle Corbin was billed as “the 4-legged girl from Texas,” a popular attraction for Barnum. As one of the most popular sideshow freaks, she earned as much as 450 dollars a week. At the age of nineteen, she married a doctor, with whom she had five children.

Eli Bowen was a tumbler and strong man who toured Europe with Barnum. Known as “The Legless Wonder”, he was applauded internationally for his extraordinary routine during which he climbed a thirteen-foot pole, then swung around the pole holding his body parallel to the pole with one hand. He married and had four sons. He took great pride in his family and the majority of the photos featuring Eli feature his family as well.

Later on, another photographer interested in unusual subjects was Diane Arbus. Her award-winning work has been exhibited in major shows and has earned two Guggenheim Fellowships. Arbus’s photography differs from this of Eisenmann.

“Arbus is not an artist who makes us see the world anew; she embeds us in our own limitations, our lack of empathy, our kneejerk reactions, our incuriosity, and lack of concern. Hers is a world without horizons where there is no escape from self.” (“Wrestling with Diane Arbus,” The Guardian, 2005).

Body, Performance, and the Posthuman

In humanistic thought, the mind and body are divided, with the body acting as a medium for the mind. Information technologies, scientific discoveries, and bioengineering test the role of the mechanical body being unable to fully replace the human body, and is unsuitable in performing functions of the biological body. Furthermore, war, plastic surgery, and prosthetics changed the perception of the body as well as of representations of people with disabilities. Take for example the German painter Otto Dix’s critique of WWI as seen in Skat Players and War Cripples.

Thanks to increased medical knowledge, wounds that in the past would have killed soldiers now remain on soldiers’ bodies as scars. But evolving medical knowledge makes it possible to save many more lives, even if avoiding war wounds and battered bodies is impossible.

It is when the movement of transhumanism appears searching for transforming the human condition through technologies, that human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities improve. Orlan (Self-Hybridizations) and Stelarc (Third Hand) are two contemporary artists who explore and push the boundaries of “humanness” by undertaking surgeries to transform their bodies into hybrids and cyborgs.

As a challenge to invisibility, Marc Quinn sculpted fellow artist and activist Alison Lapper Pregnant in Carrara marble for the fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square. The work presenting Lapper, who was born without arms and with shortened legs, has created many debates by those who view it consecutively as offensive or progressive. The work, like Quinn’s other sculptures of models with amputations for the series The Complete Marbles (2002), approves the idealism of Neoclassicism to criticise public representations of disability.

Pedagogical approach

Why is this theme relevant to adult learners?

Exclusion based on prejudice or structural discrimination is unjust in any area. People with disabilities have historically been discriminated against, separated, shut away, controlled, and disposed of. For many years they had no access to education.

Through disability studies, we can understand and trace discrimination in art history in favor of able-bodied people and prevent it from happening again. This allows us to aim to create a society based on knowledge, understanding of the other, and thus inclusion.

What are the learning outcomes of embedding this art theme with an educational activity?

With this activity, learners will be able to discover the topic through the painter’s tools and eyes. Indeed, the activities are set so that learners can learn the power of activist art, music, and words, reflecting on how they can influence artistic views. They will also be able to delve more into specific paintings and watch video explanations of some of the most influential works.

How to do it: strategies, tools, and techniques.

Learners will take both active and inactive participation in their learning. Using their painting skills, critical thinking, and listening skills they will be able to develop their knowledge of disability in art, and discuss and share their thoughts with the class, then learn from other experts in the fields of art history.

Artworks

Artwork #1 Healing of the Man Born Blind, El Greco, 1567

• Its position-relation to the theme: Healing of the Man Born Blind is a painting by El Greco, produced in 1567.

• Short description: The central scene of the painting depicts the moment when Jesus, in the foreground, opens the eyes of a blind man. The episode is described in the Gospel according to John (9:1-41). The subject of the painting is perfectly suited to a cardinal’s commission: the parable of a profound religious crisis and a real rift in Christian Europe, now divided between Catholics and Protestants, a clear allegory of the role of the Church of Rome, which, like Christ, alone can open eyes to the true faith.

• Location and European dimension: It is now in the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma, Italy.
• Possible educational exploitatio: Christianity led to more interpretations of people with disabilities. Disability is then represented in art. In that way again, disability was considered a condition to be cured, in order to allow the return to normality. It might be interesting for students to explore the link between disability and different religions.

Artwork #2 The Beggars – Pieter Bruegel (1568)

• Its position-relation to the theme: The Beggars, also known as The Cripples, is an oil-on-panel painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel’s painting of The Beggars is a fascinating image that gives insight into history and society at that time. Though the Beggars are portrayed in a pathetic and unsympathetic manner, the composition is skillful and captivating. A remarkable piece of social commentary, some of which remains undeciphered. In fact, up to this day, given the rich symbolism of the artwork and its somewhat ironic tone, the experts are not entirely sure what was the message behind this painting.

• Short description: The painting presents a beggar woman and five men in the foreground, including one with his back turned, who offer themselves to the viewer’s vision in all their deformity. Legless and afflicted with physical deformities, they move animatedly using crutches and shin guards of various kinds. They are wearing different carnival headgear, each of them representing a different group of people in the society (the king, the soldier, the bourgeois, the peasant and the bishop). It is possible that the physical deformities presented by Bruegel correspond to some form of moral weaknesses, although this hypothesis hasn’t been confirmed by the experts.

• Location and European dimension: It is now in the Louvre Museum, in Paris.

• Possible educational exploitation: During the Protestant Reformation in 1517, people with developmental disabilities were considered subhuman organisms. Let us pause to reflect on the different forms of exclusion in society. Here the disabled survive by becoming beggars. How does society decide to exclude some groups over others? How does this change historically?

Artwork #3 Peter and John Healing the Cripple at the Gate of the Temple – Rembrandt, 1659

• Its position-relation to the theme: The work depicts a man with a disability. It is part of the genre of Christian art. It dates back to the Baroque period and the Dutch Golden Age.

• Short description: It is an etching, engraving, and drypoint on ivory-laid paper. There are two characters: St. Peter and St. John, who stand over the “cripple” (as people with disabilities were called these times) with benevolence and authority. Rembrandt’s cripple sits passively, his back to the viewer; he waits to be healed so that he can then take part in the world around him.

• Location and European dimension: The painting is located in the National Gallery of Art, in Washington DC.
• Possible educational exploitation: It might be interesting for the student to delve into how the form of exclusion is historically represented in space, through physicality and physical and spatial representation.

Artwork #4 Insane Woman (La Monomane de l’Envie) -Théodore Géricault, 1822

• Its position-relation to the theme: Insane Woman is an 1822 oil on canvas painting by Théodore Géricault. It is a part of the series of works Géricault dedicated to presenting people with different mental health conditions.

• Short description: The portrait is uncompromisingly realistic, with absolute precision in the description of facial details, and it is almost a clinical study of this woman with a health condition. All the attention is focused on the physical elements, on this face that denotes the psychological disorder of the woman: Géricault insists on the tension that runs through it and makes a mask of it, an exacerbated imitation of it, on the tightness of the mouth, the fixity of the exorbitant gaze, but also the old woman’s headdress. Géricault’s alienated people are men and women suffering from various psychic alterations all ascribable to the category of monomanias, that is, obsessions that involve only one aspect of behavior: theft, pedophilia, gambling addiction, and envy. The above-mentioned conditions are not faults to be punished in asylums, but illnesses that present peculiar symptomatology that the painter takes pains to bring to the canvas.

• Location and European dimension: It is housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France.

• Possible educational exploitation: For a long period in history, it was thought that behavioural cataracts matched the physical characteristics of the person. It might be interesting to learn more about the link between appearance and social norms.

Artwork #5 The Ship of Fools – Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1490–1500

• Its position-relation to the theme: At the time of Hieronymus Bosch, social conflicts were at their peak and religion was in deep crisis. The Ship of Fools, by going further than the burlesque aspect that it gives off at first sight, is a criticism of the madness of men who live without morals and lose their religious references. But also, during the fifteenth century, people with physical and mental disabilities were boarded onto ships and exhibited for money. Hieronymus Bosch’s painting Ship of Fools (1490–1500) depicts the lives of people with cognitive disabilities aboard such a ship.
• Short description: This image entitled “The Ship of Fools” was originally part of a triptych or 3 panels, which were painted in oil and date from around 1490 to 1500. The illustration shows ten people adrift in a boat, two others overboard. In the centre of the group is a nun playing a lute and a friar. To the left of the image, a woman appears to be about to hit a man who is dragging a flagon in the water. To the right of the picture another man appears to be vomiting over the side. Above him, a man clearly dressed as a fool, is drinking from a cup. One of the boatmen is using a huge ladle instead of an oar, the other has a flagon on the end of his oar.
• Location and European dimension: The painting is located now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
• Possible educational exploitation: Thus, the relationship Bosch establishes between “vice” and “folly” is characteristic of 15th-century literature. With this painting, he playfully warns against the loss of ecclesiastical values, the neglect or madness of men toward religion. Is this relationship between vice and madness expressed in our society today? If so, how?

Artwork #6 Portrait of Sebastián de Morra – Diego Velázquez, c. 1645

• Its position-relation to the theme: Sebastian de Morra is an oil painting on canvas made in about 1644 by the painter Diego Velázquez. Sebastian de Morra was a dwarf court jester, living with his disability from birth. Velázquez depicted him seated, in a position reminiscent of puppets, with a stern, sad expression that contrasts with his profession, as if to give voice to the man’s torment.

• Short description: The portrait, now in the Prado in Madrid, shows de Morra seated on the ground, legs thrust forward, arms placed against his thighs, obscuring the fingers. De Morra has a dark moustache and a beard and wears a red cloak. Most significant are his eyes, which look at the painter, at Velázquez, at you. With dark eyes and a high forehead, the look is calm and unafraid. Instead of coming across as something to laugh at and pity, Morra resembles a man who has not yet been beaten down and still shows resilience to his poor treatment.
• Location and European dimension: It is preserved in the Prado Museum, in Madrid.
• Possible educational exploitation: Although Sebastian de Morra was ultimately there for entertainment value, he must have been held in some high regard as Velazquez only painted on average two pictures each year and this was one of them. It may be interesting to explore the role of the artist, in this specific case Velázquez, but also all artists more in general, in all of this. How does the artist stand? Is he or she just the one who represents reality without placing judgement on it? Is he or she a passive lens? Or does he or she take an active part in the choice of representation? Where is the voice of the artist?

Artwork #7 The blind girl, John Everett Millais, 1856

• Its position-relation to the theme: The Blind Girl is an oil-on-canvas painting by Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais, made in 1856.

• Short description: The work, created by Millais in Perth, depicts two young women, probably sisters, sitting beneath a sky cluttered with clouds. Of these, the maiden on the right is intent on admiring the landscape before her; her sister, however, cannot participate in the contemplation of the view, as she is blind. Despite her blindness, her other four senses are well active; in fact, her head is slightly raised, as if she is smelling the aroma of the flowers carried by the wind, and with her fingers, she is palpating fresh grass. The subsistence of both maidens is ensured by the concertina laid on the knees of the blind girl, who therefore turns out to be a musician; on the latter’s neck, moreover, is placed a bundle bearing the inscription “PITY THE BLIND.”
• Location and European dimension: It is exhibited in the Birmingham Art Gallery in Birmingham, UK.
• Possible educational exploitation: It is interesting to compare this artwork with other representations of disability. We can reflect on what this painting can teach us about vision impairment in the Victorian period and in today’s society too.

Artwork #8 Blind Man, Gustav Klimt 1896

• Its position-relation to the theme: It is a portrait of a blind man. But Klimt does not focus on this, what stands out is the dignity of the elderly person.
• Short description: The artwork depicts a man. The man has white hair, they are very thick and curly. He has sunken cheeks. The light seems to highlight the features of the man. The gaze is to the right of the viewer, but he seems lost in the void.
• Location and European dimension: The artwork is now at the Leopold Museum, in Vienna.
• Possible educational exploitation: The artist’s focus is not always on the form of disability. Let us pause to notice, for example in this painting, what the artist wants to express.

Artwork #9 Skat Players, Otto Dix, 1920

Otto Dix, Skat Players (1920) is not in the public domain in Europe, therefore it can’t be shown in this pedagogical dossier. You can find the artwork here.

• Its position-relation to the theme: The Skat Players is an oil and collage painting on canvas by Otto Dix. It portrays World War I invalids playing cards.

• Short description: The painting depicts three men playing “Skat,” one of the most popular card games in Germany. The three men depicted, however, look grotesque and bizarre. The man portrayed on the left has a wooden leg and arm and one able leg with which he is holding his cards. The man in the middle has two fake legs, no arms, a metal cup holding his head together, a glass eye, a prosthetic jaw, nose and throat, and no left ear. He has a card holder in front of him and is playing with his mouth. The man on the right, wearing an Iron Cross, has no legs, one fake arm, one real arm, a prosthetic jaw, and no nose.
• Location and European dimension: The work is now at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
• Possible educational exploitation: Here, disability is linked to the World War. How do historical events have an impact on art and the representation of certain topics?

Artwork #10 The Annunciation, Alberto Savinio, 1932

Alberto Savinio’s « The Annunciation » (1932) is a courtesy of the Boschi di Stefano House Museum in Milan, Italy. The artwork can be seen here.

• Its position-relation to the theme: The artist is Alberto Savinio. Analysis of his paintings reveals that Savinio had Asperger’s syndrome.

• Short description: The artwork has different elements. The work depicts an interior, in which a welcoming, submissive and slumbering Virgin receives a visit from Gabriel, depicted only in the compassion emanating from his enormous face.
• Location and European dimension: The artwork is now in the collection of the Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano, in Milan.
• Possible educational exploitation: The artist did not become famous, and even today many of his works are criticised. How does the artist’s relationship with the subject of disability affect his work? Savinio also approached art as a form of therapy. Let’s look at the positive aspects that art can have for different forms of disability

Practical activities

Activity 1 – The evolution of disability in art

Aims

The goal is to understand how the body is represented in visual culture and to discover how formations of disability are expressed in relation to ideas of normality, hybridization, and/or abnormality.

Materials

• Mobile device / computer
• Internet connection

Preparatory stage for educators/mediators

Give the learners information on the topic of disability in art and show them some examples throughout the days and seasons. This will help the learners to understand also the historical evolution and how historical events, conceptions and ideologies have an impact on artistic representation.

Development

Ask learners to think about the various ways in which disability has been seen throughout history and how visual representations are influential tools in the construction of societal mentalities and opinions. If learners are interested in further projects related to arts and disability, you might suggest to them http://disartfestival.org/, an online resource.

Activity 2 – Art therapy

Aims

Discover how art can also have therapeutic functions and positive short- and long-term effects.

Materials

• Access to a computer with an online connection.
• Colouring material
• Sheets

Preparatory stage for educators/mediators

The term art therapy refers to a set of therapeutic techniques and treatments that use the visual arts (and, with a broader meaning, also theatre, music, and dance) to promote health (or promote healing) of the individual in the emotional, affective, and relational spheres. Explore the methods and functions of art therapy

Development

Art therapy can take many forms, but in general, it involves patients creating artistic material (through painting, sculpture, dance, etc.) in order to use the form of nonverbal language to give more free rein to instincts and impulses, which are not always easily verbalised. Studies verified the effectiveness of art therapy on improving mood and a reduction in anxiety and physical pain. Try to use art as a moment to feel yourself, and then describe how you feel and how your artistic production reflects that.

Good luck!