'Rabelais and His World'

The Author's (Francis Rabelais) Prologue to his First Book of 'Gargantual and His Son Pantagruel' (a 5-volume Chronicle of the lives, the heroic deeds and the sayings of his mythical giants) it's what it might be, in our days, and under a strict politically correct view, a declaration of equality upon all creatures of the world, regardless of their appearance, their traits and their external or visible features.

"Most noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious
pockified blades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my
writings), Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato's, which is
entitled The Banquet, whilst he was setting forth the praises of
his schoolmaster Socrates (without all question the prince of
philosophers), amongst other discourses to that purpose, said that
he resembled the Silenes. Silenes of old were little boxes, like
those we now may see in the shops of apothecaries, painted on the
outside with wanton toyish figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled
geese, horned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts,
and other such-like counterfeited pictures at discretion, to excite
people unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father
of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious
caskets were carefully preserved and kept many rich jewels and fine
drugs, such as balm, ambergris, amomon, musk, civet, with several
kinds of precious stones, and other things of great price. Just
such another thing was Socrates. For to have eyed his outside, and
esteemed of him by his exterior appearance, you would not have
given the peel of an onion for him, so deformed he was in body, and
ridiculous in his gesture. He had a sharp pointed nose, with the
look of a bull, and countenance of a fool: he was in his carriage
simple, boorish in his apparel, in fortune poor, unhappy in his
wives, unfit for all offices in the commonwealth, always laughing,
tippling, and merrily carousing to everyone, with continual gibes
and jeers, the better by those means to conceal his divine
knowledge. Now, opening this box you would have found within it a
heavenly and inestimable drug, a more than human understanding, an
admirable virtue, matchless learning, invincible courage,
unimitable sobriety, certain contentment of mind, perfect
assurance, and an incredible misregard of all that for which men
commonly do so much watch, run, sail, fight, travel, toil and
turmoil themselves."

But grotesque world is not abound of political correct attributes; it's rather the opposite. That's what we come across in Chapter 1.LII.—'How Gargantua caused to be built for the Monk the Abbey of Theleme' when Gargantua and the Monk are setting up the special rules under which the Abbey of Theleme will be organised:

"Item, Because at that time they put no women into nunneries but
such as were either purblind, blinkards, lame, crooked,
ill-favoured, misshapen, fools, senseless, spoiled, or corrupt; nor
encloistered any men but those that were either sickly, subject to
defluxions, ill-bred louts, simple sots, or peevish trouble-houses.
But to the purpose, said the monk. A woman that is neither fair nor
good, to what use serves she? To make a nun of, said Gargantua.
Yea, said the monk, and to make shirts and smocks. Therefore was it
ordained that into this religious order should be admitted no women
that were not fair, well-featured, and of a sweet disposition; nor
men that were not comely, personable, and well conditioned."

So, when the Abbey of Theleme has been built, 'The inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme' in Chapter 1.LIV is writing:

"...Here enter not base pinching usurers, Pelf-lickers, everlasting
gatherers, Gold-graspers, coin-gripers, gulpers of mists, Niggish
deformed sots, who, though your chests Vast sums of money should to
you afford, Would ne'ertheless add more unto that hoard, And yet
not be content,—you clunchfist dastards, Insatiable fiends, and
Pluto's bastards, Greedy devourers, chichy sneakbill rogues,
Hell-mastiffs gnaw your bones, you ravenous dogs.

You beastly-looking fellows,
Reason doth plainly tell us
That we should not
To you allot
Room here, but at the gallows,
You beastly-looking fellows...

...Grace, honour, praise, delight,
Here sojourn day and night.
Sound bodies lined
With a good mind,
Do here pursue with might
Grace, honour, praise, delight...

...Blades of heroic breasts
Shall taste here of the feasts,
Both privily
And civilly
Of the celestial guests,
Blades of heroic breasts...

...Here enter you all ladies of high birth, Delicious, stately,
charming, full of mirth, Ingenious, lovely, miniard, proper, fair,
Magnetic, graceful, splendid, pleasant, rare, Obliging, sprightly,
virtuous, young, solacious, Kind, neat, quick, feat, bright, compt,
ripe, choice, dear, precious. Alluring, courtly, comely, fine,
complete, Wise, personable, ravishing, and sweet, Come joys enjoy.
The Lord celestial Hath given enough wherewith to please us
all."

In the Second Book, Chapter 2.I.—'Of the original and antiquity of the great
Pantagruel', when Rabelais describes what it was the world before the birth of giants, strange accidents occured:

"However, account you it for a truth that everybody then did most
heartily eat of these medlars, for they were fair to the eye and in
taste delicious. But even as Noah, that holy man, to whom we are so
much beholding, bound, and obliged, for that he planted to us the
vine, from whence we have that nectarian, delicious, precious,
heavenly, joyful, and deific liquor which they call the piot or
tiplage, was deceived in the drinking of it, for he was ignorant of
the great virtue and power thereof; so likewise the men and women
of that time did delight much in the eating of that fair great
fruit, but divers and very different accidents did ensue thereupon;
for there fell upon them all in their bodies a most terrible
swelling, but not upon all in the same place, for some were swollen
in the belly, and their belly strouted out big like a great tun, of
whom it is written, Ventrem omnipotentem, who were all very honest
men, and merry blades. And of this race came St. Fatgulch and
Shrove Tuesday (Pansart, Mardigras.). Others did swell at the
shoulders, who in that place were so crump and knobby that they
were therefore called Montifers, which is as much to say as
Hill-carriers, of whom you see some yet in the world, of divers
sexes and degrees. Of this race came Aesop, some of whose excellent
words and deeds you have in writing. Some other puffs did swell in
length by the member which they call the labourer of nature, in
such sort that it grew marvellous long, fat, great, lusty,
stirring, and crest-risen, in the antique fashion, so that they
made use of it as of a girdle, winding it five or six times about
their waist: but if it happened the foresaid member to be in good
case, spooming with a full sail bunt fair before the wind, then to
have seen those strouting champions, you would have taken them for
men that had their lances settled on their rest to run at the ring
or tilting whintam (quintain). Of these, believe me, the race is
utterly lost and quite extinct, as the women say; for they do
lament continually that there are none extant now of those great,
&c. You know the rest of the song. Others did grow in matter of
ballocks so enormously that three of them would well fill a sack
able to contain five quarters of wheat. From them are descended the
ballocks of Lorraine, which never dwell in codpieces, but fall down
to the bottom of the breeches. Others grew in the legs, and to see
them you would have said they had been cranes, or the
reddish-long-billed-storklike-scrank-legged sea-fowls called
flamans, or else men walking upon stilts or scatches. The little
grammar-school boys, known by the name of Grimos, called those
leg-grown slangams Jambus, in allusion to the French
word jambe,
which signifieth a leg. In others, their nose did grow so, that it
seemed to be the beak of a limbeck, in every part thereof most
variously diapered with the twinkling sparkles of crimson blisters
budding forth, and purpled with pimples all enamelled with thickset
wheals of a sanguine colour, bordered with gules; and such have you
seen the Canon or Prebend Panzoult, and Woodenfoot, the physician
of Angiers. Of which race there were few that looked the ptisane,
but all of them were perfect lovers of the pure Septembral juice.
Naso and Ovid had their extraction from thence, and all those of
whom it is written, Ne reminiscaris. Others grew in ears, which
they had so big that out of one would have been stuff enough got to
make a doublet, a pair of breeches, and a jacket, whilst with the
other they might have covered themselves as with a Spanish cloak:
and they say that in Bourbonnois this race remaineth yet. Others
grew in length of body, and of those came the Giants, and of them
Pantagruel."

What it might be also relevant to disablity aesthetics and it deserves to be mentioned here is in Chapter 2.XIX.—'How Panurge put to a nonplus the Englishman that
argued by signs', in which, Panurge and an Englishman named Thaumast, communicate and discuss philosophical problems "...by signs only without speaking, for the matters are so
abstruse, hard, and arduous, that words proceeding from the mouth
of man will never be sufficient for unfolding of them to my(their) liking."
The argument will be done through signs created with movements of the members of their body, reminding us the Sign Language or Gesture Language, that is used by deaf and not deaf people for communicating each other.

In such a subversive book, to keep on searching on what it might be political correct to our contemporary view, regarding disability, someone, will loose the most of what that book has to offer.

What if in Chapter 2.XXVII.—'How Pantagruel set up one trophy in memorial
of their valour, and Panurge another in remembrance of the hares.
How Pantagruel likewise with his farts begat little men, and with
his fisgs little women; and how Panurge broke a great staff over
two glasses', little man and women is treated like a birth of Pantagruel's farts:

"...but with the fart that he let the earth trembled nine
leagues about, wherewith and with the corrupted air he begot above
three and fifty thousand little men, ill-favoured dwarfs, and with
one fisg that he let he made as many little women, crouching down,
as you shall see in divers places, which never grow but like cow's
tails, downwards, or, like the Limosin radishes, round. How now!
said Panurge, are your farts so fertile and fruitful? By G—, here
be brave farted men and fisgued women; let them be married
together; they will beget fine hornets and dorflies. So did
Pantagruel, and called them pigmies. Those he sent to live in an
island thereby, where since that time they are increased mightily.
But the cranes make war with them continually, against which they
do most courageously defend themselves; for these little ends of
men and dandiprats (whom in Scotland they call whiphandles and
knots of a tar-barrel) are commonly very testy and choleric; the
physical reason whereof is, because their heart is near their
spleen."

Disability aesthetics should be concerned on the political correctness of its own expression? Disability aesthetics should feel comfortable whenever there is a self-mocking attitude towards its own beliefs? I believe yes, for many reasons.
[..................cont.]
What to my thought is extremely important and powerfull in this book, is its debasing and uncrowning manner to what it is commonly accepted as 'hight', the "...negation of the entire order of life (including the prevailing truth), a negation closely linked to the affirmation of that which is born anew" (M. Bakhtin).
What affiliate disability aesthetics with 'Gargantua and Pantagruel' and what makes this book looking so contemporary to our view, is the notion that the role of art is to make bourgeoisie feel uncomfortable; and this critical function is specifically characteristic to the arts since 'the crisis of the art", as Lyotard put it, locating it in the past century.



'Rabelais and His World' is the title of Michail Bakhtin's famous book dedicated to Rabelais's 'Gargantua and Pantagruel' novel. Bakhtin's book offered a refreshening and revealing, althought controversial to his contemporaries, view on many underestimated and misunderstanded aspects of the 'Rebelaisian' cosmos and through his 'grotesque realism' and 'carnivalesque' theories he studied the interaction between the social and the literary, as well as the meaning of the body.

In his fifth chapter of his book named 'the Grotesque image of the body and Its Sources' Bakhtin describes as 'exaggeration, hyperbolism, excessiveness' the 'generally consider fundamental attributes of the grotesque style.'
According to Bakhtin the grotesque world is that of great ambivalence; in one image of whom it is combined both the positive and the negative poles.

Here are some excerpts of the 5th chapter:

Grotesque Aesthetics

"As a form, the origins of the grotesque aesthetic lie in the visual arts."___*

"The grotesque is not an expression of norms, but rather what results from the transgression of them (Dieter Petzold "Grotesque" The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature.) In recognition of the grotesque as “the slipperiest of aesthetic qualities” (Geoffrey Harpham “The Grotesque: First Principles” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.) the flurry of nineteenth century writers addressing the grotesque did so by exploring its aesthetic, social and philosophical significance. (“An Introduction to the Grotesque: Theoretical and Theological Considerations” The Grotesque in Art and Literature: Theological Reflections Ed. Adams, James Luther and Wilson Yates.)
The word itself is rooted in the sixteenth century Italian excavation of ancient palaces, tombs and villas such as Nero’s Domus Aurea in Rome, and the discovery of a fantastical decorative style in the underground chambers called grotte. (Gordon Campbell, ed. “Grotesque" The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts.) Within the century the term had spread to France and England, where its definitive scope broadened from decorative motifs to encompass literature and even people."___**

"Even in its antique origin, the grotesque carried something “ominous and sinister" a world totally different from the familiar one (Kayser, Wolfgang. The Grotesque In Art and Literature. p.21). Wolfgang Kayser, in his history of the tradition quotes from Vitruvius’s On Architecture (circa 23 BC) whose commentary reveals the shock the original form presented when first employed:
"Our contemporary artists decorate the walls with monstrous forms rather than reproducing clear images of the familiar world. […] they paint fluted stems with oddly shaped leaves and volutes […] dainty flowers unrolling out of roots and topped, without rhyme or reason, by figurines. The little stems finally, support half-figures crowned by human or animal heads. Such things, however, never existed, do not now exist, and shall never come into being.""___*

"Despite some notable, but isolated, attempts in the nineteenth century to define the nature of the grotesque, it was not until the appearance in 1957 of the book by the late German critic Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, that the grotesque became the object of considerable aesthetic analysis and critical evaluation. Where previous ages had seen in it merely the principle of disharmony run wild, or relegated it to the cruder species of the comic, the present tendency—one which must be welcomed as a considerable step forward—is to view the grotesque as a fundamentally ambivalent thing, as a violent clash of opposites, and hence, in some of its forms at least, as an appropriate expression of the problematical nature of existence. It is no accident that the grotesque mode in art and literature tends to be prevalent in societies and eras marked by strife, radical change or disorientation. Although one runs the risk of succumbing to clichés when one regards the past forty or fifty years as just such an era convulsed by momentous social and intellectual changes, it can nevertheless be fairly said that this is an important contributing factor in the present artistic situation, where the grotesque is very much in evidence. Even a quick random sampling of what is being currently produced—with such names as Harold Pinter and Joe Orton in England, J. P. Donleavy and John Barth in the U.S.A., Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco in France, Günter Grass in Germany and Friedrich Dürrenmatt in Switzerland—will attest to the extent to which the grotesque has become a favoured mode in world literature. This is not to speak of the other arts, where a similar situation prevails."___***

___*"Everything Off Balance" A Master's Thesis in American Studies at the University of Virginia, Site Author: Caleb P. Dulis

___**grotesque Inga Kim Diederich: Art History and Visual Arts, The University of Chicago, Theories of Media.

___***The Grotesque by Philip Thomson, Grotesque The World Wide Web Site

Da Vinci and the Grotesque

What relates grotesque to disability it might not be so obvious (or it might be so stereotypically obvious that it can be rejected as abusive!). But as the origins of the grotesque lie in the aesthetic discourse, then disability aesthetics should be concerned for grotesque as a form.

That's what it lies also behind Jonathan Jones's article "Character Witness - Art & caricature", he wrote for Frieze Magazine. He contemplate on many topics, but highlights Leonardo Da Vinci's admiration to grotesque faces.

In his Notebooks in the chapter "The Practice of Painting", Leonardo is giving advices to portrait and figure painters for drawing grotesque faces.

572. OF A METHOD OF KEEPING IN MIND THE FORM OF A FACE.
"If you want to acquire facility for bearing in mind the expression
of a face, first make yourself familiar with a variety of [forms of]
several heads, eyes, noses, mouths, chins and cheeks and necks and
shoulders: And to put a case: Noses are of 10 types: straight,
bulbous, hollow, prominent above or below the middle, aquiline,
regular, flat, round or pointed. These hold good as to profile. In
full face they are of 11 types; these are equal thick in the middle,
thin in the middle, with the tip thick and the root narrow, or
narrow at the tip and wide at the root; with the nostrils wide or
narrow, high or low, and the openings wide or hidden by the point;
and you will find an equal variety in the other details; which
things you must draw from nature and fix them in your mind. Or else,
when you have to draw a face by heart, carry with you a little book
in which you have noted such features; and when you have cast a
glance at the face of the person you wish to draw, you can look, in
private, which nose or mouth is most like, or there make a little
mark to recognise it again at home. Of grotesque faces I need say
nothing, because they are kept in mind without difficulty."

Another allusion of what it might Da Vinci was thinking when he was looking at exceptional and grotesque faces, can be found in a brief record in the chapter "Miscellaneous Notes"

1404.
"Giovannina, has a fantastic face,--is at Santa Caterina, at the Hospital.""

According to Giorgio Vasari in "The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects Vol.05 (of 10)" Leonardo... "(He) was so delighted when he saw certain bizarre heads of men, with the beard or hair growing naturally, that he would follow one that pleased him a whole day, and so treasured him up in idea, that afterwards,on arriving home, he drew him as if he had had him in his presence.
Of this sort there are many heads to be seen, both of women and of men, and I have several of them, drawn by his hand with the pen, in our book of drawings, which I have mentioned so many times ; such was that of Amerigo Vespucci, which is a very beautiful head of an old man drawn with charcoal, and likewise that of Scaramuccia, Captain of the Gypsies, which afterwards came into the hands of M. Donato Valdambrini of Arezzo, Canon of S. Lorenzo, left to him by Giambullari."


This sheet might be "Scaramuccia, king of the gypsies" ; others think it was a cartoon used for the head of an onlooker in a now lost painting of the Mocking of Christ.

Although it is written in Jonathan Jones's article that "Da Vinci’s notebooks contain a large number of drawings of grotesque faces; Vasari collected them, and so did a lot of other people." and that "as Sir Kenneth Clark lamented in his 1939 biography of da Vinci, ‘for three centuries these were the most typical of his works, familiar in numerous engravings. Today we find them disgusting, or at best wearisome.’" it is also written by Jean Paul Richter, commentator of Da Vinci's "Notebooks" that "Nor should I be justified if I intended to include in the literary works the well-known caricatures of human faces attributed to Leonardo-- of which, however, it may be incidentally observed, the greater number are in my opinion undoubtedly spurious. Two only have necessarily been given owing to their presence in text, which it was desired to reproduce: Vol. I page 326, and Pl. CXXII. It can scarcely be doubted that some satirical intention is conveyed by the drawing on Pl. LXIV (text No. 688)."

Grotesque image in page 326


Pl. LXIV. Emblematic Representation; From the Royal Library, Windsor Castle-see text No. 688

688.
On this side Adam and Eve on the other;
O misery of mankind, of how many things do
you make yourself the slave for money!
[Footnote: See PI. LXIV. The figures of Adam and Eve in the clouds
here alluded to would seem to symbolise their superiority to all
earthly needs.]

Pl. CXXII Drawing of Caricatures; From the Royal Library, Windsor Castle


And in case of dispute regarding the relation of Leonardo Da Vinci and disability aesthetics, a quote in ViaRoma100.net, on the opportunity of the exhibition "Leonardo e lo Sport" held in Athens during the Olympic Games 2004, leave no doubt regarding the relation of Leonardo Da Vinci and disability.

LEONARDO PROGETTO' PROTESI PER HANDICAP
(Google translator)"The Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci, who designed and curated the exhibition in Athens, on this occasion indicates that the artist/scientist is interested in the Renaissance 'also studies related to the issue of physical disability. The painter of 'Mona Lisa' 'record 'stunning drawings of mechanical limbs and a therapeutic chair, in addition to those on gymnastic exercises, the functioning of muscles and the ability' sensory. Between the sheets of anatomical studies of Leonardo, says Professor Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale, are among other things: outstanding design of the structural pattern of a shoulder rebuilt with 'wires' on which the artist intends to superimpose graphically first bones and muscles. Then there is, especially, the extraordinary design of a reconstructed left leg with copper wires (''As a major round, and makes' the strings of annealed copper wire and then fold under the natural effect'': cosi' specifies in a sheet of the Royal Library of Windsor dated circa 1508)."

Symbol of this exhibition was "Head satiresca", an image never exposed to the public, dated on 1508, signed by Leonardo, and exceptionally granted for the occasion by an anonymous collector.

Head satiresca

Disability Aesthetics (Externally or Internally Imposed)?

Up to now, all previous posts (except post about Alison Lapper), were concerned on topics where disability aesthetics were somehow an externally imposed hypothesis. The subject matter itself, in his initial form, was never had a hint of or intended to be a representative of disability aesthetics. Even Mark Quinn's sculptures, in which his intentions are clear, are based on the ancient statues where there were no intention of course, to represent disability.
Let's now give consideration to subject matters in which disability aesthetics are rather not externally imposed but expressed through a more wittingly manner.

Vandalized Art

Again from T. Siebers article:
"What is the impact of damage on classic works of art from the past? It is true that we strive to preserve and repair them, but perhaps the accidents of history have the effect of renewing rather than destroying art works. Vandalized works seem strangely modern. In 1977 a vandal attacked a Rembrandt self-portrait with sulfuric acid, transforming the masterpiece forever and regrettably."



Would vandalized works become more emblematic of the aesthetic, if we did not restore them, as the Venus de Milo has not been restored?
Vandalism modernizes art works, for better or worse, by inserting them in an aesthetic tradition increasingly preoccupied with disability. Only the historical unveiling of disability accounts for the aesthetic effect of vandalized works of art. Damaged art and broken beauty are no longer interpreted as ugly... They also suggest that experimentation with aesthetic form reflects a desire to experiment with human form. Beholders discover in vandalized works an image of disability that asks to be contemplated not as a symbol of human imperfection but as an experience of the corporeal variation found everywhere in modern life."

While much have been written about vandalized works of art here and here are some very basic articles for well known works of art like "Guernica" and Michelangelo's "Pietà" or Duchamp's "Fountain".

Felix Gmelin, a Swedish artist, in his exhibition "Art Vandals" has been interested in artworks that have literally been destroyed in museums, galleries, or other public spaces. In "Art Vandals", Felix Gmelin reinterprets twelve works that have been subjected to vandalism.
'Repeatedly, the attacks occure, often committed by people who describes themselves as artists. Museums are reluctant to release information about these events, fearing that they will inspire future outrages. Or are there other reasons?'
A webbproject Art Vandales has been made and into Felix Gmelin's official web site two relevant essays (Daniel Birnbaum's "The Art of Destruction" and Dario Gamboni's "Recreating Destroyed Destructions: Felix Gmelin's Art Vandals") cast more light on the subject.



Felix Gmelin's "Kill Lies All After Pablo Picasso (1937) & Tony Shafrazi (1974)" artwork belongs to Saatchi Galery and is a reproduction of a section of Pablo Picasso's celebrated 1937 anti-war masterpiece Guernica following its defacement by young art student (and now art dealer) Tony Shafrazi while on loan to The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974. Gmelin's painting takes its title from the words daubed by Shafrazi in red spray paint across the work's surface; an attempt, he claimed afterwards, "to bring the art absolutely up to date, to retrieve it from history and give it life." The painting belongs to an ongoing series in which the artist meticulously replicates well-known paintings and sculptures as they appeared in the immediate aftermath of similar acts of vandalism or disfigurement.

Gert Jan Kocken's exhibition "Defacing" at the Artefact Festival 2009,"...is a series of photographs of religious objects that were destroyed during the Reformation and the Beeldenstorm (Image War) which raged across Europe in several waves in the 16th century. Gert Jan Kocken discovered that very few artworks with visible damage survived. The damaged artifacts which have survived on the spot (reliefs and paintings) and scratched out missal texts, have rarely if ever systematically been illustrated. The sharpness of Kocken's prints and their format give them a material quality that closely approaches that of the original sculptures and paintings, and makes them even better and more easily visible than in their location in churches, or in museum depots. In the exhibition the emphasis comes to lie on the faces of the saints, chiselled away or scratched out in a way that is as malicious as it is meticulous, while the rest of the image remains almost entirely intact.
Gert Jan Kocken places history and memory in relation to the image. Defacing is a series of photographs that focus attention on the fury that images have provoked in the past. In doing so, he poses questions about the way the image exercises its power today."

Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, collection Singer Museum, Laren Defacement: 17 January 2007


Thomas Beckett, St. Andrew, North Burlingham Defacement: 1538


Anna retable, Domkerk, Utrecht, the Netherlands Defacement: 7 March 1580


Annunciation, Swanden. Defacement 21 december 1528


Willem V, Assen. Defacement 1795


In "The Past in the Present" photography series Gert Jan Kocken also looks at moments of important historical change. Among other images, we see paintings made by Adolf Hitler at his 18th year of age when he submitted his watercolours as application for the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and he was not admitted.



From "The Art of Iconoclasm" by Sven Lütticken
Gert Jan Kocken "...began his Disaster Sites series in 1999: using a view camera, he photographed various locations where a great disaster had once occurred, printing the photographs in large format to produce a monumental, detailed image. Because the photographs were made long after the disaster involved, there is nothing more to be seen than a landscape, and there is only the memory of what took place at this specific location. For instance, the majestic views of the slope of Mont Blanc, with the entrance to the tunnel of the same name, or the sea at Zeebrugge, or the park-like space in the midst of the Bijlmer receive a certain charge – a tension between the aesthetic image and what collective memory knows about the place. A similar series was to be seen in the group show ‘Something Happened’, which Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA) assembled with work by Kocken for the Amsterdam Art Fair in 2004, this time with life-sized photographs of places in Amsterdam where a murder, suicide or a shocking disclosure had taken place. At first glance all are ordinary locations – with, however, a charged history."
"The history of iconoclasm is very closely interwoven with theological and philosophical ideas that may differ by time and place, but which are often quite profoundly rational. It began with the iconoclastic controversy in the Byzantine Empire, which ran on nearly a century after 726, the year that the Emperor Leo III had a mosaic of Christ that was above the entrance to his palace removed in favour of a simple cross. This interweaving of iconoclasm and religion continued through modern, abstract art by Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian and others. [1] Iconoclasm took on a symbolic, aesthetic form in the work of these artists. Over the centuries most forms of iconoclasm have however gone down in history as instances and examples of the act of destruction, and not so mush the specific remains of the deed. In other words, iconoclasm is mostly understood to be just blind vandalism, and has therefore become a taboo in the modern context of far-reaching musealisation and conservation of art and a constantly expanding system of historical preservation."

For a more comprehensive examination of modern iconoclasm, The destruction of art: iconoclasm and vandalism since the French Revolution by Dario Gamboni looks at deliberate attacks against works of art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.


"We shall not have demolish everything unless we demolish even the ruins! Now I can not think of another way than making beautiful, well arranged buildings out of them"
Alfred Jarry "Ubu Enchained"

Marcel Duchamp's readymade "L.H.O.O.Q" ("Elle a chaud au cul" literally translates into "She has heat in the ass" but Duchamp gave a loose translation of "L.H.O.O.Q." as "there is fire down below" - in fact the term avoir chaud au cul is slang used in the sense of "to be horny".) is the objet trouvé (found object) - a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa - onto which Duchamp drew a mustache and beard in pencil and appended the title.



Marcel Duchamp's "L.H.O.O.Q." also poses questions about the way the image exercises its power today and if a vandalized cheap reproduction of Mona Lisa is justified or acclaimed as a great work of art, then the vandalized cheap reproductions of icons of "Virgin Mary and Holy Child Jesus" on January 2007, at the School of Theology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, they can also claim their justification as great works of art.



"My point is not to encourage vandalism but to use it to query the effect that disability has on aesthetic appreciation." again from T. Siebers's article. But as vandalism very often poses aesthetic and political questions over its damaged objects, the questions coming from the vandalized image of Virgin Mary are: Does the veil symbolize a burga, a chador, a niqab and therefore a holy Christian turned into a devout Muslim, or more plainly a holy Christian turned into a musketeer infantry soldier of social change?

A rather conservative view on art vandalism, can be found in "Why art vandals strike" Katrina Kuntz's article with a list of ten exceptional examples of vandalized art between 1972 and 1998.

Alison Lapper

http://www.alisonlapper.com/

Alison Lapper is an artist - mouth-painter, photographer and sculptress.

"After graduating from Brighton University with a degree in art, I began creating a body of work which deals with the themes of beauty and disability. Can disability be beautiful? Can it evoke more than revulsion, pity or sympathy? I am showing that it can, that there is beauty in everything."

"My work questions notions of physical normality and beauty, in a society that considers me to be deformed because I was born without arms. In my photographic work, I use light and shadow to create images with a sculptural quality reminiscent of classical statues. A particular influence has been the Venus de Milo, who is admired as one of the great classic beauties, despite having lost her own arms. My final year degree show installation, included photographs of myself as a child wearing artificial limbs and concluded in a self-portrait, posed as the Venus deMilo. This – one of my best known works – was re-exhibited at London's Photographer's Gallery in a Millennium Exhibition."





Three documentaries "Alison's Baby" , "Alison and Parys" and one currently in production "The Real Venus" are unfolding her life before, during and after the birth of her son Parys.





Alison Lapper's statue “Alison Lapper Pregnant”, on display in Trafalgar Square until 2007, caused some controversy as to been Pregnant and disabled in public, even though Tragalgar Square and its public were acquainted with disability aesthetics. Horatio Nelson's column was erected there between 1840 and 1843c and his statue was sculpted with most of his right arm amputated as he was hit by a musket-ball and fractured his humerus bone in multiple places at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
As he is a national hero it is more justifiable to be (disabled) on display!

Nelson's column

"The Complete Marbles" by Mark Quinn

Since 2005 Quinn has become known to the general public for his sculpture of Alison Lapper, which was on prominent display on a plinth in Trafalgar Square in front of the National Gallery.



It was part of his series "The Complete Marbles", eleven life-size portrait sculptures of men and women who were born with physical disabilities or have had limbs amputated due to accidents or illness.
Quinn had previously made several sculptures using fragments cast from his own body, as in The Etymology of Morphology 1996 (T07239), or his body deformed through sculptural process in No Visible Means of Escape IV 1996 (T07238), before he was inspired to work with actual physical deformity.
Looking at fragmented classical sculptures in the British Museum, he wondered how viewers would respond to bodies that had been damaged during their lifetime rather than after being transformed into objects through artistic representation. He explained:

"It’s about the difference between art and life. Also about inside and outside and how people impute an inside to someone from a reading of their outside ... Traditionally marble is the medium of cultural and social acceptance and celebration ...the marble is used ironically and non-ironically at the same time. The sitters are heroes who have conquered their own interior worlds, and yet disabled people are invisible culturally, in art history. I wanted to celebrate them and use the medium in its original way as well."
(Quoted in Marc Quinn, p.60.)

Quinn contacted sporting associations in order to find disabled people with bodies that were well developed and maintained. He cast each person in plaster before Italian craftsmen copied the casts in the whitest possible marble, selected to represent a kind of Platonic perfection. He commented: ‘this marble, which comes from Macedonia, is like the idea of marble. It’s even bad taste, beautiful in a way that’s almost nauseating ... I wanted it to be absolutely clean, to be super real, hyper-real.’ (Quoted in Marc Quinn 2002, [p.39].) The subjects are depicted in semi-heroic attitudes, the result of a compromise between the model’s need for comfort and the artist’s requirement for a dynamic, positive pose that would highlight the strength of the character portrayed.

Alison Lapper (eight months pregnant) with the artist


Alison Lapper and her son Parys


Alexandra Westmoquette


Catherine Long


Selma Mustajbasic


Tom Yendell


Stuart Penn


Peter Hull


Jamie Gillespie


The Kiss

Although Quinn have been accused of exploitation ('Making money, making art, on peoples' misfortunes') or critisized as kitch (as many postmodern artworks that are kitch indeed) and insufferable idealism, "The Complete Marbles" can be considered a seminal and prominent work of art that implement disability asthetics.
Read more: Tate,Telegraph,the complete marbles,Marc Quinn and Figurative Sculpture

"Damaged'' Ancient Greek Statues

Most of ancient Greek statues have been considered as representations of the ideal aesthetic beauty but many of them are eternally "damaged", like Nike of Samothrace



or Kritios Boy from Acropolis



and Kouros of Paros


and Demeter of Cnidus


and karyatides


and Hermes of Praxiteles


and many more...

Venus de Milo

"It is often the presence of disability that allows the beauty of an art work to endure over time. Would the Venus de Milo still be considered one of the great examples of both aesthetic and human beauty if she still had both her arms?"
from T. Siebers's article again on "Disability Aesthetics",






























and he continues:
"Perhaps it is an exaggeration to consider the Venus disabled, but René Magritte did not think so. He painted his version of the Venus, "Les Menottes de cuivre", in flesh tones and colorful drapery but splashed blood-red pigment on her famous arm-stumps, giving the impression of a recent and painful amputation"



we come across the many damaged ancient Greek sculptures

'In My Language' by 'silentmiaow'

Disability Aesthetics should not consider solely works that acclaim to be work of art but also works that were never intended to operate or performed as such.

"The first part is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not."
by Amanda Baggs (or "silentmiaow")



Amanda Baggs's performance is an extraordinary dance/theatre sequence. Repeated forms of movements combined with voice/murmur/song/scratching/beating sounds create a video dance performance of exceptional beauty.
One of my beloved.

more 'silentmiaow' videos

Introducing Disability Aesthetics

A quotation of Tobin Siebers's "Disability Aesthetics" seminal article, is the best introductory definition of Disability Aesthetics.

"What I am calling disability aesthetics names a critical concept that seeks to emphasize the presence of disability in the tradition of aesthetic representation. Disability aesthetics refuses to recognize the representation of the healthy body— and its definition of harmony, integrity, and beauty—as the sole determination of the aesthetic. It is not a matter of representing the exclusion of disability from aesthetic history, since such an exclusion has not taken place, but of making the influence of disability obvious. This goal may take two forms: 1) to establish disability as a critical framework that questions the presuppositions underlying definitions of aesthetic production and appreciation; 2) to establish disability as a significant value in itself worthy of future development."

Download article .pdf