Disability Aesthetics
Published on 4. February 2010
Book
Hardback
192 pages
978-0-472-07100-5 (ISBN)
Description
"Disability Aesthetics ambitiously redefines both 'disability' and 'aesthetics,' showing us that disability is central not only to modern art but also to the way we apprehend (and interact with) bodies and buildings. Along the way, Tobin Siebers revisits the beautiful and the sublime, 'degenerate' art and 'disqualified' bodies, culture wars and condemned neighborhoods, the art of Marc Quinn and the fiction of Junot Diaz---and much, much more. Disability Aesthetics is a stunning achievement, a must-read for anyone interested in how to understand the world we half create and half perceive."
---Michael Berube, Paterno Family Professor in Literature, Pennsylvania State University
"Rich with examples of the disabled body in both historical and modern art, Tobin Siebers's new book explores how disability problematizes commonly accepted ideas about aesthetics and beauty. For Siebers, disability is not a pejorative condition as much as it is a form of embodied difference. He is as comfortable discussing the Venus de Milo as he is discussing Andy Warhol. Disability Aesthetics is a prescient and much-needed contribution to visual & critical studies."
---Joseph Grigely, Professor of Visual and Critical Studies, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Disability Aesthetics is the first attempt to theorize the representation of disability in modern art and visual culture. It claims that the modern in art is perceived as disability, and that disability is evolving into an aesthetic value in itself. It argues that the essential arguments at the heart of the American culture wars in the late twentieth century involved the rejection of disability both by targeting certain artworks as "sick" and by characterizing these artworks as representative of a sick culture. The book also tracks the seminal role of National Socialism in perceiving the powerful connection between modern art and disability. It probes a variety of central aesthetic questions, producing a new understanding of art vandalism, an argument about the centrality of wounded bodies to global communication, and a systematic reading of the use put to aesthetics to justify the oppression of disabled people. In this richly illustrated and accessibly written book, Tobin Siebers masterfully demonstrates the crucial roles that the disabled mind and disabled body have played in the evolution of modern aesthetics, unveiling disability as a unique resource discovered by modern art and then embraced by it as a defining concept.
Tobin Siebers is V. L. Parrington Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature and Art and Design at the University of Michigan. His many books include Disability Theory and The Subject and Other Subjects: On Ethical, Aesthetic, and Political Identity.
A volume in the series Corporealities: Discourses of Disability
---Michael Berube, Paterno Family Professor in Literature, Pennsylvania State University
"Rich with examples of the disabled body in both historical and modern art, Tobin Siebers's new book explores how disability problematizes commonly accepted ideas about aesthetics and beauty. For Siebers, disability is not a pejorative condition as much as it is a form of embodied difference. He is as comfortable discussing the Venus de Milo as he is discussing Andy Warhol. Disability Aesthetics is a prescient and much-needed contribution to visual & critical studies."
---Joseph Grigely, Professor of Visual and Critical Studies, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Disability Aesthetics is the first attempt to theorize the representation of disability in modern art and visual culture. It claims that the modern in art is perceived as disability, and that disability is evolving into an aesthetic value in itself. It argues that the essential arguments at the heart of the American culture wars in the late twentieth century involved the rejection of disability both by targeting certain artworks as "sick" and by characterizing these artworks as representative of a sick culture. The book also tracks the seminal role of National Socialism in perceiving the powerful connection between modern art and disability. It probes a variety of central aesthetic questions, producing a new understanding of art vandalism, an argument about the centrality of wounded bodies to global communication, and a systematic reading of the use put to aesthetics to justify the oppression of disabled people. In this richly illustrated and accessibly written book, Tobin Siebers masterfully demonstrates the crucial roles that the disabled mind and disabled body have played in the evolution of modern aesthetics, unveiling disability as a unique resource discovered by modern art and then embraced by it as a defining concept.
Tobin Siebers is V. L. Parrington Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature and Art and Design at the University of Michigan. His many books include Disability Theory and The Subject and Other Subjects: On Ethical, Aesthetic, and Political Identity.
A volume in the series Corporealities: Discourses of Disability
Reviews / Votes
"In the volume under review, Siebers challenges stubborn presuppostitions in aesthetics (and other fields) by offering a theory and a means of investigating how and why disablility has been represented in modern art, and in other forms and modes of human expression, including modern media. This book will assert significant scholarly influence and is an indespensable resource for numerous fields of investigation, including visual art, visual studies, cultural studies, literary studies, media studies and sociology."--Choice, K L Cole, University of Sioux Falls "Tobin Siebers's Disability Aesthetics takes the project of theorizing disability's role in art across the ages to a new level. ... The book will be especially useful to art historians and critics but also to anyone interested in matters of aesthetics in any conceivable medium, period, or genre." ---Disability Studies Quarterly "Disability Aesthetics ambitiously redefines both 'disability' and 'aesthetics,' showing us that disability is central not only to modern art but also to the way we apprehend (and interact with) bodies and buildings. Along the way, Tobin Siebers revisits the beautiful and the sublime, 'degenerate' art and 'disqualified' bodies, culture wars and condemned neighborhoods, the art of Marc Quinn and the fiction of Junot Diaz---and much, much more. Disability Aesthetics is a stunning achievement, a must-read for anyone interested in how to understand the world we half create and half perceive."
---Michael Berube, Paterno Family Professor in Literature, Pennsylvania State University
"Rich with examples of the disabled body in both historical and modern art, Tobin Siebers's new book explores how disability problematizes commonly accepted ideas about aesthetics and beauty. For Siebers, disability is not a pejorative condition as much as it is a form of embodied difference. He is as comfortable discussing the Venus de Milo as he is discussing Andy Warhol. Disability Aesthetics is a prescient and much-needed contribution to visual & critical studies."
---Joseph Grigely, Professor of Visual and Critical Studies, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago "Rich with examples of the disabled body in both historical and modern art, Tobin Siebers's new book explores how disability problematizes commonly accepted ideas about aesthetics and beauty. For Siebers, disability is not a pejorative condition as much as it is a form of embodied difference. He is as comfortable discussing the Venus de Milo as he is discussing Andy Warhol. Disability Aesthetics is a prescient and much-needed contribution to visual & critical studies."
-Joseph Grigely, Professor of Visual & Critical Studies, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago -- Joseph Grigely * Joseph Grigely * "Disability Aesthetics ambitiously redefines both 'disability' and 'aesthetics,' showing us that disability is central not only to modern art but also to the way we apprehend (and interact with) bodies and buildings. Along the way, Tobin Siebers revisits the beautiful and the sublime, 'degenerate' art and 'disqualified' bodies, culture wars and condemned neighborhoods, the art of Marc Quinn and the fiction of Junot Diaz-and much, much more. Disability Aesthetics is a stunning achievement, a must-read for anyone interested in how to understand the world we half create and half perceive."
-Michael Berube, Paterno Family Professor in Literature, Pennsylvania State University -- Michael Berube * Michael Berube * "In the volume under review, Siebers challenges stubborn presuppostitions in aesthetics (and other fields) by offering a theory and a means of investigating how and why disablility has been represented in modern art, and in other forms and modes of human expression, including modern media. This book will assert significant scholarly influence and is an indespensable resource for numerous fields of investigation, including visual art, visual studies, cultural studies, literary studies, media studies and sociology."
-K L Cole, University of Sioux Falls -- K L Cole * CHOICE * "Tobin Siebers's Disability Aesthetics takes the project of theorizing disability's role in art across the ages to a new level. ... The book will be especially useful to art historians and critics but also to anyone interested in matters of aesthetics in any conceivable medium, period, or genre."
-Disability Studies Quarterly -- Nicholas Hetrick, Ohio State University * Disability Studies Quarterly * "Pulling and yanking at the long-held mainstream conventions regarding disability and impairment, the work is a carefully crafted and thoughtful intellectual exercise which is, at times, difficult but definitely necessary."
--TOPIA Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies -- Nancy Hansen * TOPIA Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies *
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Ann Arbor
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
38 B&W illustrations and 23 color photographs
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-472-07100-5 (9780472071005)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Tobin Siebers is V. L. Parrington Collegiate Professor of Literary and Cultural Criticism, Professor of Art and Design and the Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan.