About the cover image: Ashokkumar Mistry on writing disability into art history

ABOUT THE COVER IMAGE

N00536. Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

WRITING DISABILITY BACK INTO ART

Over the past few years I have been writing about arts and disability through the magazine Disability Arts Online and in particular about how disability is understood in the arts …

In this time, standout moments for me have been the realisation of the massive presence of people with disabilities who strive to have creative careers, the tiny numbers of people with disabilities that make up the workforce and the lack of mention of disability across arts collections and in galleries. Many of the existing narratives relating to disability orbiting the arts were framed around disability as a blight on an individual without which, so much more could be achieved. My experience was to the contrary because, as an artist with dyslexia and ADHD, my so-called disabilities can be seen instead as the momentum for my creativity. However, this narrative was and remains absent in collections and galleries. In some ways, the lack of interest in my work I have encountered, mirrors a lack of

interest in disability in art writing overall.

Look through art collections and one will find few references to disability and the few that are present depict people with disability as either the subject of a portrait with (as in Estado de Garcia, 1998 by Andrew Hay) or as people suffering (as in The Cripples, 1949 by Laurence Stephen Lowry). The word disabled also crops up in a number of paintings depicting ships which sustained damage in war by a number of artists. One such example is Fishing Boats Bringing a Disabled Ship into Port Ruysdael, c. 1840 by JWM Turner. One of the most disturbing depictions of disability I have found in a book, Essays on Physiognomy. The plate is titled Outlines of Twelve Faces of Mentally Disabled People, According to Lavater. With the image, one will find a quote from Lavater’s book in which he explains that the:

experienced observer will easily distinguish, in this series of faces, some idiots naturally such, and others who probably became so by the effects of disease or some accident.

Thomas Holloway, Outlines of Twelve Faces of Mentally Disabled People, According to Lavater c. 1789. Wellcome Collection https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/outlines-of-twelve-faces-ofmentally-disabled-people-according-to-lavater-239873/search/ keyword:disabled/page/2 This passage and its inclusion in the Wellcome Collection and Art UK’s website is probably the closest one will get to a serious debate into the depiction and absence of disability in British art. Disability is seldom mentioned let alone debated within collections as artist and curator Aidan Moseby found out in his study of art collections titled Disability vs Dogs. In his work, Moesby used search facilities in a number of collections to measure the occurrences of the word ‘disabled’ against other words one would assume to be irrelevant to the arts such as ‘dogs’. The point of Moesby’s work was to draw heads out of the sand

and encourage a conversation around how we see disabled artists and people in general.

At times it feels as though curators and archivists don’t want to talk about disability. However, through conversations with a number of curators (disabled and non-disabled) I have found that the problem could be that art collections and the arts institutions that use those collections simply don’t know how to talk about disability beyond the same few tropes.

Let’s examine Lavater’s quote again – ‘ … some idiots naturally such and others who probably became so by the effect of disease or some accident’. This line in particular attempts to reductively place ‘Mentally Disabled People’ within a stratification that compares them against what is believed to be a normal or perfect person. Although this quote is around two centuries old, the lack of disabled artists in the sector and the lack of narratives around disability in collections suggests that our valuing of disability in the context of art has not changed much.

My challenge to major art collections is to see disability or difference as a catalyst for the creative journey of some artists rather than something that holds us back. In other words, we need to understand the connection between the thing that makes one different to others and find a language to speak of that in a positive frame. Look through art history and one will find many artists - including British artists who possessed characteristics that we would class at disabilities. Moreover, these characteristics will also be found to be connected to the artists creativity - the thing that gives them an edge.

A great example of the link between disability and creative outlook is Donald Rodney, whose work can be seen to encode and in a cryptic way, comment on traits of his disability. Rodney’s approach to digital media and electronics can be seen to push him to reach beyond the diagnosis of a low life expectancy and mobility problems. A prime example is JMW Turner whose work was examined by consultant ophthalmic surgeon James McGill in 2003. In the study, McGill examined Turner’s spectacles and use of colour and found that Turner was probably partially colourblind and could have had a degenerative eye disorder that changed the way he saw the world. Lucy Jones is another example of an artist whose creative output connects directly to her disability. Jones’ approach to colour composition and the fluidity of her work can be connected to her unique insights as a person with a disability. Each brushstroke inscribes the intellectual stride between her thoughts and movements.

What curators really need is the new vocabulary and understanding to bring disabilities to the fore as positives without painting an individual as a superhero. I have tried approaching a number of galleries and collections to help me undertake this work. However, there is little response or interest in this way of seeing disabilities.

I would argue that this is vitally important in order to enable people with disabilities to see value in themselves and more broadly to understand creativity as something as organic and evolutionary as human beings themselves. In my hundreds of conversations with artists over the years, the single factor that I have seen repeatedly is a need by artists to hide or mask their disability in case their peers interpret them as flaws. Being disabled is seen as something to be

ashamed of and yet, looking through history at some of the great artists we only now know to have had disabilities, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Monet and Degas, we can see that it provides the catalyst for culture to not become stagnant. Seeing disability as a positive takes us beyond survival of the most able and teaches us to value creativity instead of throwing it away because we don’t like the people.

References:

Rebalancing Dyslexia and Creativity at the RCA, Royal College of Art 2015 https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/rebalancing-dyslexia-andcreativity-rca/

Making A Shift, Arts Council England 2018 https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication/making-a-shift

Dogs Vs Disability by Aidan Moesby, 2020 for Disconsortia https://www.disconsortia.co.uk/aidan-moesby.html

Mave Kennedy, ‘Spectacles provide clue to the secret of Turner’s visual style’, The Guardian (18 Nov. 2003) https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/nov/18/arts.artsnews

Salvatore Mangione and Rolando Del Maestro, ‘Was Leonardo Da Vinci Dyslexic?’ The American Journal of Medicine, DOI: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2019.02.019, 2019. Cited in an article by Debbie Goldberg and Edyta Zielinska, ‘Was Leonardo Da Vinci’s Dyslexia Responsible for His Brilliance?’ https://www.jefferson.edu/university/news/2019/05/7/dyslexia-helped-leonardodavinci.html

M.F. Marmor, ‘Ophthalmology and Art: Simulation of Monet’s Cataracts and Degas’ Retinal Disease’, Arch Ophthalmol. 2006;124(12), 1764–1769. doi:10.1001/ archopht.124.12.1764 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullarticle/418859

Ashokkumar Mistry is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and curator working in the UK and internationally. By subverting technologies, he challenges conventional ways of making and viewing art. ‘As a person who sees and experiences the world differently, Much of my work is concerned with my interactions with the world and how I make sense of everything’. Ashokkumar didn’t identify as neurodivergent until he was in his 40s, and it was a seminal moment for his artistic practice. Since then, he has been focused on researching and writing about disability and neurodiversity. His writing encompasses direct research and personal experiences relating to neurodiversity with a view to sharing experiences and changing attitudes. He is currently Associate Artist with Disability Arts Online, a Development Artist with The Spark Arts and a Fellow of the International Association Of Art Critics (AICA-UK).

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