Disability and Art – Online Guide | Tate
tate comment (tbd)
articles (tbd)
Disability Arts Online, Shape Arts, Unlimited, Graeae and the Wellcome collection
Sick woman theory – Joanna Hedva
the central question of Sick Woman Theory
formed: How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?
I listened to the sounds of the marches as they drifted up to my window. Attached to the bed, I rose up my sick woman fist, in solidarity.
I started to think about what modes of protest are afforded to sick people – it seemed to me that many for whom Black Lives Matter is especially in service, might not be able to be present for the marches because they were imprisoned by a job, the threat of being fired from their job if they marched, or literal incarceration, and of course the threat of violence and police brutality – but also because of illness or disability, or because they were caring for someone with an illness or disability.
I thought of all the other invisible bodies, with their fists up, tucked away and out of sight.
If we take Hannah Arendt’s definition of the political – which is still one of the most dominant in mainstream discourse – as being any action that is performed in public, we must contend with the implications of what that excludes. If being present in public is what is required to be political, then whole swathes of the population can be deemed a-political – simply because they are not physically able to get their bodies into the street.
In my graduate program, Arendt was a kind of god, and so I was trained to think that her definition of the political was radically liberating. Of course, I can see that it was, in its own way,
2
in its time (the late 1950s): in one fell swoop she got rid of the need for infrastructures of law, the democratic process of voting, the reliance on individuals who’ve accumulated the power to affect policy – she got rid of the need for policy at all. All of these had been required for an action to be considered political and visible as such. No, Arendt said, just get your body into the street, and bam: political
There are two failures here, though. The first is her reliance on a “public” – which requires a
private, a binary between visible and invisible space. This meant that whatever takes place in
private is not political.
Arendt was worried that if everything can be considered political,
then nothing will be, which is why she divided the space into one that is political and one that is
not. But for the sake of this anxiety, she chose to sacrifice whole groups of people, to continue to
banish them to invisibility and political irrelevance. She chose to keep them out of the public
sphere.
The failure of Arendt’s political was
immediately exposed in the civil rights activism and feminism of the 1960s and 70s. “The
personal is political” can also be read as saying “the private is political.” Because of course,
everything you do in private is political: who you have sex with, how long your showers are, if you
have access to clean water for a shower at all, and so on
As Judith Butler put it in her 2015 lecture, “Vulnerability and
Resistance,” Arendt failed to account for who is allowed in to the public space, of who’s in charge
of the public. Or, more specifically, who’s in charge of who gets in. Butler says that there is always
one thing true about a public demonstration: the police are already there, or they are coming.
This resonates with frightening force when considering the context of Black Lives Matter. The
inevitability of violence at a demonstration – especially a demonstration that emerged to insist
upon the importance of bodies who’ve been violently un-cared for – ensures that a certain amount
of people won’t, because they can’t, show up. Couple this with physical and mental illnesses and
disabilities that keep people in bed and at home, and we must contend with the fact that many
whom these protests are for, are not able to participate in them – which means they are not able
to be visible as political activists.
: “shout out to all the disabled people, sick people, people with PTSD,
anxiety, etc., who can’t protest in the streets with us tonight. Your voices are heard and valued,
and with us.” Heart. Reblog
a lifetime.” So, a chronic illness is an illness
that lasts a lifetime. In other words, it does not get better. There is no cure. you feel it every day.
When you have chronic
illness, life is reduced to a relentless rationing of energy. It costs you to do anything: to get out of
bed, to cook for yourself, to get dressed, to answer an email. For those without chronic illness,
you can spend and spend without consequence: the cost is not a problem.
Ann Cvetkovich writes: “What if depression, in the Americas, at least, could be traced to histories
of colonialism, genocide, slavery, legal exclusion, and everyday segregation and isolation that
haunt all of our lives, rather than to be biochemical imbalances?” I’d like to change the word
“depression” here to be all mental illnesses. Cvetkovich continues: “Most medical literature tends
to presume a white and middle-class subject for whom feeling bad is frequently a mystery because
it doesn’t fit a life in which privilege and comfort make things seem fine on the surface.” In other
words, wellness as it is talked about in America today, is a white and wealthy idea.
Starhawk, in the preface to the new edition of her 1982 book Dreaming the Dark:
“Psychologists have constructed a myth – that somewhere there exists some state of health which
is the norm, meaning that most people presumably are in that state, and those who are anxious,
4
depressed, neurotic, distressed, or generally unhappy are deviant.” I’d here supplant the word
“psychologists” with “white supremacy,” “doctors,” “your boss,” “neoliberalism,”
“heteronormativity,” and “America.”
There has been a slew of writing in recent years about how “female” pain is treated – or rather,
not treated as seriously as men’s in emergency rooms and clinics, by doctors, specialists, insurance
companies, families, husbands, friends, the culture at large. In a recent article in The Atlantic,
called “How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously,” a husband writes about the experience
of his wife Rachel’s long wait in the ER before receiving the medical attention her condition
warranted (which was an ovarian torsion, where an ovarian cyst grows so large it falls, twisting the
fallopian tube).
“she’s still grappling with the
psychic toll – what she calls ‘the trauma of not being seen.’”
What the article does not mention is race – which leads me to believe that the writer and his wife
are white. Whiteness is what allows for such oblivious neutrality: it is the premise of blankness,
the presumption of the universal. (Studies have shown that white people will listen to other white
people when talking about race, far more openly than they will to a person of color. As someone
who is white-passing, let me address white people directly: look at my white face and listen up.
who is allowed in to the public sphere? Who is allowed to be
visible?
when Brock appeared the
next day to retrieve her car she was arrested by the police for behaving in a way that she calls
“emotional,” and involuntarily hospitalized in the Harlem Hospital psych ward.
The doctors thought she was “delusional” and suffering
from bipolar disorder, because she claimed that Obama followed her on twitter – which was true,
but which the medical staff failed to confirm.
The
medical records of the hospital – obtained by her lawyers – bear this out: the “master treatment
plan” for Brock’s stay reads, “Objective: Patient will verbalize the importance of education for
employment and will state that Obama is not following her on Twitter.” It notes her “inability to
test reality.” Upon her release, she was given a bill for $13,637.10
Because, according to this society, a young black woman can’t
possibly be that important – and for her to insist that she is must mean she’s “sick.”
Before I can speak of the “sick woman” in all of her many guises, I must first speak as an
individual, and address you from my particular location
in astrology
Perhaps it can all be explained by the fact that my Moon’s in Cancer in the 8th House, the House
of Death, or that my Mars, Saturn, and Pluto—in astrology, the three “malefics,” or evil forces—
are in the 12th House, the House of Illness, Secrets, Sorrow, and Self-Undoing. Or, that my
father’s mother escaped from North Korea in her childhood and hid this fact from the family
until a few years ago, when she accidentally let it slip out, and then swiftly, revealingly, denied it.
Or, that my mother suffers from undiagnosed mental illness that was actively denied by her
family, and was then exasperated by a 40-year-long drug and alcohol addiction, sexual trauma,
and hepatitis from a dirty needle, and to this day remains untreated, as she makes her way in and
out of jails, squats, and homelessness. Or, that I was physically and emotionally abused as a child,
raised in an environment of poverty, addiction, and violence, and have been estranged from my
parents for 14 years. Perhaps it’s because I’m poor – according to the IRS, in 2014, my adjusted
gross income was $5,730 (a result of not being well enough to work full-time) – which means that
my health insurance is provided by the state of California (Medi-Cal), that my “primary care
doctor” is a group of physician’s assistants and nurses in a clinic on the second floor of a strip
mall, and that I rely on food stamps to eat. Perhaps it’s because I’m queer and gender nonbinary,
first coming out to my parents at age 14; finally leaving home at age 16 with the last black eye I
was willing to receive from my mother’s hand. Perhaps it can be encapsulated in the word
“trauma.” Perhaps I’ve just got thin skin, and have had some bad luck.
It’s important that I also share the Western medical terminology that’s been attached to me –
whether I like it or not, it can provide a common vocabulary: “This is the oppressor’s language,”
Adrienne Rich wrote in 1971, “yet I need it to talk to you.” But let me offer another language,
too.
In Cree, one does not say, “I am sick.” Instead, one says,
“The sickness has come to me.” I love that and want to honor it.
So, here is what has come to me:
7
Endometriosis, which is a disease of the uterus where the uterine lining grows where it shouldn’t
– in the pelvic area mostly, but also anywhere, the legs, abdomen, even the head. It causes chronic
pain; gastrointestinal chaos; epic, monstrous bleeding; in some cases, cancer; and means that I
have miscarried, can’t have children, and have several surgeries to look forward to. When I
explained the disease to a friend who didn’t know about it, she exclaimed: “So your whole body is
a uterus!” (Imagine what the Ancient Greek doctors – the
fathers of the theory of the “wandering womb” – would say about that.)
The Cyborg Manifesto – Donna Harraway
A Cyborg Manifesto – Wikipedia
Bodyminds reimagined – Sami Schalk
Bodyminds Reimagined – Dr. Sami Schalk
Illness as Metaphor – Susan Sontag
Illness as Metaphor – Wikipedia
Disability in Art History | Art History Teaching Resources
Chronologically, “disability studies” emerged in the mid-to-late 1980s, and “body art” was established as a category of contemporary art in the 1970s, but disabled bodies occur in art dating to at least the 1st century CE. Still, a class on the disabled body might come quite late in the semester, after looking at other issues of identity, such as race, ethnicity, and gender. A lecture on “Disability in Art” can be a good opportunity to reflect on a central narrative of art history—representation of the human figure—and to reflect on the ways in which art contributes to and challenges the construction of normative culture. Disability studies offers an alternative methodology and point of departure for the study of the body in art history.
Ableism
Ableism is defined in disability studies as discrimination in favor of able-bodied people. The ableist views able bodies as the norm in society, implying that people who have disabled bodies must strive to become that norm. Disability is thus held as an error, a mistake, or a failing, rather than a simple consequence of human diversity; disability is seen as a “bad” thing that must be overcome.
Ablility bias
ability bias has impacted art making and the ways it can affect our understanding of history.
Representations of Disability
Diability
Disability has always been part of the human condition. Throughout history, people with disabilities have often served as visual and cultural objects, rather than as active participants in and creators of culture and media. People with disabilities have not typically decided how they would be portrayed in art, nor have they participated in the creation of the art objects in which their bodies appeared. Instead, artists and authors have used various disabilities to convey ideas about evil, suffering, grace, and human nature and to reinforce stereotypes about disability.
Disability is a subjective, corporeal, and complex sociocultural construction. Looking at disabled bodies in art history offers significant insight into the various ways in which art can support or subvert the construction and performance of normative values. Recognizing the ways in which art performs disability ultimately challenges one-dimensional understandings of disability and art.
Terms of Reference Journals – Shades Of Noir
Disabled People: The Voice of the Many. – Shades of Noir: Journals
Mental Health and Art
Kusama Yayoi
trained at the Kyoto City University of Arts in a traditional Japanese painting style called nihonga.[2] Kusama was inspired, however, by American Abstract impressionism. She moved to New York City in 1958 and was a part of the New York avant-garde scene throughout the 1960s, especially in the pop-artmovement.
metal health
Kusama has been open about her mental health. She says that art has become her way to express her mental problems.[7] She reported in the interview she did with Infinity Net “I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.”[8]
When Kusama was 13, she was sent to work in a military factory where she was tasked with sewing and fabricating parachutes for the Japanese army, then embroiled in World War II
Curator Mika Yoshitake has stated that Kusama’s works on display are meant to immerse the whole person into her accumulations, obsessions, and repetitions. These infinite, repetitive works were originally meant to eliminate Kusama’s intrusive thoughts, but she now shares it with the world.
Fifield, Anna (15 February 2017). “How Yayoi Kusama, the “Infinity Mirrors” visionary, channels mental illness into art”. The Washington Post. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
Claire Voon has described one of Kusama’s mirror exhibits as being able to “transport you to quiet cosmos, to a lonely labyrinth of pulsing light, or to what could be the enveloping innards of a leviathan with the measles”
Voon, Claire (23 February 2017). “Immersed in Yayoi Kusama’s Lonely Labyrinths and Infinite Worlds”. Hyperallergic. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
Creating these feelings amongst audiences was intentional. These experiences seem to be unique to her work because Kusama wanted others to sympathise with her in her troubled life.
Voon, Claire (23 February 2017). “Immersed in Yayoi Kusama’s Lonely Labyrinths and Infinite Worlds”. Hyperallergic. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
Bedatri D. Choudhury has described how Kusama’s lack of feeling in control throughout her life made her, either consciously or subconsciously, want to control how others perceive time and space when entering her exhibits. This statement seems to imply that without her trauma, Kusama would not have created these works as well or perhaps not at all. Art had become a coping mechanism for Kusama.
Choudhury, Bedatri D. (11 September 2018). “To Infinity and Beyond, Yayoi Kusama Grapples With Conventions”. Hyperallergic. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
Disability in Art History | Art History Teaching Resources
Keri Watson (author) is an assistant professor of art history at the University of Central Florida, focusing on modern and contemporary art and issues of disability in visual culture.
Jon Mann (editor) is an Adjunct Lecturer at Lehman College, a Senior Contributor at Artsy, and a lecture contributor and editor at Art History Teaching Resources and Art History Pedagogy and Practice.
- Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (New York: New York University Press, 1996).
- Amelia Jones, Body Art: Performing the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
- Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky, The New Disability History: American Perspectives (New York: New York University Press, 2001).
- Ann Millett-Gallant, The Disabled Body in Contemporary Art (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
- Joseph P. Shapiro, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (New York: Times Books, 1994).
- Polykleitos, Doryphoros, marble copy of bronze original, c. 450–440 BCE
- Old Market Woman, 150–100 BCE
Historical Representations of Disability in Art History
What does the Classical world’s preference for idealism tell us about their ideology? Aristotle (384–322 BCE) believed, as did many in Ancient Greece, that men were the most highly evolved beings, and that women were an evolutionary step below, representing “the first step along the road to deformity.” Aristotle recommended euthanasia for “deformed children,” writing, “Let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.” Although Hellenistic art includes representations of “grotesques,” the elderly, and children, there were few representations of disability in the Ancient world. Ask students to compare and contrast Classical idealism in the Doryphoros and Hellenistic naturalism in the Old Market Woman and the ways in which stylistic preferences relate to societal values. Could the preference for naturalism and the inclusion of subjects with disabilities, including the elderly, the blind, and the lame, indicate tolerance or even respect for people with disabilities?
- El Greco, The Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind, 1570
- Mosaics at Monreale Cathedral (1180s)
At the time of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517, persons with developmental disabilities were treated as subhuman organisms. Martin Luther (1483–1546) denounced children and adults with cognitive disorders as “filled with Satan.” Luther advised that children with severe mental retardation be drowned, because they lacked souls. Similarly John Calvin (1509–64) argued that people with disabilities were not among those predestined for salvation.
- Luttrell Psalter, 1325
- Man with crutches
- Crippled child
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Beggars, 1568
Christianity, then, often viewed disability as either a sin on the part of persons with disabilities or their families. However, they were also sometimes represented as an act of God for some divine purpose. In the first case, people were punished and excluded from society. In the second case, they were viewed as divine and considered holy. Perceived as sinners or saints, persons with disabilities were usually kept separate from mainstream society and their disabilities were thought to serve some divine purpose.
- 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, 1824–7
Both images feature a man with a disability. In Rembrandt’s piece, there are two other characters as well: St. Peter and St. John, who stand over the “cripple” (the commonly accepted term of the time) in an attitude of benevolence and authority. In the biblical story, faith and divine intervention bring about a cure of the man’s disability.
Goya’s drawing focuses more closely on the disabled individual, a beggar riding in a wheelchair. The subject appears dirty and disheveled but also actively engaged in the world. Even the work’s title emphasizes mobility and independence. 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.
Why are the two images so different? Is it because one is based on a religious theme, and the other focuses on contemporary nineteenth-century society? Might the circumstances of the artist’s lives impact their constructions? In 1792, Goya lost his hearing and had been deaf for thirty years when he made this drawing.
- Théodore Géricault, Portraits of the Insane, 1822
- Lon Chaney as Quasimodo and Patsy Ruth Miller as Esmeralda in the 1923 film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Building on, but diverging from the religious model that saw Jesus as the “spiritual physician,” the medical model of disability emerged in the nineteenth century and classified disability as an impairment, as something wrong with the body. Following the rise of modern scientific medicine and the professionalism of the discipline, doctors during the nineteenth century developed concepts of “disease” and “injury” to refer to deviations from normal body functioning. Disability became something to be healed by science rather than religion; it became a medical rather than a religious or social issue. Persons 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 also lends itself to eugenics and Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism, promoted by the nineteenth-century philosopher and political theorist Herbert Spencer, held that the theories governing the evolution of biological species—the “survival of the fittest”—held true for individuals and social systems as well. This belief helped to justify forced sterilizations, marriage restrictions, and the incarceration of individuals with developmental disabilities in institutions. These “patients” often became subjects of artists and scientists who were interested in classifying people by type and appearance.
- Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
The fear of persons with physical deformities has long been popular in the media, with figures such as Quasimodo, Captain Hook, Dr. Strangelove, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman. In addition to typecasting persons with disabilities as villains, this stereotype contributes to the fear of persons with disabilities living in the community. Students might be asked to discuss representations of people with disabilities in popular films such as: Lon Chaney as Quasimodo and Patsy Ruth Miller as Esmeralda in the 1923 film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Stereotypes were reinforced through quasi-scientific theories like eugenics. During the “genetic scare” of the 1920s, people with developmental disabilities were often the objects of fear, believed to be driven by rage and intent upon harming others. “Ugly laws,” which made it illegal for people with visible disabilities to be seen in public, were passed across the country, many of which were not repealed until the mid-1970s. Twenty-eight states adopted statutes that sought sterilization, marriage restriction, and institutionalization of the disabled, and eugenicists advocated euthanasia for disabled infants.
- Francis Galton’s Composite Portraits (published in The Photographic News)
- “The Jewish Type,” 1885
- “Health, Disease, and Criminality,” 1885
- Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools, 1490–1500
- Albrecht Dürer, frontispiece to Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, 1490–1500
During the 1840s the term “freak” came to refer to “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.
- Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Sebastián de Morra, 1645
“werewolf syndrome” or hypertrichosis (as it would be called once the fantastic ailment was scientifically and clinically classified by doctors in the early twentieth century)
The use of the word “freak” in this part of the lecture and in the scholarship is a conscious choice based on several factors. First, freak is the vernacular of the carnival and is thus historically based. Second, many have offered the word as one that has been reappropriated and inscribed with power, much like the word “queer” has been embraced by the LGBTQ community as well as academics performing queer studies. Moreover, the term connotes the absence of known categories of representation—it is outside representation if you will. The use of this word offers a theoretical discussion point for the class.
In Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter, gender theorist Judith Butler has theorized the body as a discursive space, a text, where cultural and heterosexual hegemony exerts power. As she argues, identity, class, race, sex, and gender are socially constructed and thus performative. In many ways “freakiness” is performative, even when people are displaying their actual physical bodies. Photographs are also performative, so “freak” photography is compelling, not just in the sense that we are drawn to look—to stare unabashedly if you will—without the fear of getting caught (disability studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson has theorized the “stare” in lives of people with disabilities), but also in that photographs are conscious constructions not just by the subjects, but also the photographers and the mores of society acting upon their representation.
At the same time, however, there are opportunities for rupture—places and moments where expectations are not met, where the bodies and the photographs of those bodies do not perform the way the viewer or audience might expect. These photos then, especially in the case of portraits, allow people with disabilities to challenge normative ideologies, to construct their own personas, and to create expanded discursive spaces.
- Lavinia Fontana, Antonietta Gonzalez, 1656
- Charles Eisenmann Studio, Myrtle Corbin, c. 1880
- Charles Eisenmann Studio, Eli Bowen “The Legless Acrobat,” c. 1880
- Charles Eisenmann Studio, Charles B. Tripp, c. 1880
- Marion Post Wolcott, Plant City, Florida, Strawberry Festival and Carnival, 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
- Diane Arbus, Mexican Dwarf in his Hotel Room, New York City, 1970
- Diane Arbus, Untitled, 1970–71
- Otto Dix, War Cripples, 1920
- Otto Dix, Scat Players, 1920
- Orlan, Self-Hybridizations, 1994–Present
- Stelarc, Third Arm, 1980–98
A significant issue in contemporary theory is the deconstruction of the embodied nature of humanism. In humanistic thought, the mind and body are separate, with the body acting as a vehicle for the mind. Information technologies, scientific discoveries, and bioengineering challenge the role of the body, yet they are unable to fully replace the human body. Moreover, war, plastic surgery, and prosthetics have had a significant impact of the role of the body as well as of representations of people with disabilities, specifically as powerful subjects in critiques of war.
While Dix used amputees as vehicles to parody political leaders in a fashion similar to Brant’s Ship of Fools, others have used prosthetics to investigate difference, the posthuman, and the transhuman. “Posthumanism” denotes an interest in the possibilities of life beyond human evolution and addresses questions of ethics, justice, language, and trans-species communication. Transhumanism is a movement that seeks to transform the human condition through technologies that enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacity. Orlan (Self-Hybridizations) and Stelarc (Third Arm) are two contemporary artists who investigate and push the boundaries of “humanness” by undergoing surgeries to transform their bodies into hybrids and cyborgs.
- Lisa Bufano, Film Still 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
As a challenge to invisibility, Young British Artist Marc Quinn sculpted fellow artist and activist Alison Lapper Pregnant in Carrara marble for the fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square. The work featuring Lapper, who was born without arms and with shortened legs, has been the subject of controversy and debate by those who view it alternately as offensive or progressive. The work, like Quinn’s other sculptures of amputee models for the series The Complete Marbles (2002), adopts the idealism of Neoclassicism to critique public representations of disability.
In contrast, the Jake and Dinos Chapman’s portrait of Stephen Hawking rejects idealism. Labeled “the most detestable, the most repellent, and the most pointless work of art” by The Guardian, this lifelike twelve-foot-tall fiberglass sculpture depicts Hawking in his wheelchair on top of a rocky mountain. Although decried by The Guardian as crude and sarcastic, Art Monthly labeled it brilliant, and some disability rights scholars have defended it as an honest portrayal that captures the reality of both the subject and the artists.