Affirmations of the Non-Visual. The Art History of Blindness in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Dr. Tobias Teutenberg

The project examines artistic and institutional responses to blindness, sight loss and visual disability in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as their continuities in contemporary art. The field of investigation includes topics such as the conceptual restriction or disempowerment of the sense of sight in the creative process; strategies of blinding and obscuring visual access; forms of representation and functions of markers such as prostheses, Braille and the long cane; blindness and visual impairment as aesthetic ideals, art theoretical metaphors and art historical interpretations; the history of museum strategies of depriving the eye as well as the art historical integration of selected positions of blind artists. Against the current theoretical background of Critical Disability Studies, the project will thus re-evaluate the diverse manifestations of the avisual in art after 1800, which will merge into an inclusive art history.