ABSTRACT
Disabled and non-disabled artists have explored what happens when the fantastic, non-rational context of Surrealism rubs up against disability aesthetics. The politics that emanate from Surrealism are at times useful for and at other times in conflict with the politics of disability art. The iconography of Surrealist artists Hans Bellmer, Jacques-André Boiffard, Brassaï, and André Masson takes on new meaning when juxtaposed with performances, sculptures, and photographs by contemporary artists Lisa Bufano, Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi, and Artur Żmijewski. The works of the Surrealists and these contemporary artists share some critical characteristics, as they each execute lively imagery exploring human and non-human body parts in various guises, such as the praying mantis, the mannequin, and the doll. Specifically, Bufano’s animal-like performances with props and prosthetics have an uncanny physical and metaphorical similarity to the praying mantis depictions in Masson’s paintings, and Yi’s photographs of her two-fingered toes and feet demand and call for a reconsideration of the infamous, stark depiction of hands, feet, and other body parts in the Surrealist photography of Boiffard and Brassaï. The cocktail of Żmijewski’s amputee and non-amputee bodies in his photographs evokes Bellmer’s Poupée sculptural constellations of limbs and flesh, and his work may represent antagonism towards the very disability politics that I seek to promote in this chapter. The work of Bufano, Yi, and Żmijewski simultaneously enhances and destabilizes Surrealism’s tropes and iconography, because these contemporary artists grapple with psychoanalysis and ideas of the non-rational in more complex, corporeal forms. While it is the image of disability that interested the Surrealists, the languages of disability and Surrealism have rarely been conflated within both the fields of art history and disability studies. Utilizing Surrealist tropes ultimately empowers disabled people, because they wield agency over how their own bodies are being portrayed, rather than being objectified from a distanced gaze. For this reason, contemporary representations of disability by disabled and non-disabled artists can shake up and destabilize the very radical efforts of Surrealism itself, as this was a period of art history that, to my knowledge, was predominantly composed of non-disabled artists, or artists who did not identify as disabled or have intimate familiarity with disability.
