ABSTRACT
Aesthetics tracks the emotions that some bodies feel in the presence of other bodies. The human body is both the subject and object of aesthetic production: the body creates other bodies prized for their ability to change the emotions of their maker and endowed with a semblance of vitality usually ascribed only to human beings. Disability aesthetics refuses to recognize the representation of the healthy body – and its definition of harmony, integrity, and beauty – as the sole determination of the aesthetic. This chapter considers how art is changed when we conceive of disability as an aesthetic value in itself. It presents the examples of two remarkable artists, Paul McCarthy and Judith Scott. The idea of disability aesthetics affirms that disability operates both as a critical framework for questioning aesthetic presuppositions in the history of art and as a value in its own right important to future conceptions of what art is.
