|
email publication
of the signing community
about
on the spot:
|
Clerc Scar 9.325 August 2009
=====
All done by a deaf artist/cartoonist--Matt Daigle
=====
Deaf Artists in America
Deborah M. Sonnenstrahl's Deaf Artists in America: Colonial to Contemporary is an exemplary work, the only one of its kind, providing an overview of deaf artists and their artwork from colonial days to the present. Sonnenstrahl makes us aware of something that was there yet invisible to us: persons we had seen, heard about, or studied in art history classes were deaf, a fact that might never have been mentioned in the texts we used or by the lecturers we learned from. I've taken numerous art history classes yet I never knew about the existence of most of the artists Sonnenstrahl reveals. I assume they weren't considered "significant" enough to mention in art survey texts. While I can understand the need to be selective in a survey text, as a former art student, I would have liked to have known about the existence of deaf artists. One portrait I saw had the sitter's first name prefaced with the word "deaf." This led me to wonder how many portraits in galleries might be of deaf persons--or how many artists might have been deaf--yet this information was lost or erased or considered irrelevant. How many portraits might have been analyzed and written about in purely "hearing" terms: " . . . in this portrait, the sitter appears to be listening to some far strains of music . . . has his head tilted as if listening . . . her eyes meet those of the viewer . . . she stares into space as if dreaming" and so on when the sitter could have been deaf or even deaf-blind. Maybe hearing, sighted people would say they don't want to see "people like that" when they visit a gallery. But the real question is whether or not they want to know the truth about their, or any, nation's history. Sonnenstrahl's book should help art faculty who have no idea how to treat deafness among the artists they discuss in classrooms. With Goya the approach has been to mention his deafness briefly, in passing, exploiting stock terms like "isolation" and "loneliness" once the artist's deafness is mentioned. From such remarks we can see the fear and ignorance that exists in our population. All the more reason, then, for a book like Sonnenstrahl's. Sonnenstrahl leads the reader to experience deaf artists as a continuum rather than the lone Goya or Douglas Tilden. "A Study in the Unknown--A New Nation" she titles her first chapter. "The artists in this chapter," she writes, "were born at a time when there was no prominent deaf community. . . . Deaf artists in this chapter followed the Folk art tradition, with the subject matter varying from Mercer's battle scenes of the Civil War to Brewster's portraits to Catlin's depictions of Native Americans and the 'new West.' For her section on Augustus Fuller, 1812-1873, she uses the rubric: "Self-Reliant Artist in Pre-Deaf-Aware America." Imagine that! Pre-Deaf-Aware America! A few pages later we come to John Carlin, 1813-1891. This section, or chapter, is titled "First Deaf American Artist to Study Abroad." Sonnenstrahl states unequivocally that he was "born deaf" and had a deaf younger brother. When Carlin was eight years old he met a man named David Seixas who had collected a group of fifteen deaf students he had found "wandering the streets." Seixas taught them reading, writing, and arithmetic. This school became Mt. Airy School for the Deaf, and Laurent Clerc was an instructor. Carlin graduated at age twelve and went abroad to study art. On page 41 there is a reproduction of Carlin's portrait of Clerc. This is astonishing: a blending of the history of art with the history of deaf education! We've all been regaled with stories about the American West. Buffalo Bill, Anne Oakley, Cochise, and Geronmino are a few names that come to mind. What we haven't heard about is deaf Indians. Page 139 treats John Louis Clark, a Blackfeet Indian whose Blackfeet name was Cutapais, Man Who Talks Not. Sonnenstrahl notes, "He was labeled as a 'deaf and dumb Indian.' This . . . was . . . meant to indicate that he never used his voice . . . Within the Blackfeet culture silence was not an issue." So where, then, is silence an issue? Could it be in our culture? Art reveals a great deal more about us than we imagine. This book is full of singularities. How about a deaf artist of the Holocaust? Sonnenstrahl has this too tucked into her bottomless book. On page 182 is David Ludwig Bloch, born 1910, who, like many Jewish artists, was forced to flee Germany. Sonnenstrahl is an art historian, and through her writing she helps the reader learn about art. She mentions, for example, direction lines in a work of sculpture or a painting, and how these direct the viewer's eyes toward some facet the artist finds important. Sonnenstrahl is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about an artist's attempts to portray deaf life in an artistic medium, and can write about this sensitively. A deaf Canadian researcher who compiled a prestigious volume on the history of deaf people in Canada noted that relatives of deaf persons routinely threw out or destroyed the letters, writings, correspondence, or other memorabilia when a deaf family member died, deeming these works to be of no value. In this way, deaf history was often lost. And so it has undoubtedly been with deaf art. Sonnenstrahl, during her years of work as an art historian at Gallaudet University, assiduously collected information on deaf artists and produced this magnum opus. There is no other work quite like this, and I am both astounded and pleased that this richly illustrated reference now exists.
=====
=====
We are always open to submissions. Submit your writing, artwork, or video to editor@clercscar.com. To subscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Subscribe daily" or "Subscribe weekly." To unsubscribe, email subscribe@clercscar.com with the message "Unsubscribe me." Find us on Twitter and Facebook! Visit our archives or bookstore at http://www.clercscar.com. Copyright 2009 by Clerc Scar. All rights reserved. |
