Relatively speaking, this is a new subject that is being increasingly recognised for its importance. Although educationalists have been designing arts curricula in schools for the blind since the beginning of the 19th century, a serious study of this topic was not really observable until the second half of the 20th century. Furthermore, it was not properly understood that blind people could appreciate all forms of aesthetics until the end of the 20th century.
“Demodocus”
The first writer to propose a formal, institutionalised system of education for the blind. In a paper in The Edinburgh Review in the 18th Century, this anonymous writer, whilst referring to the philosophy of Locke and Diderot amongst others, proposed a system of what would later become handwork or “industrial arts” mixed with “enlightened” literature.
Valentin Hauy
The French educationalist Hauy was the first to create a formal, educational institution for the blind, in Paris in the late 18th century. In order to raise funds for this institution, he wrote a paper citing the work of Locke, Diderot and Sanderson. Ironically, he dedicated this work to the king of France. He promoted literature for the blind and a tactile alphabet.
Wilhelm Klein
The German educationalist Klein appears to be the first person to write about, or indeed promote, haptic (non-visual) aesthetic and “moral” art for the blind, his motives for this being linked to his Catholic faith. Having moved to Austria, he formed the Viennese Institute for the Blind in the early 19th century. Before this, he most notably taught Kleinhans to sculpt.
JA Charlton-Deas
Charlton-Deas was the British curator of the Sunderland Gallery and Museum at the beginning of the 20th century. He conceived of the first gallery exhibition course for blind and visually students, which he later described in a paper published in the Museums and Galleries Journal in 1913. Unfortunately, this was not replicated until decades later.
Viktor Lowenfeld
Not only one of the most influential writers on arts and blindness, the Austrian Lowenfeld was perhaps one of the most influential writers on arts education as a whole, in his role as co-author of Creative and Mental Growth. Although trained as a sculptor, he first worked in a school for the blind in Vienna until becoming an academic in the US.
E Axel & N levent
The US art theorist Axel formed the revolutionary Art Education for the Blind, which initially designed tactile and sound descriptions of famous pieces of art. Later she teamed up with the Ukrainian academic Levent, now based at an art college in New York, to produce information on this issue for galleries and schools. This became Art Beyond Sight.
For over 300 years the main pre-occupation of academics studying blindness is the understanding of non-visual perception, its relation to sight and “the concepts and mechanisms” of perception. However, in the 20th Century these studies became empirical. We could literally fill this website with these researchers, but have restricted them to the six most prominent writers on this issue.
Max von Senden
The German academic Von Senden tested Molyneux’s question by analyzing case studies of patients recovering from congenital blindness in the 1930s, using only data from their medical records. His conclusion was that people who were blind had little concept of “visual” aesthetics, as they could not relate visual perceptions to tactile ones.
Geza Revesz
Born in Hungary, Revesz worked in Holland. His pioneering work in the early decades of the 20th Century included observations and case studies of those born blind. In this study he developed a theory of haptic and visual types, concluding that Von Senden was wrong on certain aspects of his theory, but concurred that it was not possible for blind people to appreciate art as sighted people do.
Richard L Gregory
In the 1960s, Gregory was the first psychologist to reproduce Berkeley’s study. During this experiment he observed and tested a man recovering from congenital cataracts. Gregory concluded that SB could relate touch and vision directly — a concept named cross modal transfer. He also concluded that he had aesthetic appreciation.
John Kennedy
Although Northern Irish, Kennedy has worked in Canada since the 1970s. His work is as controversial as it is pioneering. He researches pictorial representation, drawing and blindness through case study work. Kennedy concludes that all people, both blind and sighted, have an inherent ability to understand art works, including 2D visual metaphor and perspective.
Oliver Sacks
This famous British physician works in the US, and has published studies on blindness amongst his vast corpus of work in the 1990s. He has reproduced Gregory’s study of SB on a patient called Virgil, reaching similar conclusions. He has also conducted a social study of a colour blind community, concluding their culture accommodated their blindness.
Charles Spence
Working at Oxford University, the British psychologist Spence conducts pioneering research on the interactions between senses since the 1990s. Although not conducting experiments on blindness in particular, Spence concludes that the senses work in concert with each other; i.e. the perception of one sense is affected by the information of another.
Simon Ungar
The British psychologist Ungar is based at Surrey University in the south of England. His research is based on the perception of tactile maps, and in particular an understanding of the cognitive mechanisms necessary to translate 2D representations into the 3D “real world” features. His research provides further evidence of the “cross modal transfer’ between vision and touch.
All modern thinking on blindness and the arts started with these thinkers. The recorded history of arts and blindness in the West can be traced back to Antiquity, however on this website we have restricted our description to authors of the Enlightenment until now, and in particular writing from the time of the original question from William Molyneux to John Locke.
John Locke
The British philosopher who taught at Oxford University from the 17th century and was, for a while at the end of this century, a political dissident in France and Holland. Largely credited with the development of the Enlightenment, and whose Essay on Human Understanding determined our modern understanding of blindness and perception.
George Berkeley
Academically, Bishop Berkeley was a polymath, and wrote widely on a multitude of subjects. He was the first to empirically test and observe the question William Molyneux posed to John Locke, when he tested a boy recovering from congenital blindness in the 18th century. He found it took a while for the boy to understand his new world.
Denis Diderot
A French philosopher, atheist and one time ally of the king of France, Diderot became a political prisoner and later wrote A Letter on the Blind. This questioned the omnipotence of accepted doctrine, and championed the morality of the blind population. It was also a political move to challenge the primacy of sight in human understanding.
Thomas Nagel
Nagel is a contemporary philosopher based at New York University. Although specialising in ethics and the law, Nagel has written on the subject of subjectivity and objectivity of identity, and their links to perception. His best known essay on this topic is What Is It Like To Be A Bat, in which he discusses an understanding in terms of a world identity constructed without vision.
Robert Hopkins
Hopkins is a British philosopher, currently teaching at Sheffield University, whose prime area of interest is the understanding of pictures and aesthetics. Although he argues that congenitally blind people can develop a sense of understanding of sculpture, he disagrees with Kennedy, for example, in his belief that pictorial representation is purely visual.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
A French philosopher who wrote about the phenomenology of perception, and particularly how it relates to the identity of the self, around the middle of the 20th century. Although he did not address blindness and the arts directly, his discussion concepts such as “the phantom limb” and “the blind man’s cane” addressed a physically disabled social identity.
Because this topic is so new, it is only recently developing a distinct culture and social identity of its own. Consequently, essays and books in this field are relatively new, and authors on this topic are few and far between. However, it is vital to understand the culture of blindness and the arts, and also to comprehend why many have felt that blind people cannot understand the arts.
Isaac Newton & Nicholas Saunderson
It is a little difficult to place these two massive historical figures. British mathematician Newton wrote anonymously on theological issues related to visions, and took an Arian, anti-iconic stance that led to his scientific theory of optics. He then sponsored the blind mathematician Saunderson, who devised a tactile geometry and a pioneering “pin dot” language.
William Paulson
The US academic of French history analysed the symbolism of blind people and blindness at the time of the Enlightenment and the period just after the revolution in France, in his seminal work Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Blind in France. This work concluded that blindness was romanticised as a symbol of radicalism in French literature.
Martin Jay
Following on from Paulson, the US philosopher Jay wrote the seminal piece Downcast Eyes. Concurring with Paulson’s original arguments, he concluded that French literature and philosophy above all others had romanticised blindness. In this work, Jay finds that, above all, as blindness was glorified, sight was actively denigrated as a form of moral perception.
Moishe Barasch
Although not studying the culture of blindness in his major work, Blindness: The History of a Mental Image in Western Thought, the Israeli art theorist Barasch investigates how a greater cultural image of blindness has been developed by religions through art. From Antiquity to the Renaissance, Barasch finds that allegories of blindness are complex and most often negative.
Yvonne Eriksson
The Swedish academic Eriksson also has practical experience of working in this field in her role at the Swedish Library for Talking Books. She also appears to be the first academic writer to investigate the history of tactile images in a PhD. She finds that they have an evolving history as sophisticated, descriptive images.
William H Illingworth
Illingworth was a British teacher in a school for the blind and a member of the College of Teachers for the Blind at the beginning of the 20th century. By this time enough of an educational culture had evolved for him to write his History of the Education of the Blind. This surveyed literature, handwork, music and the “industrial arts” education to this point.
Catherine Kudlick
The US academic Kudlick is professor of history at the University of California (UC) at Davis. She graduated originally from the UC Santa Cruz and Berkeley, the latter known for its connections with the disability movement. Kudlick writes on the subject of the social history of disability, and has written broadly on the history of blindness. She is the current President of the Disability History Association.
Unfortunately, too little attention is given to the personal experience of blindness. Many researchers prefer instead to rely on their own observations during experiments rather than trust first hand experience. However, many intellectual insights are given by authors introspecting on their own notions of aesthetics or institutionalisation, or from comparative reviews of these books and essays.
Johan Kleinhans
According to Revesz, the Austrian Kleinhans was the first recorded congenitally/early blind artist. He was also renown for being the first blind person to be taught art, in the early 19th century. Kleinhans, a devote catholic - in the mould of his teacher, Klein—specialised in carving crucifixes, and reportedly several of his pieces still exist in churches in the Tyrol.
Helen Keller
Although not the first recorded deaf blind person to be educated—this title went to Laura Bridgeman—Keller certainly became the most famous as her writings were renown throughout the western world. Although she received no art education, per se, she often wrote about her appreciation of the beauty of nature through her remaining senses.
John M Hull
Currently working at the Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham, whilst retaining his emeritus chair at Birmingham University, the Anglo-Australian theologian Hull is perhaps the best known 20th century author on the experience of blindness. Coming to prominence for Touching the Rock, he has helped raise awareness of the arts, disability and blindness.
Helen Keller
Although not the first recorded deaf blind person to be educated—this title went to Laura Bridgeman—Keller certainly became the most famous as her writings were renown throughout the western world. Although she received no art education, per se, she often wrote about her appreciation of the beauty of nature through her remaining senses.
Esref Armagan
The early blind Turkish painter Armagan has been described by Kennedy as one of the most important artists in the history of western thought. Although not receiving a formal arts training Armagan has developed a surreal style of figurative painting involving elements of perspective and colour, through verbal feedback from those who observed him work.
Gary Sergeant
The British painter Sergeant is perhaps the most commercially successful artist who is registered blind. Working out of his home county of Yorkshire, Sergeant, who was once a designer in independent television, paints vivid, strongly coloured pieces based on local scenery. His work has been exhibited in the British and European parliaments.
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