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Silvers, Anita. From the Crooked Timber of Humanity, Beautiful Things Should Be Made!
2011, APA Newsletter, 10(2): 1-5.
Categories: Aesthetics, Aesthetics and Culture, Applied Ethics, Body Aesthetics, Disability, Value Theory
Keywords: attractiveness, beauty, disability, normalcy
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Added by: Hans Maes, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Summary: Follow-up essay on her 'From the Crooked Timber of Humanity, Beautiful Things Can Be Made' (note the one-word difference in the title). Adds the idea that medical professionals have at least a mild duty to cultivate aesthetic judgment of individuals with biological differences. Also makes the case that beauty is not the same thing as attractiveness or normalcy.
Comment: Useful in discussing portraiture and depiction, beauty, as well as the links between aesthetics and ethics.

Artworks to use with this text:

Riva Lehrer, Susan Nussbaum (1998)

This portrait of disability activist Nussbaum invokes Picasso's famous portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906). It is discussed in Garland-Thomson. Useful in discussing portraiture and depiction, beauty, as well as the links between aesthetics and ethics.

Artworks to use with this text:

Riva Lehrer, Susan Nussbaum (1998)

This portrait of disability activist Nussbaum invokes Picasso's famous portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906). It is discussed in Garland-Thomson.

Difficulty: Intermediate
Recommended use: Further Reading
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Walsh, Andrea N., Dominic McIver Lopes. Objects of Appropriation
2012, In Young, James O., and Conrad G. Brunk, eds. The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation: Blackwell Publishing.
Categories: Aesthetics, Aesthetics and Culture, Crosscultural Aesthetics, Culture and Cultures, Social and Political Philosophy, Value Theory
Keywords: art, cultural appropriation, cultural property, culture
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Added by: Erich Hatala Matthes
Summary: Walsh and Lopes argue that some appropriation can be beneficial and productive: in particular, the appropriation of elements of dominant culture by members of culturally marginalized groups. They explore this idea through discussion of such appropriative artwork by a number of contemporary First Nations artists, which they argue challenges "the assumed alignment of appropriator with oppressor and appropriatee with victim"(227).
Comment: This text serves as a useful counterpoint to the general framework employed in much of the other cultural appropriation literature. It is also a useful selection for course units focusing on art practice.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Recommended use: Further Reading
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