Sculpting Body Ideals

  • Ann Millett-Gallant
Chapter

Abstract

British citizen Alison Lapper was thrust into fame when her 11.5 foot tall, 13 ton sculptural portrait likeness, Alison Lapper Pregnant, was unveiled on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square in 2006, where it reigned for eighteen months (Figure 2.1). Lapper agreed to being cast in the nude by British artist Marc Quinn when she was seven months pregnant and to be placed on public display; many have called the project collaborative. The controversial sculpture has brought widespread attention to the model’s body and her life story. Lapper, born without arms and with shortened legs, is an alumnus of British institutions for disabled children and programs for disabled artists, now a single mother, and an artist who makes work about her body and embodied experiences as a disabled woman. Carved from precious Italian marble and placed on a pedestal among statues of British naval captains, Lapper has been called a contemporary heroine of cultural diversity. Deemed by some as “brave and bold” and “pregnant and proud” and by others as a tasteless and overtly political publicity stunt for Quinn, the work makes a public statement about disability and Lapper’s right to be seen as a productive social subject and a reproductive sexual being.

Keywords

Disable People Disable Woman Carrara Marble Visual Mediation Disable Body 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

  1. 1.
    Examples of other public art projects in Britain that resulted from 1980s and 1990s initiatives are: Victoria Square, Birmingham; Broadgate Business Park; Cardiff Bay, Birmingham; London Docklands, and various projects gracing transportation stations, hospitals, and parks. See Sara Selwood, The Benefits of Public Art: The Polemics of Public Places (Poole, UK: Policy Studies Institute Publications, 1995).Google Scholar
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    These are qualities of successful, transformative public art advocated by art critic Patricia Phillips. Patricia C. Phillips, “Temporality and Public Art,” in Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy, ed. Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1992), p. 295–304.Google Scholar
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    Portions of this chapter have been reprinted, with permission, from the following: Ann Millett, “Sculpting Body Ideals: Alison Lapper Pregnant and the Public Display of Disability,” in Disability Studies Quarterly 28, no. 3 (Summer 2008), and in The Disability Studies Reader, 3rd ed., (New York: Routledge, 2010).Google Scholar

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© Ann Millett-Gallant 2010

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  • Ann Millett-Gallant

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