Haptic Types: Viktor Lowenfeld’s Art Education for Blind and Black Students

This article uses the example of Viktor Lowenfeld to demonstrate the necessity of decolonizing early disability studies in art history, art education, and psychology. It presents sculptural works by blind children and adolescents from Lowenfeld’s art classes at the Israelite Institute for the Blind in Vienna and critically examines the ethnopsychological interpretations of these objects. In addition, the article shows that Lowenfeld used the ideas he developed based on the Vienna sculptures regarding the characteristics of “primitive art” as the basis of his art lessons for African American students in exile which aimed at helping them achieve an artistic expression corresponding to their ethnic origin.