Introduction

Make a list in your head or on paper of what you see in each image. Think about the definition of figuring we’ve provided elsewhere on this Web site, and think about the definition(s) you might have created in your own mind. How do the kinds of figuring represented in these images differ from figuring you’ve seen in other images on this Web site and elsewhere?

Before looking at the title and date of each image, what can you find in the images—looking at them separately and together—to tell you something about the time periods in which they were each created?

Do you think it matters whether the creator of each of these works was a woman or a man? How might you look for or “see” the gender of the creator in the actual images themselves? Do you think the images each demonstrate different ways of looking at women’s bodies, or do they all seem to be similar? Why? If they seem to you to be different, can you relate the different viewpoints to the different time periods in which the works were created?