Images of the human body reveal a great deal about the cultures
that produce them. Whether fashion ads, state portraits, news
photos, or works of visual art, they will always mirror, to some
degree, the social and political conditions under which they
were made. If an image is provocative—that is, if it strays into
forbidden territory, or makes explicit something that we don’t
wish to acknowledge or confront—it will spark debate and may
even stimulate change. On the other hand, affirmative and
celebratory pictures can bring people together and bolster our
sense of community. This is how figurative images can be said to
be “political”—though they are pictures of individual bodies,
they stand for a larger truth about us all. To paraphrase Freud,
sometimes a cigar is more than just a cigar. This theme provides
the structure for the exhibition Body Politics: Figurative
Prints and Drawings from Schiele to de Kooning, which focuses on
the first half of the 20th century. During that time, the
Western world was wrack