ABSTRACT
ARTISTS HAVE LONG USED WOMAN’S BODY AS AN OBJECT. THEY HAVE REDUCED her image, nude or clothed, to volumes, textures and surface tones. Like peaches and pears, a woman’s body allowed the attractive play of light and shade on a pleasing composition of curves, spheres and smooth surfaces. It not only titillated the erotic in man, but was in its very geometry aesthetically pleasing. The woman’s body fitted much better than the man’s into Hogarth’s theory that curves were more beautiful than straight lines and into Winckelmann’s theory that beauty consisted of continuity and smoothness. The male body might express character, as Winckelmann had put it, but only the female could achieve beauty.
