Look! Don't Look! A Visual and Temporal Exploration of the Maternal Breast

• In Event: Critical Cultural Analysis of the Body: Technology, Medicine, Space and Gender

Abstract

Considering four paintings, which range from the 16th century to the 21st century, I read the images in the context of infant feeding and how they function as cultural indicators regarding breastfeeding and motherhood. I suggest that these paintings hold rhetorical importance by demonstrating the breast as a site of struggle and that the acceptability of the sexual breast in public is made permissible by the taboo nature of the public maternal breast.

Author

• Karen Kimball, University of North Texas