Defining the Body: Contemporary Figuration on Paper reflects on the evolution, over the past 50 years, of the human form as a long-standing art-historical subject.

When artists need subjects for drawing the human form—nude or clothed, the entire body or certain parts—they look to their family members, friends, and self, as well as to models. 

This exhibition comprises drawings and prints from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Examples of Realism by figurative artists of the 1960s and 1970s include the work of George Segal and Philip Pearlstein. Moving on to the Neo-Expressionist artists of the 1980s, Defining the Body features Francesco Clemente, Eric Fischl, and A. R. Penck. The installation concludes with later representations of identity by artists of the 1990s and beyond, such as Louise Bourgeois, Lorna Simpson, and Kiki Smith.