There are lots of drawings in Rhythm magazine's Volume 2, Number 5, from June of 1912. The cover is a naked woman picking fruit off of a tree surrounded by vaginal looking flowers. The first real page of contents features a nude figure bend over on the ground. Then there are some innocent looking drawings of a village, a big face, The Arc de Triomphe, basic fruit still lifes. But if the cover tells us anything, we should not be surprised to see some breasts. And certainly there is a nude woman, fruit, and tree motif going on in this issue. So should we be surprised by Breast Fruit? Probably not, but I still am. Why, amid plenty of other, tamer still life drawings of fruit are these two pairs of breasts shoved in our faces? It's hard to assume that the likeness is unintentional. I can't think of a single fruit that has such pronounced, uniform nipples. Some citrus fruits could debatably have nipples, but these grow on trees and are never this close together until they are picked. Strangely, for a magazine that seems almost obsessed with trees, this vine comes out of nowhere. These are clearly breasts, and perhaps it is an idealistic dream of the art editor for them to grow on trees.
Maybe it is one of those presumptions we tend to have that we live in a more progressive, sexually explicit time, but I think it's pretty true. I know people had sex just as much around this time, I read The Sun Also Rises, and I know it was seen in art, as it has been for hundreds and hundreds of years, but apparently it was also in magazines. Obviously these modernist magazines weren't exactly mainstream, but I was still a little surprised to see this in the same issue of Rhythm. The woman is strong, tall, and prominent. Her hair is up, and she is looking down at the man. We do not even see the man's face. He may as well be a big skin blanket. He does not matter, except to add to the suggestiveness of the piece. Despite, or perhaps because of, the strength of the woman this is a tender moment. As far as I can tell this couple has just had sex. Or, is even debatably still engaging in some form of it. Was this drawing surprising to viewers? Was it considered obscene? Was it stared it, or mostly ignored?
