I went shopping at the bookstore this past weekend and found a lovely book of paintings by Mary Cassatt. She’s one of my favorite artists; her portraits of mothers and children are so tender.

As I was thumbing through the book, one picture caught my eye and made me think abt my last discussion paper on obscenity. The portrait is a beautiful depiction of a mother nursing her infant. The breast is not even fully visible, and it is certainly not painted in a way that a rational person would find sexual.

However, Mary Cassatt was born in 1844, so many of her paintings were crafted in an era when controversies leading up to the Comstock Act were at fever pitch. It occurred to me that this particular painting would likely have been confiscated by the postal service and destroyed as obscene material. How sad.