La vie des seins (The Life of Breasts) is a strange volume, designed primarily as an excuse to commission Icart to produce a series of illustrations illustrating one of his favourite subjects. The pseudo-anthropological text is by one ‘Docteur Jacotus Brededin’, supposedly of the ‘Faculté des Sciences Socio-Psycho-Érotologiques’ in ‘L’université d’Ampelople’. Who it was actually written by is anyone’s guess.

Icart’s illustrations for La vie des seins are quite experimental, simply coloured and surrounded by large, almost blank backgrounds. Though the learned doctor claims to show the wide variety of mammaries, they are all conventionally very similar.

It wasn’t the first time that the learned Doctor Brededin had appeared – in 1917 the author Jacques Morland and the artist Raoul Dufy collaborated on a now-rare parody volume entitled Folourdan, ‘A Satirical Concoction dedicated to André Mary, Burgundian, by Fernand Fleuret, Chevalier, with Remarks by Jacotus Brededin, PhD, Reader at the University of Ampelople, giving Details of the Giant, the Curious Description of his Shoes, his Hands, his Behind, etc., his Journeys, and the Horrible End of his Subjects; all intermingled with Moral Reflections and Quotations.’ Folourdan was published by the Guild of Forgers with an address of the Fourth Pythian Tripod at Delphi.

La vie des seins was published by Georges Guillot in a limited numbered edition of 196 copies.