The sexy fruit: Kiss-from-heaven strawberries inspire art

"Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields," begins the legendary 1967 song by The Beatles,  "Strawberry Fields Forever."

The refrain of Britain's most famous pop band continues to resonate whenever the word "strawberry" is mentioned. 

While officially credited to the Beatles' co-foundering duo John Lennon and Paul McCartney , singer and guitarist John Lennon wrote the song as a nostalgic tribute to the gardens of Strawberry Field, a Salvation Army charity children's home in Liverpool, near where Lennon played as a child.

Experimental musical and video genres

Beginning in late 1966, the Beatles spent weeks in the studio, creating various versions of the track, culminating in a combo of them all: experimenting in alternating tempos, mood and musical keys. Cello, brass, flutes and the Indian swarmandal (a harp, or plucked box zither) were thrown into the mix. 

The song was released as a flipside to the band's "Penny Lane" vinyl take.

"Strawberry Fields Forever" confounded band critics and fans alike but would ultimately shape the emerging psychedelic rock genre. Its accompanying promotional film is considered a pioneer in the music video medium getting off the ground at the time.

A world apart

Originally writing the song on a film set in Almeria, Spain in September-October 1966, Lennon was allegedly influenced by his experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD while penning "Strawberry Fields Forever." Likewise, the line "Nothing is real" reflects the concept of illusion conveyed in the Hindu teachings Lennon was reading at the time.

According to music magazine Rolling Stone, Lennon considered "Strawberry Fields Forever" to be his greatest work.

Following Lennon's murder in New York City in December 1980, a tribute to the Beatles' co-founder was created in the Big Apple's Central Park – the Strawberry Fields Memorial – not far from the Dakota Building, where Lennon resided with his wife and artist, Yoko Ono, and where the songwriter was killed.

What is sexy about the strawberry?

Meanwhile, the strawberry has also emerged as a sensuous and sometimes erotic symbol in art and pop culture. 

Take the 1990 film "Pretty Woman" starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, in which client Edward (Gere) offers up champagne and strawberries to call girl Vivian (Roberts) in a provocative scene in a swanky hotel. Vivian indulges in a sumptuous bite, yet retorts that this art of seduction won't work on her. She's too smart for that.

Why is it that the strawberry can be taken for sexual innuendo? What is it about the fruit that is so alluring?

The strawberry as a sexy symbol goes back to the Romans, Maitri Chand, a Mumbai-based psychologist and marriage therapist, told Cosmopolitan magazine in February 2023. 

"Strawberries as fruit have been historically associated with Venus, the goddess for love, sex, beauty, and fertility. They were also offered to people who were getting married as a gift to increase sexual pleasure." This was due to their bright red color, intoxicating taste and tempting fragrance.

Strawberries as popular motifs

Wild strawberries are mentioned in the works of ancient Romans and praised as a gift of the gods. Poet Ovid distinguished between the ground tree strawberry, while fellow poet Virgil offered a warning to children picking strawberries to beware of serpents lurking in the grass.

Fast-forward to the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and you'll find the strawberry symbollically invoked throughout the works of William Shakespeare.

In the 19th century, the fruit featured in fairy tales by the German Brothers Grimm, including "The Three Little Men in the Woods" and "The Hazel Branch."

Charles Baudelaire, in his poem "Les metamorphoses du vampire," describes a woman's mouth as "red as strawberries." 

German poet Paul Zech's 1930 "Ich bin so wild nach deinem Erdbeermund" (I'm so wild about your strawberry mouth), on the other hand, was a more pornographic verse about things below the beltline. The image has inspired songs by bands such as Franz Ferdinand, as well as providing the title to famous German actor Klaus Kinski's autobiography.

Strawberries in art over the ages

Alpine strawberries featured in religious paintings beginning in the late 1300s, and were often associated with the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. 

These include "Madonna Among the Strawberries," painted around 1420, and the 15th century "Madonna with Wild Strawberry,” where the fruit and its flower paradoxically symbolize both maternity and virginity.

The motif of the strawberry is found in paintings by artists ranging from Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai to Russian Zinaida Serebriakova, to Auguste Renoir and Marc Chagall.

British artist Lucian Freud created this 1950s work, aptly titled "Strawberries,” as a gift to Ann Rothermere, who was Freud's patron and friend. It reflects both his fascination with the Old Masters, as well as the intensity of the strawberry imagery.

Equally riveting is the triptych oil painting on oak panel "The Garden of Earthy Delights” by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, who lived from approximately 1450 to 1516.

The viewer detects the strawberry as the pinnacle in a surrealistic castle, while tiny people sit in a circle holding up the gigantic red fruit as several naked subjects are ensconced within an open strawberry.

The work typically relates themes if sensuality, desire and "earthly delights” to the strwaberry, which is housed in Madrid's Museo Nacional del Prado.

To the Americas and back

People had been eating the much smaller, wild strawberries for thousands of years (and not just red ones, but white and yellow sorts as well), often for what were considered medicinal purposes. 

However, strawberries were not earnestly cultivated until the 1300s in Europe.

By the early 1700s, as world exploration and colonization expanded, travelers brought back plant and animal samples to Europe from all over the world. In the US, for instance, Native Americans had been enjoying strawberries for centuries.

It was a stroke of luck that strawberry samples that French naval engineer Amedee-Francois Frezier had transplanted to France from an expedition to Chile in 1712 were later crossbred with a variety brought back from Virginia, USA. This gave birth to a hybrid that would lay the foundation for the much larger, plump, heart-shaped garden strawberry we know and love today.

Critique about cultivation

In May 2023, German environmental activists from the Campact group petitioned strawberry cultivation practices in Huelva, Spain, saying that strawberry farms close to the Donana national park had been illegally diverting water in order to irrigate their crops all year round. The environmentalists called on German supermarkets to stop selling these "drought strawberries."

Campact's petition stated that "illegal water theft" was threatening the "fragile ecosystem" of Donana national park.

Huelva, where the park is located, typically produces around 30% of the EU's crop.

The region is the largest exporter of strawberries in the world, a large volume of which goes to Germany.

The love story continues

Yet the love affair with the strawberry — which is a member of the rose family, high in vitamin C and is not actually a berry, but what botanists call a "false fruit" — is not likely to end anytime soon.

Legend has it that, in the French countryside, people served up cold strawberry soup as an aphrodisiac to newlyweds.

Old folklore also says that if two people break a strawberry in half and share it with each other, they will fall in love.