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Born: 1904
Died: 1999
Summary of Paul Cadmus
Cadmus was a pioneer of Queer Art and an important figure in the history of American art in the twentieth century for being one of the first openly gay artists to create work that was also explicitly queer. Sardonic humour and an incisive look at modern American life were the hallmarks of his work, which depicted everything from the beautiful to the disgusting in all its glory and depravity. It’s hard to ignore the utopian vision of a world where there is equality for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, despite the fact that some of his works are based in historically oppressive environments. He was not always considered fashionable, but his paintings have gained in popularity in recent years as a result of more research and knowledge about queer visual culture.
Censorship of Cadmus’ early work, The Fleet’s In (1934), resulted in his sudden national acclaim. However, he was unfazed by the Navy’s and the media’s criticisms, and he continued to create art that supported his artistic vision of promoting equality, tolerance, and enjoyment. A significant part of American queer history, The Fleet’s In and other works depicting Navy life and scenes of cruising on Riverside Drive are now widely recognised.
However, Cadmus maintained his commitment to figurative painting and updated American Realism to fit contemporary social contexts, even though abstract art was prevalent in the art world at the time. He drew dense compositions that served as sharp social satires that are still relevant today in his works.
Cadmus and his peers held a deep reverence for the Classical and Renaissance traditions of art. Their influence could be seen in his careful rendering of the human anatomy, the way he arranged his compositions, and the numerous references he made to art from the time period in which they were created. In the twentieth century, he was instrumental in reviving the use of egg tempera, a technique popular in the early Renaissance. Renaissance art, which set him apart from the prevailing artistic taste of his time, has been framed by recent scholarship as a result of their unique artistic perspective.
Biography of Paul Cadmus
Childhood
When Paul Cadmus was born in New York City in 1904, both of his parents came from different parts of the world. His father came from the Netherlands, and his mother came from the Basque region of Spain. Before moving to Cuba and then the United States, they lived in Cuba and then in the United States, too. The sister of Paul was born two years after he did. As a child’s mother, Maria, illustrated children’s books. Their father was a commercial lithographer and watercolourist and their mother was a children’s book illustrator (they met in art school). Even though the parents were poor, the kids grew up in a creative and artistic environment because they were so artistic and creative.
It was clear to Cadmus at an early age that he wanted to be a doctor; he didn’t want to be anything else. His parents were always there for him, and they were always there for him. It was 1919 when he left public school and went to the National Academy of Design instead of going to school. During his time there, he was one of the best students and won many awards for his work. Cadmus learned a lot about art at the academy. He learned how to draw, print, and etch, as well as many other things about art. In the future, when he was an artist, he used all of these skills.
Early Life
At an advertising agency in New York, Cadmus was a layout artist in 1928. Even though he kept going to the Art Students League to learn about art, he didn’t stop. His friend at school was Jared French. For the rest of their lives, they were best friends, and they were both very happy. Cadmus learned a lot about art from the French, and it had a big impact on him all through his work. This is what happened. The person who convinced Cadmus to give up his job as a salesman and become an artist instead was French, not Cadmus himself. Their goal was to find a more interesting job when they left on an oil tanker in 1931. The two artists moved to Mallorca, where Cadmus began painting in a more professional way. He painted some things from the Mediterranean islands, but he spent most of his time painting things from the United States, like two big works: Shore Leave (1933) and Y.M.C.A. Locker Room (1934). (1934). (1933). They went to France and Spain over two years. They also went to some of the best museums and art sites in Germany, Italy, and Austria, as well as some other places. Cadmus saw the works of Renaissance artists like Andrea Mantegna and Luca Signorelli when he went to the Renaissance art gallery. This is how he would feel for the rest of his life.
It was his sister, Fidelma, who told him about the Public Works of Art Project while he was in Europe. In late 1933, the men ran out of money, so they decided to return to New York. He and French both applied to the WPA, and they kept working together in their studio on St. Luke’s Place, where they had been before, as long as they worked there. December was the month that Cadmus joined the WPA. For them, he made the paintings The Fleet’s In (1934) and Greenwich Village Cafeteria (1934). (1934).
There was a WPA show at the Whitney Museum. The Fleet’s In was chosen to be in the show When it was done at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, it went on to another show there. People didn’t like the show because it talked about drunken sailors on leave and prostitutes, which offended the Navy. It was taken out of the show. A picture of the painting had already been taken, which meant that the press could make money from the painting. This is how he made his name in the 1930s. When he did his first solo show in 1937, more than 7,000 people came to see him.
He also cared about 1937 on a personal level, which is why it was important to him. When they met at the Art Students League, French married Margaret Hoening, who was an artist they both knew. This changed French’s friendship with him. They didn’t bother Cadmus in any way. Jared and Margaret on the other hand didn’t seem to bother him at all. In their friendship, they couldn’t be apart from each other. There were still studios on St. Luke’s Place for Cadmus and French to share with each other. During the same year that Cadmus talked to Lincoln Kirstein, he also met him and talked. Philanthropist: Kirstein gave money to people who needed it. Writer: Kirstein was also a person who cared about the arts in New York. Because he helped start the New York City Ballet, he is best known. Cadmus and Kirstein would become close friends. He would also be one of Cadmus’ biggest supporters and fans, so this is how it would work out. In 1941, when he married his sister Fidelma, he became Cadmus’s brother-in-law because he was married to his sister, so he was Cadmus’s brother.
Mid Life
When Cadmus worked in the 1940s, he made a lot of changes to his work. Cadmus changed to painting with egg tempera because of Jared French. This is what Cadmus said: “When I found this medium, I was so in love with it that I didn’t want to use anything else.” Early on, he was known for making fun of society. But in the next decade, he began to use a wider range of materials. When he spent summers with Margaret and Jared French on Fire Island, he came up with the idea for this new set of paintings. These portraits, images of dancers, and beach scenes were all in smaller sizes. Many of them were linked to Magic Realism, a term that came into use in 1943 when the Museum of Modern Art in New York put on a major show called “American Realists and Magic Realists.” It was put together by Dorothy C. Miller with the help of Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Lincoln Kirstein, and it had 16 paintings by Cadmus. Magic Realism was seen as a continuation of the American Realist tradition. It focused on the mysteriousness and unpredictability of everyday life. Kirstein told us how Magic Realism is different from other types of art: “By combining crisp hard edges, tightly indicated forms, and fake material surfaces like paper, grain of wood, flesh, or leaf, our eyes are fooled into believing in the reality of what is shown, whether it is real or not.” In Cadmus’ case, many of these intimate scenes used a codified language to show that they wanted to be the same-sex couple. Cadmus tried new things with art during the summers he spent on Fire Island. Cadmus took pictures with Margaret and Jared French. They used Margaret’s Leica camera to make staged photos of sensual nudes, like this one. In order to make the name of their photography group, the three people combined the first two letters of their names. They called it PaJaMa (Paul, Jared, Margaret). After being discharged from the Marines in 1944, he met George Tooker, a painter who had started back at the Art Students League. He took Tooker under his wing and taught him how to use tempera with French and other people. Soon, Cadmus and Tooker were in love, and the younger artist moved into a studio next to the one Cadmus shared with French, where the two artists worked together. Tooker became a common sight on Fire Island, where he posed for many of Cadmus’s paintings and the PaJaMa photos that show him. Cadmus, French, and Tooker all paint in a similar way, and art historian and curator A. Hyatt Mayor even called them “the Fire Island School of Painting.” Cadmus became very interested in the writings of English novelist E.M. Forster at the same time. There was a lot of correspondence that led to their friendship. The two met for the first time in 1947, when Forster came to New York. Cadmus was close with Forster, and he showed his love for the author in the painting “What I Believe” (1947), which was based on Forster’s essay of the same name. In 1949, Cadmus and Tooker, along with the Frenches, went on a trip across Europe. It came to an end there for Cadmus and Tucker. People who write about Cadmus say that Jared was a source of friction between them, which led to them breaking up. Cadmus quotes Leddick in his account: “That wasn’t possible for George. Was not going to give up Jared in any way.” After he broke up with Tooker, Cadmus kept in touch with the Frenches. He spent a lot of time in France and Italy from 1951 to 1953. Then he came back to New York, where he had shared a studio with French. People in Cadmus’ close circle of friends kept him company for most of the 1950s He spent the summers on Fire Island and went to Europe a lot.
Late Life
Around 1960, the Frenches decided to move to Europe for good and sell their studio on St. Luke’s Place, so they could move there. Cadmus moved to a studio on Remsen Street in Brooklyn Heights after that, and now he works there. Then he met Jon Anderson, who was a former cabaret star. He was on Nantucket in 1964 when they met. There was a relationship between the two of them, and Anderson became Cadmus’ main model and muse. Most of all, Cadmus used Anderson to make a series of male nude drawings that he worked on in the later parts of his life. With Anderson, he spent the last years of his life in a studio that Kirstein had made for him. On December 12, 1999, Cadmus died at the age of 94. He died just five days before his 95th birthday.
Some people thought Paul Cadmus was a bad artist when he did his work in the 1930s. His witty social satires often caused outrage and even censorship because they broke with traditional morals. Cadmus was able to take advantage of the attention he got from the media and become one of the best artists of his time because of his uncompromising ways. Jonathan Weinberg, an art historian, said that his homoerotic imagery was coded and would have been understood by a group of people who knew what they were looking at. This allowed for a shared sense of fun that went unnoticed by traditional culture.
During the late 1940s, Abstract Expressionism started to become more popular. This made Cadmus and other figurative artists fade away from the public eye. Cadmus stayed true to himself even though there were changes in the art world. He used techniques from the old masters, made complicated compositions, and treated the human body with care.
A lot of people are now interested in Cadmus’s art now that Stonewall is over. In the media and in scholarship, people started to look at his work through the lens of sexuality. They celebrated the gay artist as an example and a major influence on Queer Art. Initially, Cadmus wasn’t sure how to feel about this newfound interest in the subject. While he didn’t hide his homosexuality, he didn’t like the idea of identity politics. “Gayness is not the point of my work,” he said. Philip Eliasoph, an art historian, says that Cadmus’s attitude can be blamed on a generational divide: “He asked those on the front lines of militant gender politics [in the 1970s and 1980s] to respect that he was from a generation where reticence and discretion signalled an unspoken ethical code.” In place of talking about the homoeroticism in his work, Cadmus talked more about his interest in the nude and how Renaissance painting had an impact on his work. Richard Meyer, a scholar who wrote a lot about queer elements in Cadmus’s art, came up with a more complicated answer: “homosexuality cannot be understood in terms of the coherent, confident terms of what we now call gay identity.” Today, from a queer theoretical point of view, his interest in the Italian Renaissance, his satirical view of American life, and his depictions of homoerotic and sensuous male bodies all form a queer sensibility that doesn’t have a specific identity or political message. Instead, it is an early version of a queer style.
Famous Art by Paul Cadmus
The Fleet’s In!
1934
A painting called “The Fleet’s In” is one of the artist’s most well-known and controversial works. Public Works of Art is a project that Cadmus took part in (which later became part of the WPA). The PWAP paid artists to paint American scenery for public buildings each week. Cadmus was inspired by what he saw on Riverside Drive in Manhattan, where sailors would dock. He decided to show drunken sailors and prostitutes mingling together.
The painting was chosen for a show at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, DC, in 1934. Before the opening, Henry Latrobe Roosevelt, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, took it down because retired Navy General Admiral Hugh Rodman had said he didn’t like it. Rodman thought that Cadmus’s art was very disrespectful to the Navy and its people. When he saw the painting, he said it was “a most disgraceful drunken brawl, where a number of enlisted men appear to be having a party with street-walkers and people who live in the red-light district.” A lot of people were surprised when the painting was censored. Soon, Cadmus was quoted and featured in newspapers all over the country because of the story. Controversy was good for the young artist because it gave him free publicity. He thought: “As a result, I was on all of the front pages. That was the best piece of luck an artist could ever have. In the end, I could back it up later with paintings that were not bad, let’s say. This is a good thing.”
Coney Island
1934
In this painting, Cadmus shows people having fun on the beach at Coney Island, which is a popular place for working-class New Yorkers to go. Hairy, sweaty bodies are clustered together as they sunbathe, drink, eat, read, and play sports on the beach in a noisy and rowdy scene. Cadmus used figures that aren’t usually thought to be attractive. It looks like they have burned and pimply skin, swollen bellies and double chins, grimacing faces with over-sized features, long and lanky bodies that show their rib cages. While the characters are crass and vulgar, the general mood is happy and carefree. However, the artist also made small references to the harsh realities of the time in the painting. It can be seen on the headline of the newspaper, for example, that Hitler’s name can be seen on the bulky man napping in the background. The detail adds a dose of political reality that contrasts with the image’s hedonistic vibe.
Venus and Adonis
1936
“Venus and Adonis” is a fable from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It tells the story of how the Roman goddess Venus was accidentally hit by Cupid’s arrow and fell in love with the handsome hunter Adonis. The next day, Venus had a dream that Adonis was going to be killed by a boar. She tried to stop him from going hunting. He didn’t pay attention to her. Tragically, she found him dead and gored to death by a boar when she went to check on him. Cadmus used his sense of humour to make the story more interesting. When he did this, Adonis became a handsome athlete who was excited to play tennis with the boys and be part of the match (with his left hand holding two balls, suggesting a queer subtext). Venus, the goddess of love, turned into a middle-aged woman who was desperate to be with him. To the right of her is Cupid, who is shown as a chubby baby throwing a tantrum.
Sailors and Floosies
1938
These are three paintings by Cadmus that were all about the US Navy and sailors who were on leave. This is the last one in the set. Like The Fleet’s In, the artist got ideas for this picture from real-life images of people cruising and drinking on the streets of Riverside Drive. “Floosies” with thick make-up and big bodies are in the background. A handsome sailor has passed out in the foreground. His body is next to a half-empty bottle of whisky and above his head is a torn newspaper with a picture of Mussolini praising his military victories and a headline that says that thousands of people died in an air raid. Another couple is in the background. A sailor takes comfort in her breast, and on the right is an attractive blue-clad woman who seems to be resisting her date’s advances. Another person is sitting on the far-right corner of this picture alone, not with any other people. The unique frame Cadmus made for this painting has graffiti drawings that match the ones on the arch in the painting, which is part of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Riverside Park. In addition to being beautiful, the frame adds to the world and atmosphere of the painting that is shown in the painting.
Herrin Massacre
1939
In 1922, the Herrin Massacre happened in the mining town of Herrin, Illinois. When Life asked sixteen artists to paint important events, Cadmus chose the Herrin Massacre because it happened there. A contract dispute between striking miners and the owners of the mines turned into a violent riot, in which 23 men were killed. Most of them were hired by the owners of the mines to replace the striking union members.
Cadmus went to the site of the massacre in 1939, and he saw the Herrin cemetery, where some of the murders also took place, near the mine. He set the scene for the painting in that place. Because Cadmus chose to use Christian symbols in the painting, Lincoln Kirstein said, he could use them in the painting. In the foreground, a flowering cross lies at the feet of victims’ bodies and the Lamb of God on a child’s tomb is covered in the blood of the dead. They may look like Andrea Mantegna’s The Mourning over the Dead Christ (c.1475), which used a dramatic foreshortened perspective to show the dead Christ’s body in a way that made it look real. These references to the crucifixion show the stark contrast between the naked, bloody bodies of the victims in the foreground and the violent aggressors with guns, pipes, ropes, and pitchforks in the back, who are armed with these things. Because the subject was so controversial, Life didn’t put the work out. People who work for organised labour might not like the painting because it shows union members as attackers. The magazine was trying to get the support of organised labour.
What I Believe
1947-1948
This painting is a tribute to the English author E.M. Forster, who was a close friend of Cadmus and had a big impact on him. When Forster wrote “What I Believe” in 1938, he talked about how democracy and humanism were important in the face of growing totalitarianism in Europe. This is the name of the painting. Cadmus was very moved by the text.
When you look at the painting, you can divide it into two parts: on the left is an idyllic paradise, and on the right is a scene of destruction. Cadmus, his family, and his friends are shown in the paradise in the foreground as muscular and sexy figures. The handsome artist is in the middle of the picture, sketching, and he looks very good. His best friend and ex-lover, Jared French, is sitting next to him. Jared’s wife, Margaret, is standing behind them. They also have E.M Forster and George Tooker with them, who were both the artist’s lovers at that time. His book’s cover says “What I Believe.” Fidelma, the artist’s sister, and Lincoln Kirstein, her husband, spend time together. Fidelma rests her head on Kirstein’s lap as he plays the flute, surrounded by animals. The construction behind them makes it clear that this is a scene of making and making. Allegorical figures: Cadmus and his friends become people who look like art, literature, music, and architecture.
Night in Bologna
1958
In this painting, there is a tragicomic “lust triangle” of some kind set in the evening, with the arches and columns of classical Italian architecture in the background. Longing and sexual desire are the main subjects. In the background, a single Italian soldier looks at a woman in a tight dress. Tight-fitting uniform pants are on him. He is standing with his straight body aligned with the phallic tower in the back of his body. The woman doesn’t know that the soldier is looking at her. She has her eye on a lonely American tourist sitting at a table far away. This isn’t true, though. The tourist in a suit is clearly looking at the soldier. Colors that represent three of the seven sins were used by Cadmus to make each of the characters stand out. Red for lust, yellow for greed, and green for envy were used (the tourist).
BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)
Best for Students and a Huge Time Saver
- When Paul Cadmus was born in New York City in 1904, his parents were both from different countries.
- Cadmus learned a lot about art from the French, and it was a big influence on him all through his career.
- Cadmus joined the WPA in December, and he made the paintings The Fleet’s In (1934) and Greenwich Village Cafeteria (1934) for them (1934).The Fleet’s In was chosen for a WPA show at the Whitney Museum.
- Cadmus and French continued to share a studio on St. Luke’s Place with each other.
- Cadmus changed to painting with egg tempera because of Jared French.
- “Early on, he was known for making fun of society.
- When he spent summers with Margaret and Jared French on Fire Island, he came up with the idea for this new set of paintings.
- Many of them were linked to Magic Realism, a term that came into use in 1943 when the Museum of Modern Art in New York put on a major show called “American Realists and Magic Realists.”
- Magic Realism was seen as a continuation of the American Realist tradition.
- Cadmus took pictures with Margaret and Jared French.
- “Cadmus became very interested in the writings of English novelist E.M. Forster at the same time.
- After he broke up with Tooker, Cadmus kept in touch with the Frenches.
- He died just five days before his 95th birthday.
- Some people thought Paul Cadmus was a bad artist when he did his work in the 1930s.
- They celebrated the gay artist as an example and a major influence on Queer Art.
- While he didn’t hide his homosexuality, he didn’t like the idea of identity politics. “
- Philip Eliasoph, an art historian, says that Cadmus’s attitude can be blamed on a generational divide: “He asked those on the front lines of militant gender politics [in the 1970s and 1980s] to respect that he was from a generation where reticence and discretion signalled an unspoken ethical code.”
- In place of talking about the homoeroticism in his work, Cadmus talked more about his interest in the nude and how Renaissance painting had an impact on his work.
- Richard Meyer, a scholar who wrote a lot about queer elements in Cadmus’s art, came up with a more complicated answer: “homosexuality cannot be understood in terms of the coherent, confident terms of what we now call gay identity.”
- Today, from a queer theoretical point of view, his interest in the Italian Renaissance, his satirical view of American life, and his depictions of homoerotic and sensuous male bodies all form a queer sensibility that doesn’t have a specific identity or political message.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
