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Paul Cadmus
Book by KIRSTEIN, Lincoln.
- GenresArt
Hardcover
First published December 31, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 20, 2010
I first discovered Paul Cadmus in the 1970's when I saw a painting in a magazine called "Sailors and Floozies" (1938) that didn't depict our boys valiantly fighting Tojo for Mom and Apple Pie, but passed out drunk with hookers of questionable gender mauling them. That was pretty strong stuff back then - given our post 9/11 fanaticism it's still considered blasphemy.
The outrage of Cadmus' art never seems to diminish. Cadmus classically composed images recalls memories of American life that are disturbingly true to life and refuses ot blow smoke up people's asses, he is the anti-Norman Rockwell, killing sentimentality for truth.
Some of the best pieces are:
Shore Leave (gobs partying, watch those manly hookers!) - 1933
YMCA Locker Room & Horseplay (doughy, ugly Bowery Boys lookin' guys nekkid) - 1933
The Fleet's In! (more drunk servicemen crusin' for p"ssy) - 1934
Herrin Massacre (strike breakers killing strikers with a pichfork and bloody pipes) - 1940
Finistere, The Bath, The Shower, & Point O' View (lots of male nudes with surprisingly dark backgrounds) - 1943
I could go and on, but the point is that Cadmus' subject matter and never failed to provoke and disturb. Paul Cadmus artwork was light years ahead of its time and is absolutely worthy of any art fan's attention.
The outrage of Cadmus' art never seems to diminish. Cadmus classically composed images recalls memories of American life that are disturbingly true to life and refuses ot blow smoke up people's asses, he is the anti-Norman Rockwell, killing sentimentality for truth.
Some of the best pieces are:
Shore Leave (gobs partying, watch those manly hookers!) - 1933
YMCA Locker Room & Horseplay (doughy, ugly Bowery Boys lookin' guys nekkid) - 1933
The Fleet's In! (more drunk servicemen crusin' for p"ssy) - 1934
Herrin Massacre (strike breakers killing strikers with a pichfork and bloody pipes) - 1940
Finistere, The Bath, The Shower, & Point O' View (lots of male nudes with surprisingly dark backgrounds) - 1943
I could go and on, but the point is that Cadmus' subject matter and never failed to provoke and disturb. Paul Cadmus artwork was light years ahead of its time and is absolutely worthy of any art fan's attention.
February 18, 2020
An affectionate and expert telling of Paul Cadmus' works, with rather comprehensive photographic coverage and some real gems like letters from E.M. Forster which I've never seen before.
April 22, 2024
certainly an authoritative, florid and nostalgic description of Cadmus’ oeuvre
April 28, 2012
Another American Icon
There are all manner of icons in the art world, but surely Paul Cadmus is standing the test of time to become more of a frontrunner than most. His paintings and drawing are magnificently executed representational art - with a twist: his courage in painting works that reflected his gay life style resulted in his becoming one of the earliest painters to allow America to examine a sector of society that had long been closeted. This book, though rather brief, is a beautiful collection of 120 reproductions of Cadmus' more important paintings accompanied by the late Lincoln Kirstein who included excerpts from contemporaneous reviews, articles and comments by the artist about his methods and point of view as well as selections from writer E.M. Forster's letters to Cadmus during their twenty-five year correspondence.
Paul Cadmus (1904-1999) was born in New York City, the son of parents were artistically gifted (his father was an commercial lithographer who created advertising images, and his mother had illustrated children's books) but quite poor. Cadmus is known to have said that their home was "a horrible tenement. We lived with lots of bedbugs and cockroaches." At the age of 14 Cadmus enrolled in art classes at the National Academy of Design, where his parents had met years earlier. Soon afterward he dropped out of his regular high school classes to enroll full-time at the art school, a move his parents encouraged. He became particularly fascinated by the art of the Italian Renaissance, when artists rediscovered some essential principles of human figure drawing that had been lost for more than a millennium. He spent six years at the Academy, winning several student awards and scholarship prize money during his time there, before moving on to classes at the Art Students League of New York City for another two years. In 1934, but he became famous overnight when a minor scandal erupted over his painting The Fleet's In! - a depiction of American sailors on shore leave that aroused the ire of Navy officials, and it vanished for decades from the public view. That work, as well as Cadmus's subsequent images, usually featured heroically muscled young men, and he later became one of the first contemporary artists to be recognized as a chronicler of gay life. "I wasn't trying to foster gay rights," Cadmus told Howard Feinstein in the Advocate about the Fleet painting and his other efforts. "I recorded what I saw and thought and knew."
Some of the paintings, now well known and praised, included in this book are Shore Leave ,1933, YMCA Locker Room & Horseplay, 1933, The Fleet's In!, 1934, Aspects of Suburban Life- Public Dock, 1936,Sailors and Floozies, 1938, Herrin Massacre,1940, Finistere, The Bath, The Shower, & Point O' View, 1943, Fantasia on a Theme by Dr S,1946, and others.
Cadmus's artistic fame waned in the years following World War II. His style remained firmly rooted in the social realism he perfected in the 1930s, but by the early 1950s tastes were changing, and abstract painting emerged as a strong new force in American art. Critics sometimes compared Cadmus's images to Normal Rockwell's overly sentimental cover illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post , only with a more debauched mood than Rockwell's folksy feel-good Americana. In some instances his work was rejected for museum exhibitions by curators who feared its homoerotic overtones might upset the community. Cadmus's career was also hampered by his preferred medium: since the 1940s he had been working exclusively in egg tempera. This was a painstaking method that dated back to the Renaissance era, and it sometimes took him six months to finish a single painting.
Lincoln Kirstein's gift to the American art public as demonstrated in this fine book places the critic in the annals of important art historians. There should be more books published that emphasize the now accepted powerful influence of Paul Cadmus on American art.
Grady Harp
There are all manner of icons in the art world, but surely Paul Cadmus is standing the test of time to become more of a frontrunner than most. His paintings and drawing are magnificently executed representational art - with a twist: his courage in painting works that reflected his gay life style resulted in his becoming one of the earliest painters to allow America to examine a sector of society that had long been closeted. This book, though rather brief, is a beautiful collection of 120 reproductions of Cadmus' more important paintings accompanied by the late Lincoln Kirstein who included excerpts from contemporaneous reviews, articles and comments by the artist about his methods and point of view as well as selections from writer E.M. Forster's letters to Cadmus during their twenty-five year correspondence.
Paul Cadmus (1904-1999) was born in New York City, the son of parents were artistically gifted (his father was an commercial lithographer who created advertising images, and his mother had illustrated children's books) but quite poor. Cadmus is known to have said that their home was "a horrible tenement. We lived with lots of bedbugs and cockroaches." At the age of 14 Cadmus enrolled in art classes at the National Academy of Design, where his parents had met years earlier. Soon afterward he dropped out of his regular high school classes to enroll full-time at the art school, a move his parents encouraged. He became particularly fascinated by the art of the Italian Renaissance, when artists rediscovered some essential principles of human figure drawing that had been lost for more than a millennium. He spent six years at the Academy, winning several student awards and scholarship prize money during his time there, before moving on to classes at the Art Students League of New York City for another two years. In 1934, but he became famous overnight when a minor scandal erupted over his painting The Fleet's In! - a depiction of American sailors on shore leave that aroused the ire of Navy officials, and it vanished for decades from the public view. That work, as well as Cadmus's subsequent images, usually featured heroically muscled young men, and he later became one of the first contemporary artists to be recognized as a chronicler of gay life. "I wasn't trying to foster gay rights," Cadmus told Howard Feinstein in the Advocate about the Fleet painting and his other efforts. "I recorded what I saw and thought and knew."
Some of the paintings, now well known and praised, included in this book are Shore Leave ,1933, YMCA Locker Room & Horseplay, 1933, The Fleet's In!, 1934, Aspects of Suburban Life- Public Dock, 1936,Sailors and Floozies, 1938, Herrin Massacre,1940, Finistere, The Bath, The Shower, & Point O' View, 1943, Fantasia on a Theme by Dr S,1946, and others.
Cadmus's artistic fame waned in the years following World War II. His style remained firmly rooted in the social realism he perfected in the 1930s, but by the early 1950s tastes were changing, and abstract painting emerged as a strong new force in American art. Critics sometimes compared Cadmus's images to Normal Rockwell's overly sentimental cover illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post , only with a more debauched mood than Rockwell's folksy feel-good Americana. In some instances his work was rejected for museum exhibitions by curators who feared its homoerotic overtones might upset the community. Cadmus's career was also hampered by his preferred medium: since the 1940s he had been working exclusively in egg tempera. This was a painstaking method that dated back to the Renaissance era, and it sometimes took him six months to finish a single painting.
Lincoln Kirstein's gift to the American art public as demonstrated in this fine book places the critic in the annals of important art historians. There should be more books published that emphasize the now accepted powerful influence of Paul Cadmus on American art.
Grady Harp
January 12, 2009
he book is worth acquiring for the quality of the illustrations. Paul Cadmus was a magnificent artist in the line of Tooker. He ran against the conventions of art in his time with the use of an exceptional talent for darftmanship and a vivid sense of satire.
The text pretty much limits itself to describe the pictures and offers some sparse biographical notes but doesn't add anything. Interestingly, some quotes from newspapers , Cadmus' friend E.M. Foster and Cadmus himself appear scattered throughout . These are much more informative than the tortured descriptions of the main text.Quote-right
The text pretty much limits itself to describe the pictures and offers some sparse biographical notes but doesn't add anything. Interestingly, some quotes from newspapers , Cadmus' friend E.M. Foster and Cadmus himself appear scattered throughout . These are much more informative than the tortured descriptions of the main text.Quote-right
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews