#paul cadmus

Sleeping Nude
Paul Cadmus
1967

Male and female nudes by Paul Cadmus, 1904-1999.

I remember the only sexual advice my mother ever gave me. She said, “Don’t ever accept a ride if anybody offers you a ride because they’ll take you home and strap you to a bed and abuse you.”…I thought it sounded rather interesting, I guess.

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Male Nude (NM168) by Paul Cadmus, 1982.

Paul Cadmus sketching Ralph McWilliams, photo by George Platt Lynes, 1953.

His Circle

Luigi Lucioni (1900-1988), Selected Portraits

Paul Cadmus (American, 1904-1999), Notturno Bologna [Bologna nocturne, detail and overall], 1957. Egg tempera on gesso panel, 29 x 40.5 cm

The Bath (1951) - Paul Cadmus.  Tempera.

Paul Cadmus. Enzo, 1951. Pencil and white watercolor on gray paper.

Enzo’s likeness appears in many Cadmus works, most notably as the young prostitute servicing old queens in Bar Italia, 1953-55. He has that quintessential lumpen look—sensuous, phlegmatic and vaguely degenerate, a peasant corrupted by exigencies of urban life but unburdened by the demands of thought. It is a phenotype we encounter time and again in Italian artistic production, in the films of Pasolini, for example, or long before that, in the paintings of Caravaggio, hereandhere.

Paul Cadmus. Jerry, 1931. Oil on canvas.

Paul Cadmus. The Architect, 1950. Oil on canvas.

I see Enzo is making an appearance.

Paul Cadmus. Manikins, 1951. Oil on canvas.

Paul Cadmus. Sailors and Floozies, 1932. Oil on canvas.

Paul Cadmus. Finistère, 1952. Oil on canvas.

I love the guy with the patched pants and his hands in his pockets one the right. And the cheap, Accattone-esque sultriness of that one Italian phenotype he always uses!

Paul Cadmus. The Bicyclists, 1933. Oil on canvas.

My mom bought us a Cadmus book when I was a kid and could only begin to fully grasp the satire. The best learning experience ever. This was before Tom of Finland. More on Cadmus here.

Paul Cadmus. Night in Bologna, 1958. Oil on canvas.

Paul Cadmus said once that he preferred to paint novels rather than short stories. Maybe Night in Bologna is not a novel; it is not a short story either.

It is a black comedy depicting an impossible lust triangle: a young soldier is looking with desire at a worldly woman; unaware of his attentions, she is targeting a presumably rich gentleman; unaware of her attentions, he is looking with visible lust at the soldier.

The setting is an old palazzio with huge arcades; the outcome is out of question; it remains the analysis of the triangle.

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Paul Cadmus (American, 1904-1994), Jerry, 1931. Oil on canvas.

Male Nude, 1981, Paul Cadmus
More male art at www.theartofman.netandwww.vitruvianlens.com