Clovis Trouille - An Angel of Bad Taste

Il est vrai que je n'ai jamais travaillé en vue d'obtenir un grand prix à une biennale de Venise quelconque, mais bien plutôt pour mériter 10 ans de prison. (Clovis Trouille)

Clovis Trouille, Religieuse italienne fumant la cigarette, 1944

Camille Clovis Trouille (1889-1975) was born in La Fère, in the Picardie region of France. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts of Amiens from 1905 to 1910. With a name worthy of a pseudonym (to have "la trouille" means to be afraid in French), Trouille paddled upstream in a river of Christian morality, military patriotism and bourgeois ostentation with lightness, irony and obstinacy. His erotic and gaudy work delivered a slap in the face to both religion and war (Trouille considered war to be an "infamy", one which had permanently traumatised him). He was drafted on 2 August, 1914. The First World War made him an anarchist and his painting followed suit.

Clovis Trouille, Remembrance, c. 1930

One of his first paintings, Remembrance (above), features two dead soldiers, one German the other French. In their hands they hold two white rabbits and two wooden crosses. On the battlefield a white-haired cardinal cloaked in red with a robe and garter belt bestows his blessing upon a military commander. A nude woman, her body contorted, wears a red, white and blue garter and leaves a trail of military medals behind her.

Clovis Trouille, La profanation, la belle torchie, c. 1945

Remembrance was discovered in 1930 by Dali and Aragon at the Salon des peintres et écrivains révolutionnaires. Trouille also was much appreciated by André Breton, who considered him "the grand master of anything goes", and offered to exhibit his works in his gallery. Trouille refused for fear of being permanently under a label, and it was not until 1962 that he had his first solo exhibition. It was followed the next year with a solo show at the Raymond Cordier gallery in Paris, which was forbidden to anyone aged under age 18 and over 70. In La voyeuse, the dark room is forbidden for anyone under fifty:

Clovis Trouille, La voyeuse, 1960

Was Trouille a surrealist? "Anarchist, surrealist - I don't know. I paint what I love, I paint feminine beauty. For me everything is erotic. It is the most wonderful feeling" explained Trouille. A nonconformist, he peeled away the layers and revealed the defects of the right-wing western society of the time. For example, Bikini (below) depicts a French colony. In the distance in the middle of a field of wheat there is a French soldier leading a group of spahis soldiers.

Clovis Trouille, Bikini, 1930s

On the side of the road a priest with his head in his hands contemplates a skull and crossbones. Barely hidden behind a few stalks of wheat three white women sunbathe in bikinis. The hypocrisy of their mission to "civilize" is thereby unmasked. The Romance of a Spahi (1881) was Pierre Loti's second novel, dealing with a Spahi (French colonial soldiers famous for their romantic uniforms), stationed in sub-Sahara Senegal. The novel was daring for its time as it depicts a love affair between a black woman and white man.

Clovis Trouille, Dialogue au Carmel, 1944

In The Red Poet (below) we see a guillotine before the "prison for nonconformist poets" and a poet with a black cape like the anarchists of the early twentieth century. Hiding behind an urinal, he prepares to attack the executioner. The red poet is André Breton. In the foreground, a phallus-shaped monument is erected in honor of de Sade, topped by a bust of Pope Pius XII.

Clovis Trouille, The Red Poet, 1949

My favorite Trouille painting, The Confession, reminds me at Rivarol's brilliant observation: Il y a des péchés si flatteurs que, si je les confessais, j'en commettrais un autre d'orgueil (There are sins so flattering that, if I confessed them, I would commit another one of pride):

Clovis Trouille, The Confession, n.d.

Towards the end of his life, Clovis Trouille experienced a certain success with his painting Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta! (below) which gave its title to the famous comedy musical that had sex as the main topic. Created in Broadway in 1969 by Kenneth Tynan, it starred Samuel Beckett as one of its librettists and John Lennon among its musicians. In Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta! (The French phrase "oh quel cul t'as" translates roughly as "oh what a lovely backside you have"), "the ass  forms a perfect circle designed to suggest the conquest of the moon", Trouille explained.

Clovis Trouille, Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta!, c. 1960

Some of Trouille's pieces are reminiscent of English Pop Art. In Souvenir without Suite (below) a female face straight out of a 1950s ad campaign stares out at the spectators revealing three very yellow bananas. In the background three nuns with covered faces piously read the bible.

Clovis Trouille, Souvenir without Suite, c. 1960

In The Kiss of the Confessor a couple languishingly embraces inside the cathedral of Amiens. She with lipstick red as blood, mascara and a beauty mark at the corner of her mouth. He with shoulder length hair, red lips, a look of love in his eyes as he leans over her, his hand on her breast. Their bodies intertwine below the stained-glass gazes of kings. A nun and a priest stand out against a somber background.

Clovis Trouille, The Kiss of the Confessor, n.d.

Trouille always wanted to stay independent. He never wanted to depend on galleries. Almost all of his life, he worked as a restorer and decorator of department store mannequins in Paris. He only painted in his spare time. His work consists of only a hundred paintings which he reworked, sometimes for years. Trouille would probably be surprised to see that his paintings are currently trading between 250.000 and 300.000 Euros.

 

Clovis Trouille, My Funeral, 1940

Fascinated or amused by his own mortality Trouille painted a triptych of paintings entitled: My Funeral, (above), My Burial, (1945) and My Grave (below). My Funeral displays a magnificent carriage passing through the streets of Paris followed by a parade of bishops, soldiers and dogs.

Clovis Trouille, My Grave, 1947

In My Grave ghostly women lurk around the cemetery wearing bats as loin cloths, on the gravestone we can read "Here lies the artist who lost his life while earning it". At the top of the vault the face of Jesus Christ appears. Clovis Trouille laughed to the very end. He died on 24 September 1975 in Paris. You can see more of Trouille's work here.

Carel Willink

 Carel Willink in 1977

Carel Willink (1900-1981) was born in Amsterdam, the eldest of two sons of Jan Willink and Wilhelmina Altes. His father was - in those days very rare - a professional car dealer and also an amateur painter. He encouraged his son to start painting and Carel made his first painting when he was 14 years. He attended high school, studied medicine from 1918-1919, and then civil engineering at the Technical University of Delft. But he soon moved to the Hague, where he decided in 1919 that he wanted to be a painter.

Carel Willink, Self-Portrait, 1944

Because modern art experienced its heyday in Germany, Willink decided to study at the Academy in Düsseldorf. There he was rejected after several weeks, and he continued at the Staatliche Hochschule in Berlin. Eventually he studied three years at at Hans Baluschek's painting school, starting out with expressionist works. During his studies Willink experimented with various art movements. At first he felt strongly drawn to Vincent van Gogh, and made a number of landscape paintings in a similar style. Soon he became impressed by the Expressionism of George Grosz and Otto Dix. Later he made collages in the style of Kurt Schwitters. Upon his graduation, he became influenced by the work of Wassily Kandinsky and constructivism, and produced a number of abstract paintings and watercolors. In 1923 he exhibited with the November Group at the Moabit Glaspalast.

Carel Willink, Portrait of a Lady, c. 1930

Upon his return to Amsterdam in 1924, Willink began to experiment with Cubism and Futurism and became a member of the avant-garde art group The Triangle. Through this group he came in contact with the writer Edgar du Perron. He was a key advisor and good friend of Willink until his death in May 1940. Willink then developed a distinctive style of painting: a kind of cubism with strong figurative elements related to the work of Fernand Leger. Examples of this style were the paintings Three Women, The Silver Wedding and The Clock. Willink, through these works, developed into a reasonably successful artist.

Carel Willink, Townscape, 1934

In 1926, during a study trip to Paris, Willink came into contact with the neoclassicism of Pablo Picasso and his figurative paintings, often with classical subjects but with a slightly cubist character. During this period he made works such as Pigeons, and Girl with Dove. The same year, he married Mies van der Meulen, but she left him in two years later. In 1931 he painted Venus Resting, with Wilma Jeuken as the model. They married in 1934 and moved to Amsterdam, where Willink lived until his death.

Carel Willink, Self-Portrait with Wilma van der Meulen, 1934

On the advice of his friend Du Perron, Willink began to paint realistic in the early 1930s. During these years, he was concerned about the future: the stock market crash, the Depression, and the rise of  Fascism and Nazism. He was tired of the unending series of experiments in painting, and decided to return to traditional painting techniques. Thus, he developed his timeless style of Magic Realism, set in a threatening and oppressive atmosphere.

Carel Willink, The Execution, 1933

During a tour of Italy in 1931, Willink became fascinated by classical sculptures and Renaissance architecture. Both elements appear frequently in his work. He also became acquainted with the work of Giorgio de Chirico whose love of emptiness, depth, and extreme shadows would also influence his work. On his return from Italy Willink began working on two paintings: Late Visitors to Pompeii and Uproar, both of which are typical for his later work.

 

Carel Willink, The Blimp, 1933

 

During the German occupation of the Netherlands, it became hard for Willink to sell paintings, all the more so since he refused to sell paintings to German buyers. In order to meet his financial needs, he now began to make portraits. These photo realistic portraits perfectly fit into his own magical realist style. Willink was until his death the most famous, most popular and most expensive portrait painter in the Netherlands. In 1944, Willink painted the following portrait of J. Bergmans, and many portrait commissions would follow over the years:

Carel Willink, J. Bergmans, 1944

In 1947, Willink stayed in Paris and, in 1951, he exhibitied at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Although his technique remained unchanged after the war, Willink experimented with new subjects. Between 1950 and 1965 he made a series of paintings of mostly exotic animals which he incorporated in unusual environments. A giraffe or a rhinoceros in a sculpture garden creates a strange effect. He also combined a nuclear power plant, an atomic explosion or a demolition machine with ruined temples and weathered statues. In 1961, he made a study trip to the Italian Bomarzo Gardens. The bizarre, monstrous statues, designed by Pirro Ligorio, returned a few times in his work.

Carel Willink, Sylvia Quiël, c. 1975

In 1969, Willink married Mathilda de Doelder, who was an eccentric society figure and had lived with him since 1963. In 1975, Willink started an affair with the sculptress Sylvia Quiël (above). After Mathilde had damaged the portrait he had done of Wilma Jeuken in 1952 they separated, and Willink started living together with Quiël until his death in 1981. On May 19, 1977 Mathilde said on television that she would commit suicide if the separation wouldn't be settled in a a way that would be acceptable to her. When it became formal she received 135.000 guilders and started her own gallery in Amsterdam. She also started an affair with coke dealer Gerard Vittali, who found her death on her bed on October 25, 1977. She was naked, had a gun in her hand and a bullet in her head. It was unclear if she had been killed or had committed suicide.  

 

Carel Willink, Jobstijding, 1952

In the 1970s another change in Willink's took place: The strange light traps and menacing dark clouds gave way to bright daylight, a blue sky and white clouds. Paintings like Dryad Resting and Portrait of Rik testified to a newly found hope for the future. The year 1980 saw a major exhibition of his works in the Stedelijk Museum in honor of his eightieth anniversary. Willink felt only now recognized as a serious painter. He died in 1983 shortly after the publication of his authorized biography Willink Truth. He is buried in Zorgvlied. The tomb was designed by his widow, Sylvia Willink Quiël.

Horst P. Horst - Electric Beauty

George Hoyningen-Huene, Portrait of Horst, 1931

 

The son of a well-to-do hardware merchant, Horst Paul Bohrmann (1906-1999) was born in the eastern German town of Weißennfels-an-der-Saale. Although he seldom bothered to use his surname, he formally dropped it in 1943, after he had become an American citizen, so as not to be confused with the Nazi official Martin Bormann. He legally changed his name to Horst P. Horst. 

Horst P. Horst, Odalisque I, 1943

A mild case of tuberculosis brought Horst's public school days to an end. He spent a year in a sanatorium in Switzerland in the early 1920s. After briefly studying Chinese in Frankfurt am Main, he worked in an import-export firm as a file clerk. Introduced to the arts by his paternal aunt, Horst longed to find a way into that world. He was particularly fascinated by the Bauhaus. Initially interested in architecture, Horst entered the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg to design furniture. In 1930, he moved to Paris where was accepted by Le Corbusier as an apprentice in the Bauhaus architect's studio. 

Horst P. Horst, Dali Costumes, 1939

While at a Parisian café, Horst met Baron George von Hoyningen-Huene, a Russian emigrant and photographer for Vogue magazine. Influenced by Huene, who became his lover, Horst abandoned architecture in favor of photography. He worked as an assistant and occasional model for Huene. Through him, Horst met fashion photographer Cecil Beaton and Vogue art director Mehemed Agha. In 1931 Agha invited Horst to the Vogue studio in Paris to learn how to photograph fashion models. Initially, Horst's work echoed the cool classicism of Huene, with plain or geometric backgrounds, artificial lights that emphasized chiaroscuro, and an occasional reference to ancient Greek or Roman sculpture.

Horst P. Horst, Coco Chanel, 1937

Horst's first pictures appeared in the December 1931 issue of French Vogue. It was a full-page advertisement showing a model in black velvet holding a Klytia scent bottle in one hand with the other hand raised elegantly above it. Horst's real breakthrough as a published fashion and portrait photographer was in the pages of British Vogue starting with the 30 March 1932 issue showing three fashion studies and a full-page portrait of the daughter of Sir James Dunn, the art patron and supporter of Surrealism.

  Horst P. Horst, Bending Nude, 1941

In 1932, Horst held his first exhibition in Paris. After a brief period of freelancing, he was hired by Vogue in 1935 after the temperamental Huene quit the magazine. His affair with Huene over, Horst became involved with Luchino Visconti, the Italian aristocrat who was to become an important filmmaker. In 1938, Horst met British diplomat Valentine Lawford, who became his longtime companion and biographer. The two remained together until Horst's death. The 1930's were an exciting time for Horst. His work was published and exhibited in both America and France. His circle of influential friends grew to include artists such as Jean Cocteau, and fashion designer Coco Chanel whom he called "the queen of the whole thing". He would photograph her fashions for three decades. 

 Horst P. Horst, Electric Beauty, 1939

Electric Beauty (above) dates from 1939, the year in which Europe entered the Second World War. With its backdrop relating to Hieronymus Bosch's Temptation of Saint Anthony, it goes beyond a depiction of the more surreal aspects of the fashion industry to communicate a sense of impending menace. Horst left for America in late summer of 1939, shortly after taking what would be one of his most enduring images - of a model, bathed in deep shadows, wearing an unraveling corset. He said the Mainbocher Corset summed up his feelings about an era's end. ''While I was taking it,'' he said, ''I was thinking of all that I was leaving behind.'' 

Horst P. Horst, Mainbocher Corset, 1939

When war was declared between America and Germany on 7 December 1941, Horst was called up for service, though he was not officially enrolled until July 1943. The late 1930s and early 1940s were his most productive years. As a typical example of wartime escapism, the Rita Hayworth film Cover Girl (1944) provided Horst with the opportunity to produce one of his most sumptuous film-star covers in a montage of seven different portraits of the cover girl Susann Shaw set against a silk design. His picture of Loretta Young became an almost immediate classic when it was featured in a special edition of Vogue which included masterpieces of photography selected by Edward Steichen to show off the first hundred years of the medium.

Horst P. Horst, Round the Clock I, 1987

He went on to have a successful career as a photographer for American Vogue, though, in the 1960's, when editors demanded more lifelike shots of models running and skipping, he fell out of favor. In the 1980s, the dramatic pre-war photographic style became popular again, and Horst enjoyed a rejuvenation of his career. Synonymous with the creation of images of elegance, style, and glamour, he was sought out by such stars of the 1980s as pop group Duran Duran. Horst' career can be said to have reached Old Master status when pop goddess Madonna created her celebrated hymn to classic fashion photography with her single Vogue in 1990. In the video directed by David Fincher, she posed as a recreation of Horst's most iconic fashion image, a model seen from behind, wearing a partially tied, back-laced corset made by Detolle.

Horst P. Horst, Edith Sitwell (profile, close-up), 1948

Failing eyesight and poor health marred Horst's last years. He died at his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida on November 18, 1999. You can see more works of him on his official website.

Alberto Savinio

The whole of the modern myth still in process of formation is founded on two bodies of work - Alberto Savinio's and his brother Giorgio de Chirico's - that are almost indistinguishable in spirit and that reached their zenith on the eve of the war of 1914. (André Breton, Anthology of Black Humour, 1937)

Alberto Savinio, Self Portrait in the Form of an Owl, c. 1930

Andrea Alberto de Chirico (1891-1952) - who in 1914 adopted the pseudonym Alberto Savinio - was born in Athens to an Italian-speaking family from Dalmatia. He was the younger brother of Giorgio de Chirico. Andrea was homeschooled by his mother, while living in Greece. At a young age he became enthralled by ancient Greek culture, which was conducive to creativity and fantasy during his childhood. As a result, Andrea would later often credit Greece for his love of critical thinking and irony. When he was just 12 years old he earned his diploma in piano at the Athens conservatory. Following his father's death in 1906, he moved to Munich with his mother and brother. There he studied with the renowned composer Max Reger and wrote an opera entitled Carmela.

Alberto Savinio, Objets dans la forêt, 1928

In 1907, the Savinio family moved to Milan. Together the brothers studied ancient languages, literature, music and philosophy, and practised painting and drawing. In 1910, they moved to Florence. Alberto would remain there for one year, working with his brother and helping him lay the foundations of the new Metaphysical art. The first public performance of Savinio's music, which he presented in Munich in 1911, was a failure and he moved to Paris, where he was joined by his mother and brother. He now separated his activity from his brother's - Savinio writing music and De Chirico painting. In 1914, he met Guillaume Apollinaire. The two became friends and collaborators, and Savinio participated briefly in the activities of the avant-garde artistic circles that gravitated around the poet.

Alberto Savinio, Attente d'Egée, 1930

Savinio's first literary production developed in this milieu. He collaborated with Les Soirées de Paris, the journal directed by Apollinaire, and in May 1914 he held a concert at its headquarters, presenting Les Chants de la mi-mort, a mixed work of  dramatic scenes, in which music, literature, theatre and set design blended together, taking up the aspiration of Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art. Les Chants de la mi-mort dealt largely with the concept of sleep (referred to as "Half Death") and was filled with odd, mechanical toy-like characters. This poem is considered one of the most important of the 1910's surrealist movement.

Alberto Savinio, Le Depart de la Colombe, 1930

When Italy entered the First World War in May 1915, the brothers returned to Florence, as they were enlisted with the city military district, and then were sent to Ferrara as part of the infantry reserves. Here they met Filippo de Pisis and Carlo Carrà, forming a short-lived alliance, the Metaphysical School. In Ferrara Savinio abandoned music and devoted himself to literature, although he never stopped drawing.

Alberto Savinio, La cité des promesses, 1928

In 1918, Savinio was sent to the Macedonian front as an interpreter and wrote a series of stories and lyrical prose; these works were released in instalments in La Voce and later published as a book entitled Hermaphrodito. From 1919 to 1923, Savinio, his brother and Carrà, living now in Rome, were part of the driving force behind the literary and artistic group surrounding the magazine Valori Plastici.

Alberto Savinio, Fighting Angels, 1930

In the early 1920s Savinio collaborated with all of the leading literary reviews in Italy. He wrote Tragedia del l’infanzia (Tragedy of Childhood), an autobiographical collection of episodes in which the world of adults and artistic creativity is contrasted with the world of childhood imaginations. In 1924, the Metropolitan Opera of New York performed his ballet Perseus. 1925 saw the publication of his second novel, La Casa Ispirata (The Haunted House). During this period he also collaborated with Luigi Pirandello's Teatro d'Arte, which in 1925 staged the ballet La morte di Niobe in Rome, with music and lyrics by Savinio, and set design and costumes by De Chirico.

Alberto Savinio, Niobe, n.d.

In 1926, Savinio moved to Paris, and began to paint seriously, gaining both critical and public acclaim. His first solo show, held at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1927, was presented by Jean Cocteau. Savinio continued to cultivate the contacts he had made in 1920 with André Breton and the Surrealists. In 1933, Savinio returned to Rome. Starting in the mid-1930s and throughout the 1940s, he devoted his time exclusively to literary activities and journalism. During this period Savinio virtually abandoned painting, practising it only occasionally, and devoted his time to graphics, often illustrating his own publications and those of other authors.

Alberto Savinio, Souvenir d'un monde disparu, 1928

Following World War II Savinio took up music again, composing the ballet Vita dell'uomo. At the same time, he also directed plays and designed sets, collaborating with the Scala in Milan. Savinio died in Florence in1952.

Pierre Roy - Danger on the Stairs

Pierre Roy, Danger on the Stairs, 1927

Pierre Roy (1880-1950) was born in Nantes, France, to a cultured middle-class family, related to that of Jules Verne. He was deeply impressed as a child by Verne's stories, which were told to him by the writer's brother. His repressed ambition was to become a sailor. Instead, his secondary studies finished, he entered an architect's office. From this period, he retained a taste for precise draughtsmanship and materials like stone, wood, rope, and metal. 

 Pierre Roy, A Naturalist's Study, 1928

In 1910, Roy entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and enrolled at the École des Arts Décoratifs and the Académie Julian a short time later. He participated - unsuccessfully - in the Salon des Indépendants in 1907 and 1908. Around 1910, he came into contact with the Fauves and the circle of intellectuals who supported them, notably André Salmon and Max Jacob. In 1913, Guillaume Apollinaire noticed Roy's work at the Salon des Indépendants and asked him to pay him a visit. The two instantly understood, each other and this encounter introduced Roy to the circle of artists gravitating around the poet. During this period, Roy met Alberto Savinio and, through him, Alberto's elder brother, Giorgio de Chirico. Roy and De Chirico exhibited their works together at the 1914 Salon des Indépendants establishing a rapport of mutual esteem that continued into the 1920s.

Pierre Roy, The Shoe, c. 1930

In 1914, Roy abandoned painting almost entirely and began to work on a collection of counting songs illustrated by a series of woodcuts. He was forced to interrupt this work, which was backed by his friend Apollinaire, when he was conscripted to serve in the First World War. Entitled Cent comptines, it was not completed and published until 1926. Following the war, in 1919, Roy began to paint his first object combinations, inspired by his personal interpretation of De Chirico's metaphysical compositions.

Pierre Roy, Le chou-fleur, 1931

In the mid-1920s, Roy joined the Surrealist movement and participated in La Peinture Surréaliste exhibition held at the Galerie Pierre Loeb in November 1925, which showcased works by Giorgio De Chirico, Hans Arp, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Man Ray, André Masson, Joan Miró and Picasso. The event marked Roy's first true success, underscored by the critic André Salmon in the article he published in Revue de France.

 Pierre Roy, Boris Anrep in his Studio,1949

During the 1930s, Roy visited the United States every year, where he had exhibitions at the Brummer Galery in 1930 and 1933, at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932, and at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Roy also worked as a stage designer for the Ballets Suédois of Rolf de Maré, and as an illustrator he produced a series of lithographs for The Child of the High Sea of Jules Supervielle (1946). On his way to an exhibition in Bergamo, where he was showing some of his work, Roy died in Milan on September 26th, 1950.

Paul Cadmus - Beauty's all Things B

Cadmus, to our enormous benefit, understands that beauty is bodies, brains, buttocks, bathtubs, bicycles, Bach, bravado and bad behaviour; beauty's all things B. (Steven Jenkins)

Luigi Lucioni, Portrait of Paul Cadmus, 1928

Paul Cadmus (1904-1999) was born in New York City into a family of commercial artists. (NYC isn't exactly located in Central Europe - which is, more or less, the gravity center of this blog - but I feel free to shift focus once in a while). Cadmus' father, who had little money, was a commercial lithographer who had studied with Robert Henri, and his mother was an illustrator of children's books. At 15, before he finished high school, he was enrolled in art classes at the National Academy of Design. 

 Paul Cadmus, Jerry, 1931. "I've never had a good chest. My chest has always been rather weak. It's one reason why I think I draw such beautiful chests on other people", Cadmus observed in 1988.

Within two years Cadmus was admitted to the life drawing classes and by 1926 had completed his course work, having won numerous prizes and scholarships. Cadmus did advertising jobs until 1931 and studied at the Art Students League. There he met the painter Jared French, who became his lover and urged him to quit commercial art. In 1931, Cadmus made one of his first paintings depicting French. The painting, Jerry (above), remained in the French family until recently, when it was acquired by the Toledo Museum of Art. The small painting - it's just 20-by-24 inches - is strikingly intimate. French is holding James Joyce's Ulysses, then banned in the United States for being obscene. (According to Richard Meyer's Outlaw Representation, a friend of Cadmus had smuggled the book into the US from Europe and had given it to him as a gift).

Paul Cadmus, Byciclists, 1933

After hopping on an oil tanker to Europe and cycling through France and Spain, Cadmus and French stayed on the island of Majorca (1931-1933), where Cadmus painted two of his best-known early works, YMCA Locker Room and the above Bicyclists (later bought by Cole Porter). After his return to New York in 1933, Cadmus became the center of a circle of gay artists including his brother-in-law, Lincoln Kirstein, who helped found the American School of Ballet, Pavel Tchelitchew, and the photographer George Platt Lynes, for whom Cadmus frequently modeled. 

Paul Cadmus,  Self Portrait, Mallorca, c. 1932

Along with Bernard Perlin, Jared French, and George Tooker, Cadmus became known as a "Magical Realist", though none of the artists truly accepted the term. At the time, he worked for the Public Works of Art Project, which was later incorporated into the WPA. This experience was to help shape his style for the rest of his long career. Nearly illustrative, his paintings remained linked to a realist style found in many WPA works of the 1930s.   

Paul Cadmus, The Fleet’s In, 1934

In 1934, Cadmus' above painting The Fleet's In, depicting the pleasures of uniformed sailors, was removed from an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington (at the same venue and in similar circumstances fifty years later, Robert Mapplethorpe's pictures were to suffer a similar fate). Outraged Navy officials saw a newspaper reproduction of the painting and pulled the work from the show. This "disreputable drunken brawl" came from "the sordid, depraved imagination of someone who has no conception of actual conditions in our service", fumed Secretary of Navy Claude Swanson. Like a stealth cruiser, The Fleet was kept from public view until 1981 and is now temporarily displayed at the Navy Art Gallery in Washington.

Paul Cadmus, Coney Island, 1935

Cadmus' painting Coney Island (above) also became the subject of controversy. Its portrayal of local residents enraged Brooklyn realtors, who threatened to file a civil suit against the Whitney Museum of American Art. Similarly, his commission for the Port Washington post office, Pocahontas and John Smith (1938) was also regarded as scandalous and cancelled. As a result of Cadmus' notoriety, his 1937 exhibition at Midtown Galleries in New York attracted more than 7.000 visitors.

Paul Cadmus, Aviator, 1941

After yet another successful show in 1937, Time magazine reported of the paintings on display: "Around the walls sailors tousled their trollops, perverts beckoned from a cafeteria washroom, and slatterns rioted on public beaches. These are the principal aspects of US life that attract Cadmus' attention, and he shrewdly draws and crudely colours them." 1937 was also a significant year in Cadmus’s private life - his lover Jared left him and married a mutual friend, Margaret Hoening. The three of them remained close friends, however, and worked together on a number of photography projects.

Paul Cadmus, Aspects of Suburban Life, 1935

Throughout the late 1930s Cadmus continued to shock. His Aspects of Suburban Life series (above) commissioned as murals for a post office were rejected as "unsuitable for a public building" and in 1938 he showed once again what can be done with a drunken sailor in Sailors and Floozies (below), this one temporarily removed from the Golden Gate International Exhibition in San Francisco in 1939. Putting it back on the wall, the director of the Palace of Fine Arts said: "If every picture to which some may object is removed, none would remain."

Paul Cadmus, Sailors and Floosies, 1938

In 1940 came another rejection, this time from Life magazine, which had commissioned 16 artists to paint significant events in American history after 1915. Cadmus chose to depict the tragic Herrin massacre (shown below), a labor contract dispute which occurred in the mining town of Herrin, Illinois in 1925. The bloody riot resulted in twenty-six dead strikebreakers, slain by labor union members. Some were hanged, others lined up against a fence and shot, and in some cases, some were forced to dig their own graves. Cadmus' painting was never published by Life, most likely because the magazine did not wish to offend organized labor just as the nation was gearing up for war production.

Paul Cadmus, Herrin Massacre, 1940

Despite the stream of rejections, the 1930s and 1940s were Cadmus' most successful years. Professionally, he was at his peak and his social life was an endless whirl of glamorous Manhattan parties where he was feted by friends including W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Edith Sitwell,  George Platt Lynes, and  E.M. Forster ("I do not believe in belief"). Cadmus' painting What I Believe was inspired by Forster's essay of the same name, in which he expressed his faith in personal relations: "Love and loyalty to an individual can run counter to the claims of the state. When they do - down with the state, say I, which means that the state will down me." Forster, the story goes, read his homoerotic novel Maurice aloud while Cadmus was painting his portrait.

Paul Cadmus, Fences, 1946

Cadmus' own favourite work dates from 1958. Once asked which painting he would save from the flames in the event of a fire, he responded quickly, "Night in Bologna is the summa of my career" (G.B. Shaw once had responded to the same silly question: "The one next to the emergency exit"). Night in Bologna depicts a farce of miscalculated seductions. An Italian soldier yearns for a curvaceous female hooker; she, in turn, tries to seduce a crewcut American tourist, while he gazes back at the Italian man with envy and lust.

Paul Cadmus, Night in Bologna, 1958

In real life, meanwhile, Cadmus spent much of this period in a triangle of his own. In the post-war 1940s he had been involved with artist George Tooker but the pair broke up in 1949. Said Tooker: "I was looking for a relationship and my relationship with Paul always included Jared and Margaret French." But Cadmus was once again to find love in 1964 when he met Jon Andersson, a singer and actor who became his boyfriend for the next 35 years. The young man inspired a series of exquisite nude drawings and the striking Study for a David and Goliath, a homage to Caravaggio, in which Jon brandishes a T square above Cadmus' head, the painter's red scarf marking the point of decapitation. Cadmus also explored his relationship with Andersson.  in later works, such as The Haircut:

Paul Cadmus, The Haircut, 1986

Cadmus' narrative style - he referred to himself as a ''literary painter'' - fell out of favor with the art establishment after the rise of Abstract Expressionism in the 1940's. But by that time he had already achieved more than one widely publicized succès de scandale. Near the end of his life there was a renewed interest in his work, sparked at least in part by the success of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, as well as by a resurgence of interest in representational art. The revival of interest in Cadmus was given impetus by the first edition of Lincoln Kirstein's illustrated biography. 

Paul Cadmus, Finistère, 1952

Cadmus was a slow, meticulous worker who favored the complicated, time-consuming medium of egg tempera. He finished an average of only two paintings a year. He was, however, more prolific in other forms, including drawing, printmaking and, early on, photography. Although Cadmus stopped painting towards the end of his life, he continued to draw at his home in Weston, Connecticut, particularly portraits and figure studies of Jon Andersson. Paul Cadmus died in his home in Weston in 1999, just five days short of his 95th birthday. The Smithonian Archives have published online an excellent 1988 interview with Paul Cadmus.