He even had the painting photographed and personally distributed the images to the press. By attacking my painting, naval officials have only called attention to it, whereas if they had said nothing about it, it probably would have been noticed only by the art critics.”Ĭadmus provided countless local and national newspapers across the country with direct quotes, actively shaping the narrative around his censorship. Making the most of his notoriety, the artist pointed out to the New York Times, “I don’t think admirals have much sense of humor, if they are as deeply offended as reported. Multiple publications wrote about Cadmus’s incident with the Navy. The painting’s theft from the Corcoran was just the beginning of the scandal, however. Retired Navy General Admiral Hugh Rodman Apparently a number of enlisted men are consorting with a party of streetwalkers and denizens of the red-light district.” “It represents a most disgraceful, sordid, disreputable, drunken brawl. Page B-1 of the April 3, 1934, issue of the Washington Evening Star, which included an image of Cadmus’s The Fleet’s In! (detail at right). After his death in 1936 he “bequeathed” it to the Alibi Club, an exclusive men’s lounge for high-ranking government officials, where it hung for four decades until the Naval History and Heritage Command was given custody. Roosevelt went into the gallery, lifted the painting from the wall, and according to the source, either took it home or hung it in the Navy secretary’s bathroom. In April 1934 Rodman ordered Henry Latrobe Roosevelt, then–Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to remove the painting from the show before it opened and ensure that it would never be displayed publicly again. “Apparently a number of enlisted men are consorting with a party of streetwalkers and denizens of the red-light district.” While highly pejorative, Rodman’s description is literally correct. “It represents a most disgraceful, sordid, disreputable, drunken brawl,” he wrote. Image © 2021 Estate of Paul Cadmus / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NYĪfter spotting a reproduction of The Fleet’s In! in a preview of the exhibition, retired Navy General Admiral Hugh Rodman published a letter in multiple newspapers. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command. ![]() ![]() It was slated for inclusion in a group show at The Corcoran in Washington, D.C. ![]() Cadmus chose a group of inebriated sailors and one marine socializing with civilians in Manhattan’s Riverside Park during shore leave. In 1933 Cadmus returned to the United States to participate in the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), a New Deal program that provided artists with a weekly income to paint US scenes of their choice. The unmentioned queer presence in his painting ignited one of the earliest known cases of censorship of a gay artist in the United States.Ĭadmus-a classically trained artist whose teacher Charles Hinton was a student of the French academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme-spent two years in Europe with his lover and fellow artist Jared French. Reproductions of the work proliferated in newspapers across the country, catapulting Cadmus into the media spotlight. When the US Navy forcibly removed Paul Cadmus’s 1934 painting The Fleet’s In! from an exhibition at The Corcoran Gallery of Art before it opened that same year, a national scandal unfolded.
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