Adventures of the Blackgang

thenewloverofbeauty:

Photography by Paul Cadmus

(via malousum)

Paul Cadmus, The Fleet’s In - 1934

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)

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, Sailors and Floosies, 1938

The Pleasures of the Mariners