Thursday, September 18, 2008

Why Isn't Paul Cadmus More Famous?






FBC! is blessed with a great friend who also happens to be a curator of American Art (hi Austen!). Austen taught me more about American Art than anybody else. She's a goldmine of information, but always fun and engaging. In one word, she's not a pedantic academic, but a lively and personable source of knowledge. She recently took me on a rapid tour of the newly reinstalled galleries of American Art at LACMA (in passing, all the re-installed permanent collections in the Ahmanson, Hammer and Art of The Americas buildings there are fabulous to visit, and that includes the Jorge Pardo-designed vitrines).
On this visit with Austen I became totally engrossed in a painting by Paul Cadmus, an artist I was aware of and always thought really interesting, but I never spent more than 5 minutes looking at it.
I'm going to present some details of this painting in 2 separate posts. Meanwhile, I'd like to propose for some future exhibition somewhere in a daring institution something with a large choice of Cadmus paintings, along with some Robert Crumb drawings, Peter Saul paintings, Tom of Finland's paintings, and I'd add some drawings by the French draftsman and caricaturist Albert Dubout (in addition, some caricatures by the Carracci brothers and by Leonardo, but I doubt the loans would be forthcoming). Georg Grosz is too obvious in this context. You found the idea on FBC! first.

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