Night+in+Bologna

Date: 1958
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1986/1986.6.87_1a.jpg?itok=pqdVYgdB width="231" height="330" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/night-bologna-3619"]] || Title: **Night in Bologna**

Artist: **Paul Cadmus** Born: New York, New York 1904 Died: Weston, Connecticut 1999

Medium: egg tempura on fiberboard Dimensions: 50 3/4 x 35 in. (129.0 x 89.0 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation

Accession: 1986.6.87 || //Night in Bologna// is a dark comedy of sexual tensions played out on a stage of shadowy arcades. In the foreground, a soldier on leave throws off a visible heat that suffuses the air around him with a red glow. He casts an appraising look at a worldly woman nearby, who gauges the interest of a man seated at a café table. The gawky tourist is unaware of her attentions, and looks longingly at the man in uniform. Cadmus left the outcome unclear because he was more interested in the tangle of human instincts than in tidy resolutions. He once said that he would always rather paint “a novel” than “a short story.”
 * Gallery Label: **

Paul Cadmus is known for critically depicting social concerns relevant to contemporary life. In particular, many of his works deal with humorous and romantic sexual themes as well as social class differences. From 1919 to 1926 Cadmus studied at the National Academy of Design and at the Art Students League in 1928. Later with artist Jared French (1905-1988) he toured Italy, where Cadmus admired the technical draftsmanship and classical composition of Italian Renaissance paintings. Seeing such works inspired Cadmus to use egg tempera, which he often combined with oil paint. Thus, the monumental style and physical appearance of the artist’s paintings share some similarities with the Renaissance style.
 * Artist Biography: **

Cadmus is also remembered for his work as a WPA artist, and for his aversion to gender biases and dislike of using narrow categories to identify artists.

Sources: Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T012944q=paul+cadmus+&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit ; Philip Eliasoph, “A Tribute to Paul Cadmus” University of Chicago Press, vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 2000), 90-94; William Kloss, Treasure from the National Museum of American Art (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 150, 241-243.

Cadmus associated the color scheme of the paintings symbolically with the Seven Deadly Sins. He stated ‘“The soldier is in red light (Lust), the woman is in golden-yellow light (Money, Avarice), and the traveler is in a green light (Envy)”’ (Kloss, 242).
 * Cadmus’ evaluation of //Night in Bologna//: **

When asked by his friend Philip Eliasoph which painting he would save if a fire occurred during a retrospective, Cadmus replied, ‘“Night in Bologna is the summa of my career.”’ Eliasoph then explains: “Painted in 1958, it synthesizes every element of Cadmus’ allegorical, narrative-driven imagery. Powerful sexual psychic tension locks three people in a triangle resembling Piero’s Flagellation, the image he considered ‘the most perfect painting in the world.’ 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 (Cadmus?), while he gazes back at the Italian man with envy (Eliasoph, 94).”

Source: Philip Eliasoph, “A Tribute to Paul Cadmus” University of Chicago Press, vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 2000), 90-94; William Kloss, Treasure from the National Museum of American Art (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 242.

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