Aspects+of+Suburban+Life+(Public+Dock)

Date: 1936
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1978/1978.76.3_1a.jpg?itok=1IBLJPP8 width="390" height="272" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/aspects-of-suburban-life-polo-3606"]] || Title: **Aspects of Suburban Life: Public Dock**

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

Medium: oil and tempera on fiberboard Dimensions: 31 3/8 x 52 5/8 in. (79.7 x 133.7 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Transfer from the U.S. Department of State

Accession: 1978.76.2 || “I’m called a realist painter, yet I don’t know how realistic I am---sometimes magic realist, sometimes symbolic realist, in any case always representational. I want people to know what I’m saying.” Cadmus, quoted in Kirstein, Paul Cadmus, 1992
 * Luce Center Quote: **

Public Dock depicts a group of vacationers recoiling from an electric eel that a hapless fisherman has caught. Paul Cadmus conveyed the boisterous atmosphere of an afternoon at the beach: the crush of bodies, the flap of flags on yardarms, the roar of a biplane overhead. A blowsy woman with bottle-blond hair and vivid make-up topples backward with a small child, and a bathing beauty at the lower right realizes what she is swimming with. Cadmus created this as part of his Aspects of Suburban Life series, which was intended for a post office mural. Administrators didn’t appreciate Cadmus’s humor, however, and the project was abandoned.
 * Luce Center Label: **

//Main Street//, the fourth painting in the series, became separated from the other works after the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa returned it. The Art in Embassies Program found the sexual content of //Main Street// "unsuitable" (Kloss, 241). Today the Myron Kunin Collection of American Art owns the painting.
 * Background on Aspects of Suburban Life: **

The three paintings in the Smithsonian American Art Museum are tamer. Oddly, //Main Street// is also a foot longer. Compositionally //Golf//, Polo, and //Public Dock// form a unifying arch and exhibit Renaissance devices like a worm’s eye view. Hot red, pink, orange, and yellow colors appear in the three works. Activity as well as interaction among the figures characterizes the scenes. Cadmus used actors and onlookers to create a narrative of social commentary.

Sources: Mia, @http://collections.artsmia.org/art/111502/aspects-of-suburban-life-mainstreet-paul-cadmus; William Kloss, Treasure from the National Museum of American Art (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 241-242.

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. 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.
 * Artist Biography: **

Sources: Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T012944?q=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.

Artist Biography SAAM Collections Page
 * Links: **