PaJaMa and Environs - II

Paul Cadmus
Jerry
(Jared French)
1931
oil on canvas
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Paul Cadmus
Shore Leave
1933
tempera and oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Paul Cadmus
Going South
1934
etching
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Paul Cadmus
Horseplay
1935
etching
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Paul Cadmus
Sailors and Friends
1938
tempera and oil on linen, mounted on panel
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Paul Cadmus
Two Boys on a Beach #1
1938
etching
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

George Platt Lynes
Paul Cadmus
ca. 1937
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Paul Cadmus
1938
gelatin silver print
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Paul Cadmus
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

George Platt Lynes
Untitled (Paul Cadmus)
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

George Platt Lynes
Paul Cadmus
1941
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

George Platt Lynes
Paul Cadmus with Triangle
ca. 1941
gelatin silver print
Indianapolis Museum of Art

George Platt Lynes
Paul Cadmus
ca. 1942
gelatin silver print
Dallas Museum of Art

Paul Cadmus
Fantasia on a Theme by Dr. S.
1946
tempera on board
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Paul Cadmus
The Bath
1951
tempera on board
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Paul Cadmus
The Bath
1953
etching
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Cadmus
Finistere
1952
tempera on paper, mounted on panel
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Paul Cadmus
Bar Italia
1953-55
tempera on panel
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Cadmus
Night in Bologna
1958
tempera on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Cadmus
Nude #179
1983
acrylic and crayon on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Cadmus
Teddo
1985
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Quince Tree

We had in the end, only the weather for a subject.

Luckily, we lived in a world with seasons –

we felt, still, access, to variety:

darkness, euphoria, various kinds of waiting.

I suppose, in the true sense, our exchanges

couldn't be called conversation, being

dominated by accord, by repetition.

And yet it would be wrong to imagine

we had neither sense of one another nor

deep response to the world, as it would be wrong to believe

our lives were narrow, or empty. 

We had great wealth.

We had, in fact, everything we could see

and while it is true we could see

neither great distance nor fine detail,

what we were able to discern we grasped

with a hunger the young can barely conceive,

as though all experience had been channeled into

these few perceptions.

Channeled without memory.

Because the past was lost to us as referent,

lost as image, as narrative. What had it contained?

Was there love? Had there been, once,

sustained labor? Or fame, had there ever been

something like that?

In the end, we didn't need to ask. Because

we felt the past; it was, somehow,

in these things, the front lawn and back lawn,

suffusing them, giving the little quince tree

a weight and meaning almost beyond enduring.

Utterly lost and yet strangely alive, the whole of our human existence –

it would be wrong to think

because we never left the yard

that what we felt there was somehow shrunken or partial.

In its grandeur and splendor, the world

was finally present.

And it was always this we discussed or alluded to

when we were moved to speak.

The weather. The quince tree.

You, in your innocence, what do you know of this world?

– Louise Glück (2001)