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This Controversial Painting Was Censored by the US Navy
Paul Cadmus’s homoerotic art
A provocative scene where one man grasps a woman’s torso while another lounges on a parapet.
A provocative scene where the women are adorned in sensual attire.
And what if I tell you that the men portrayed are US navy sailors?
Welcome to The Fleet’s In by Paul Cadmus that pushes boundaries and stirs anticipation.
Just as this painting was getting ready to be displayed at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, a national scandal broke out, which brought Cadmus a lot of attention.
Multiple copies of the painting were already circulating, and this caught the eye of retired Navy General Admiral Hugh Rodman. He was so upset that he demanded the painting to be taken down from the museum and all copies confiscated.
He published a letter in multiple newspapers —
“It represents a most disgraceful, sordid, disreputable, drunken brawl,” he wrote. “Apparently a number of enlisted men are consorting with a party of streetwalkers and denizens of the red-light district.”
This incident became one of the earliest cases of censoring a gay artist in the United States.
