GLR July-August 2022

Maurice to me—the gay novel that wasn’t published until many years after his death.” Cadmus admired the values that Forster wrote about—tolerance, sympathy, kindness—and shared Forster’s sense of loss over not being able to express openly the topics that were so dear to both of them. In an essay that anticipated World War II, Forster declared: “If there’s to be survival of Western culture in the coming conflagration, it’s going to be because an aristocratic ‘Community of the Sensi tive’ will keep culture alive. The sensitive know each other. They catch each other’s eyes in the street”—an obvious refer ence to homosexuals. Ten years later, having witnessed the destruction anticipated by Forster, Cadmus painted What I Believe (1948), in which a loving nude male couple separates the gay world from the straight. On the left, he shows a homosexual Arcadia of nude artists in a beautiful, peaceful world, with Jared French and his wife Margaret placing their hands on Cadmus. The right, straight side is an apocalyptic image of death and destruction presided over by Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. A phallic light house stands in the distance, and the clouds form a question mark, as if to ask: Which will it be? In 1964, Cadmus met Jon Anderson (1937–2018), a hand some cabaret performer three decades his junior. While it was physical attraction that first drew Cadmus to Anderson, it was their love and collaboration that bound them together. Anderson became Cadmus’ muse, causing him to abandon his satirical, controversial work in favor of sensual, intimate drawings of Jon’s sculptural body. Philip Eliasoph, a professor who curated Cadmus’ 1981 retrospective, declared that “Cadmus’ drawings of Anderson almost single-handedly resurrected figurative art.” “After I met Jon, I never wanted to be with anyone else,” Cadmus once remarked. Showing no sign of jealousy, Kirstein built Cadmus a house on the grounds of his Connecticut prop erty, where Cadmus lived with Anderson for 35 years. The two cooked for Kirstein and Fidelma every Saturday. On his last day of life, Cadmus took his usual walk, got into bed withAnderson, and quietly passed away. Cadmus stated that he belonged to a generation for which dis cretion signaled an unspoken ethical code. Still, by the time ho mosexuality was decriminalized in the 1960s (in New York), Cadmus himself—unlike Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Ellsworth Kelley, Robert Indiana, or even Andy Warhol—was already out as a gay artist. A 2019 exhibition The Young and Evil , organized by NewYork’s David Zwirner Gallery, finally gave Cadmus and his circle the credit they deserved. Its curator, critic Jarrett Earnest, stated: “There was another mod ernism beating at the heart of NewYork’s culture in the early 20th century. These artists were boldly homosexual at a time when it was criminalized and pathologized, expressing an otherwise for bidden and reviled sexuality.” Some works in the exhibition made modern-day viewers gasp, starting with never-before-seen draw ings by Cadmus of gay sex acts. In response to this illuminating reappraisal, a critic said of Cadmus: “No artist has been as sincere, delicate, realistic and ro mantic, erotic yet not exploitative about homosexuality.”Another described Cadmus as the most overlooked major American artist of the 20th century. No doubt Cadmus would have been pleased that he was no longer pigeonholed as a “gay artist” but recog nized for his trailblazing work as an (unmodified) artist. July–August 2022

o A nne E L int y ineteenth-Centur N utla ender O S U nmaki The G n with gender-ambiguous embo Anne E. Linton has written the Jen Manio tant An impor emergence and acceptan ‘ Th e book challenge ‘ .

ng

ws of

France

y criticism ounded literar orically gr ity of California, Berkeley) n Fawcett Distinguished Professor .’ eteenth centur w sex was understoo etation of ho r y Trans* and Female Masculinity of .’ istor y Fran diment in nineteenth-centur wing fascina o fi rst account of a gr , Amherst College n ead!’ and fascinating r ’ ue sex. tr ce of the concept of ‘ ws of the s longstanding vie y of gender and sexuality ce tion d

, author Jack Halberstam uly compelling h … a tr

‘ Th is book is a model of hist of History (Univers , Hele Thomas W. Laqueur in the nin evisionist interp and a major r

PLiteraturePerfor @CU P_LitPerform @CU cambridge.org/unmak

ingsex

mance

nd Me “ BJU a

UNIVERSITY

ugapress.or OF GEORGIA PRES g S

21