The diversity of the people also emerged as a strong current of social realism. In fact, the myth of America as a country where everyone lives a pastoral, carefree existence emerged with new vigor in the art of the 1930s. Regionalists were particularly fond of idealizing the past and aggrandizing the present accomplishments of the country. Occasionally artists infused an element of humor into the pathos of everyday existence, even in scenes that allude to the political disasters of the day. American scene painters captured busy city dwellers on streets, in buses, at work, and at play. Although a small group of American artists did attack the societal ills of the nation (housing shortages, unemployment) and of the world in general (the rise of fascism and militarism), most adopted a more pragmatic and even positive attitude. As a result, most of the art created in the decade prior to World War II was humanistic in orientation.Īrtists, writers, and philosophers of the period became obsessed with the social relevance of art. Although the government did not dictate the type of art that was to be produced, it did encourage the use of a representational style and American themes. Thousands of artists were employed, most through the largest program, the Works Progress Administration. Toward these ends, he established various new federal agencies, putting many more people to work to do the increased business of government. More.įour years after the stock market crash of 1929, which triggered the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated the New Deal, a program of domestic reform meant to revive the economy and alleviate the problem of mass unemployment. In the etching the image is reversed but otherwise differs only in a few minor details (see Related Works). In 1935 Cadmus produced an etching from a photograph of the painting in the hope that it would reach a larger public. According to the artist’s incomplete records, it seems that the painting was rejected from several annual exhibitions to which it was submitted soon after it was shown at the Whitney biennial, probably because of the controversy it stirred. The Coney Island Showmen’s League, a local trade group, denounced the painting as offensive and inaccurate and threatened a libel suit if the painting was not removed from the exhibition. Coney Island, with its seminude figures arranged in complex groupings, their bodies twisted and in constant motion, was for Cadmus the twentieth-century version of a baroque allegorical composition.Ĭadmus claimed that his intent was not to be sensational, but when the painting was exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s second biennial, it suffered the same hostile reception as did his earlier The Fleet’s In!.
As was his friend REGINALD MARSH, Cadmus was attracted to the elaborate compositions of old master paintings. His treatment, however, is rather baroque. Moreover, he considered the beach scene to be a classical subject. He was attracted to the Brooklyn beach because it offered him the opportunity to delineate the human figure with as little clothing as possible. His small, exacting brushstrokes impart a flickering quality to the surface, which intensifies the impression that the figures are in constant motion.Ĭadmus actually began to sketch the scene on Martha’s Vineyard, before he visited Coney Island. In the 1930s Cadmus used oil paint almost as if it were a graphic medium, consequently Coney Island looks more like a tinted drawing than a painting. Everything is exaggerated, the color verging on the garish to intensify their grossness. Swarming the beach, their bodies are strangely intertwined, their faces smiling inanely. The bathers are oblivious to their ridiculous appearance and uncouth behavior. Poking fun at the bathers’ carefree pleasures, Cadmus accumulated an odd assortment of bulging, burnt bodies. It is typical of his paintings of the period in both theme and form.Ĭadmus viewed the prosaic activity of bathing on a beach in devastatingly satirical terms. Coney Island was the first painting Cadmus made after he ceased working for the federally sponsored Public Works of Art Project.
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