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Mobile
Contemporary Art
A figure painter known from the 1930s on for his baldly satirical commentaries on human appetites and desires, Paul Cadmus was throughout a master draftsman. Although he undertook still-life subjects only rarely and, as he once stated, as “practice works like scales,” he achieved parity between figure and still life in Mobile. Here, a beautifully proportioned young man holds a mobile composed of beach detritus (wood, feathers, shells, and bones) in a delicate state of balance—a reference to the weightlessness of spent forms, and a meditation on mortality.
PRINTER
Pippin Press
MEDIUM
Serigraph
DATES
1953
DIMENSIONS
Image: 15 3/4 x 18 1/4 in. (40 x 46.4 cm)
Sheet: 18 7/8 x 21 1/8 in. (47.9 x 53.7 cm) (show scale)
SIGNATURE
Signed, "LXXV 72/ Cadmus" middle of composition in colored graphite
INSCRIPTIONS
Inscribed at bottom by artist "Completed Serigraph 'Mobile' print no. 72 edition of 75 (print reproduced in monograph" in colored graphite
COLLECTIONS
Contemporary Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
68.164.1
CREDIT LINE
Gift of the artist
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Paul Cadmus (American, 1904–1999). Mobile, 1953. Serigraph, Image: 15 3/4 x 18 1/4 in. (40 x 46.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 68.164.1. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, CUR.68.164.1.jpg)
EDITION
Edition: 72/75
IMAGE
overall, CUR.68.164.1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2011
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RIGHTS STATEMENT
© artist or artist's estate
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