Mobile
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
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.
Caption
Paul Cadmus American, 1904–1999. Mobile, 1953. Serigraph, 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). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 68.164.1. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, CUR.68.164.1.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Printer
Title
Mobile
Date
1953
Medium
Serigraph
Classification
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)
Signatures
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
Credit Line
Gift of the artist
Accession Number
68.164.1
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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