Partner Paul Cadmus
Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a TimeISBN-13: 978-1500563325 (CreateSpace-Assigned)
ISBN-10: 1500563323
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Together from 1964 to 1999: 35 years.
Jon Andersson (born 1937)
Paul Cadmus (December 17, 1904 – December 12, 1999)
Jon Anderson, a former cabaret singer, became Paul Cadmus's longtime companion of 35 years and the subject of many of his works. Paul Cadmus was an American artist who painted with egg tempera. For a time Cadmus worked together with his lover, Jared French, and French’s wife, Margaret, calling themselves PaJaMa (Paul + Jared + Margaret). Anderson and Cadmus met on a pier on Nantucket in 1964, when Andersson was twenty-seven and Cadmus was fifty-nine. "I never wanted to be with anyone else", Cadmus remarked. Thirty-six years later, at sixty-three and ninety-five, when Paul died, they were still together. Jon can be seen in the David Sutherland 1986 PBS Documentary about Paul Cadmus entitled “Paul Cadmus, Enfant Terrible at 80.” In the documentary, Cadmus joked that the modeling job he had offered Jon Anderson was actually just an excuse to meet the handsome young cabaret star. But even if it was physical attraction that first drew Cadmus to Anderson, it was their love, friendship and collaboration -- Cadmus, the artist, and Anderson, his muse -- that bound them. Up until his death in 1999, Cadmus created dozens of drawings and paintings of Anderson -- a collection of sensuous, erotic and often witty pieces. Many of these works were shown in "Muse," an exhibition at the Westport Arts Center held in 2012. Philip Eliasoph, professor of art history at Fairfield University, noted, "Cadmus and life model Anderson almost single-handedly resurrected figurative art. (Cadmus) choreographed the graceful movements of Anderson in the same way that George Balanchine directed his male ballet dancers." Cadmus died in 1999 and in 2006 Anderson married Philis Raskind, a figurative artist with whom he shared a similar relationship to what he had with Cadmus. The couple first became friends in 1970 at the National Academy of Design, where Raskind-Anderson was a student and Anderson was a model. In addition to her work as a sculptor and teacher, Philis produced many cabaret shows in NYC and was an active participant in celebrity driven fund raisers for AIDS Research and Prevention, co-producing the first benefit for the AIDS Research Center at Bailey House NYC. Philis Raskind Anderson died on September 30, 2018, after a year long struggle with brain cancer; three weeks later, Jon Anderson, now 81, died as well.
PAUL CADMUS (1904 - 1999)
Seated Male Nude.
Conté crayon on tan laid paper. 425x374 mm; 16 3/4x14 3/4 inches. Signed in white crayon and inscribed in ink, lower right recto. Circa 1960.
Though Cadmus was known to be very private, his large paintings burst with homoeroticism and celebrate male beauty by drawing attention to genitalia and rippling muscles. His technically brilliant male nude drawings are more tender and less satirical than his paintings.
Provenance: Estate of the artist; Estate of Jon Anderson (Cadmus' executor), Weston, Connecticut; private collection, New York.
