The Fleet's In!,

1934

<p><em>The Fleet’s In!</em> originated as one of Paul Cadmus’s most important early works, commissioned in 1934 as a mural painting by the Public Works of Art Project of the Works Project Administration, or WPA. Sailors on shore leave are depicted in complex poses and relationships, including, most notoriously at the time, a same-sex couple. The erotic exaggeration of clinging trousers and bulging crotches led to controversy: Admiral Hugh Rodman attacked it for representing “a most disgraceful, sordid, disreputable, drunken brawl,” while the secretary of the navy found it “right artistic” but “not true to the Navy.” The work was withdrawn from its inaugural exhibition, but its reproduction as an etching established a pattern in Cadmus’s career for disseminating his often-controversial work.</p>