Hide/Seek: “What I Believe“ by Paul Cadmus

Discussion by Jonathan Katz, co-curator of “Hide/Seek“ and Chair of the Visual Studies Doctoral Program at SUNY-Buffalo. Paul Cadmus’s depiction of a world divided between light and darkness, virtue and vice, homosexuality and heterosexuality, summed up not only what was at stake, but also what was of value at the end of World War II. To the right are the forces of evil, shown both allegorically and historically, as in the figure of Hitler. But to the left are scenes of largely homoerotic love and creati