"I wanted to make a film about an artist and his work, without using narrators and interviewers who would come between the viewers and the subject. The goal was to get the artist to act as host in a film about himself." -David Sutherland

The artist, Paul Cadmus, is the focus of this intimate film portrait, "Paul Cadmus: Enfant Terrible at 80," directed by David Sutherland.

In 1934, while on the government's WPA, Cadmus painted a satiric view of rowdy sailors on shore leave in a New York park. The painting was chosen for a special exhibit of works by New Deal painters, and it was hung at Washington's Corcoran Gallery. Before the opening, a VIP group viewed the exhibit. The group included a strait-laced admiral who was outraged at what he considered an insult to America's sailors, and ordered the painting removed. The affair became something of a national issue, the center of an often amusing debate about government censorship and the morals of American military men. The confiscated painting, "The Fleet's In" was lost, and only recently re-discovered. Sutherland's film records Cadmus' reaction at seeing the painting for the first time after more than 45 years, at a retrospective of his work in Oxford, Ohio.

Sutherland's goal was to make a different kind of artist's profile. "I wanted to make a film about an artist and his work, without using narrators and interviewers who would come between the viewers and the subject. The goal was to get the artist to act as host in a film about himself."

Cadmus talks engagingly about subjects ranging from his life-long commitment to satire and exaggeration ("People's noses should be rubbed in all sorts of things, pleasant and unpleasant, or else they skip it.") to the paradoxical contrast between an artist's work and his life ("Be regular and ordinary in your life, like a bourgeois," he says, quoting Flaubert, "So you can be violent and original in your art.") He demonstrates his masterful technique of sketching the nude, and painting in egg tempera. He reveals much about himself and his work, but he will not, he insists, tell all. "I'm not going to unravel all the mysteries," he warns, "I think people should discover them for themselves."

"Paul Cadmus: Enfant Terrible at 80" was produced and directed by David Sutherland. Photographed by Joe Seamans. Edited by Michael Colonna. Presented by Fairfield University under the guidance of Steven Weber, Dean of Arts and Sciences; and with the research assistance of Art Historian Phillip Eliasoph. Funding was provided by the Sara Roby Foundation, Forbes Inc., and Maupintours.