Dancing Sailors - Charles Demuth Art Print

Dancing Sailors crowds three navy boys onto a harlequin floor of slate gray and soot-black diamonds, each clasping a partner close enough to share a pulse. Sailor collars flap loose, piped in white, like pages torn from a shore leave diary.  Two young men lock arms at center, rocking hip to hip. And Charles Demuth scrawls his name above the tiles like a bar tab.

In 1917 America entered World War I, and Manhattan's ports swelled with bluejackets hungry for a night of passion and excess. Demuth, a Lancaster, Pennsylvania dandy who haunted Greenwich Village cabarets and vaudeville halls, watched them closely. His watercolor blots bloom across their uniforms in cobalt and ultramarine mottles, pooling at the seat of their trousers with open appetite. A blond sailor holds a brown-haired young man, and nobody objects.

Behind them, Cubist arcs of cream and ochre swing like searchlights sweeping a harbor. A plum skirt swirls. A pink flower tilts on a green hat. This homoerotic watercolor print keeps a gay modernist secret in plain view, painted by a man who knew exactly where to look. Hang it where the music never stops.