“There was on Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street a large cafeteria named Stewart’s . . . full of beatniks, delinquents, minor gangsters of its day,” Paul Cadmus said of the setting for this painting. He conveys the resident action in a tangle
of colorfully clad limbs, twisting torsos, and exaggerated facial expressions. One figure—a suit-clad gentleman in the background at right—seems calmly removed from the tumult. Turning suggestively toward the viewer as he enters the men’s restroom, he offers a reference to the gay life of the bohemian Village.
Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern, March 17 – June 15, 2019.
Gallery label from American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe , August 17, 2013–January 26, 2014.
Cadmus's satirical painting of the patrons of a New York cafeteria called Stewart's captures the chaos of this popular dining establishment, a place where, according to the artist, "With a main course (usually less than 50 cents), soup, rolls, and coleslaw were thrown in." Cadmus saw the posturing and flirting men and women who fill the scene as "beatniks, delinquents, minor gangsters." He made the work for the Public Works of Art Project, a government-funded endeavor—part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelts New Deal—that employed American artists of the Depression era, giving them a chance to earn a living. Greenwich Village Cafeteria was exhibited at the Museum in 1934, together with over 100 other works from the program, and has remained here since then on loan from the U.S. government.
Explore more
From MoMA Design Store
Installation views
We have identified this work in the following photos from our exhibition history.
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.