Henry Koerner was one of many Brooklyn based artists that wove mythic visions of Coney Island with h

Henry Koerner was one of many Brooklyn based artists that wove mythic visions of Coney Island with his own past experiences. The Barker’s Booth (1948-49) is one of the three paintings by Koerner in Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland and the second after Tunnel of Love (1947) to be based on the Coney Island slow boat ride ‘Tunnel of Laffs.’ The artist used the vernacular of Coney Island to deal with themes of memory, loss and powerlessness.Unlike Tunnel of Love, which shows a ride in action, The Barker’s Booth depicts an attraction forgotten. The shuttered entrance, a tattered wall of past promotions, and an empty barker’s booth—the podium from which a salesman would encourage passersby to take a ride—are all remnants. On the wall, there are fragmented faces of both animals and performers, notably an enormous woman who is likely Dolly Dimples (Celesta Geyer), “The World’s Most Beautiful Fat Lady.” The reflective sides of the booth depict a family whose faces and bodies have been freakishly stretched, reminiscent of both fun-house mirrors and the bending of sheet metal through age.Koerner was an Austrian Jew who fled to the United States in 1939, joined the American army, and was then a courtroom artist for the Nuremberg Trials. It was only in 1946 that he learned that his parents and brother had perished in the Holocaust. The artist’s loss and the postponement in terms of learning the fate of his loved ones is echoed through the sense of removal, solitude, and lack of human presence in the artwork. The warped representation of the family in the refective surface suggests a position of powerlessness and a present that is shaped by past distortions. The disorder of images and twisted rendering of an abandoned Coney Island allowed Koerner to address the American public’s inability to separate spectacle from devastation, in addition to the paranoia that would lead to McCarthy-era America. “But,” as Koerner stated in Life Magazine in 1948, the works were not made from anger, “I do not point a finger, I do not accuse, and there is always something I love in my paintings.”Posted by Robert SohmerHenry Koerner (America, born Austria, 1915–1991). The Barker’s Booth, 1948–49. Collection of Alice A. Grossman -- source link

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