GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Painted during the artist’s most celebrated period, Henry Koerner’s June Night is an important example of magical realism, a movement characterized by imaginative yet realist imagery and a clean, highly finished style. Shortly after immigrating to the United States from his native Vienna in 1939, Koerner was drafted into the US Army and later served as a court artist at the Nuremberg Trials. Haunted by the death of his parents and brother—victims of the Holocaust—the young artist returned to the US, briefly settling in Brooklyn. There he explored the chaos of postwar America and sought to memorialize his family, formulaically combining real and imagined perceptions of daily life in deeply personal cityscapes.
In this painting balancing memory and reality, Koerner’s open windows are consciously voyeuristic. The artist’s son, art historian Joseph Koerner, writes of the deeply personal familial allusions painted within each open-window vignette, noting his father’s emphasis on interpersonal relationships. The artist’s juxtaposition of intimate, private spaces viewed through the exterior of an apartment building’s brick façade is echoed in his personal motives for painting, stating, “Art is just a hole through which we can see life.”
NOTES
Created in 1948-49
Hilary Bober will provide Powerpoint that includes this work in a few months. JR
Would be good for a magical realism content chunk
Object file reviewed
------------
From letter 15 February, 1980, Josh Logan to Tom Nabors:
"Dear Tom,
I bought June Night after I had seen a color reproduction of it in Time Magazine. I was fascinated by the pictures of Koerner.
I went to the gallery and bought June Night, but I had a difficult time finding a place to hang it. It was too elaborate for my office and too depressing for the bedroom or living room.
Finally, I decided to give it to a museum as I still admired it enormously. Since the Stanley Marcuses were friends of mine, I asked them if they would like to see it with the idea of putting it in the Dallas Museum. I chose that museum because I was born in Texas and that museum was the nearest to my birthplace, Texarkana.
Best wishes,
Josh Logan"
-------------
From letter 3 July 1992, Tom Nabors:
"A few months before Josh Logan died, he and Mrs. Logan (Nedda) were in Dallas for some theatrical event and visited with them. Nedda had a modification to the story of how they came to give the painting to the Dallas Museum of Art.
Nedda had always found the subject matter of the painting distasteful and hung it in the dining room. She connived with the decorator to paint the room in colors that were totally incompatible with the colors of the painting. Josh agreed. Later Stanley Marcus was a guest in their home. Josh told Stanley his plight and asked for his advice. Stanley advised him to give it to him and he would take it to the Dallas Museum of Art."
--------------
Pink card, 6/18/81, handwritten: "couple (bride and groom): portrait of Morris and Edna Goldberger (parents of architecture critic for New York TImes Paul Goldberger) they were friends of Koerner Morris is a publisher Edna a speech therapist"
----------------
Exhibitions: Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, "From Vienna to Pittsburgh: The Art of Henry Koerner," May 28-July 31, 1983, p. 51, cat. no. 23 (illus.)
References: A. Eliot, Three Hundred Years of American Painting, Time Inc., New York, 1957, p. 261 (illus.).
"Emerging one evening from the Kings Highway elevated station in Brooklyn, he came face to face with a scene very much like June Night. The mural ad (for a photographer who specialized in wedding pictures), the poster with the sleeping baby, even the blimp, were all there. The mural, of course, made him think again of his parents, but it also seemed a gigantic "illusion" of wedded bliss, superimposed on the brick reality of the apartment house and pierced with glimpses into cramped, sweaty lives. Koerner slowly squeezed what he had seen into a tightly integrated picture, flushed with hot, wet, rosy light. The actual blimp had carried a Goodyear sign; Koerner substituted the flying red horse "because I thought it was a nicer shape." He considerably enlarged the baby's head in the poster and embellished it with sinister rips. By virtue of its size and leaden slumber, the baby almost dominates the picture; he might in fact be dreaming it all. As a whole the painting surpasses mere illustration because it implies so much more than it tells. The very theatricality of the picture seems to say that the 'real' manmade world is equally a fabric of illusions." pp. 261-63
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Koerner, Henry (America, born Austria, 1915-1991)
Cultures
Geography
Depicted location and place of origin: New York (New York/United States): TGN: 7007567
Process/materials
Oil on composition board
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
1963: Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts, gift of Joshua L. Logan
From 1963: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Foundation for the Arts Collection, transferred from the above, May 30, 1963 [1] [2]
[1] Pursuant to the April 19, 1963 Agreement of Merger between the Dallas Association and the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA), the collection of the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts was transferred to the Foundation for the Arts.
[2] The Foundation for the Arts is a non-profit corporation created as a title-holding entity to serve the people of Dallas but to operate independently of the City. The Dallas Museum of Art (at its own cost) is responsible for the care, storage, insurance, conservation and maintenance of the collection, and agrees to maintain the highest museum standards in the management and handling of the Foundation’s collection. The title to all works of art purchased or otherwise acquired by the Foundation for the Arts is retained by the Foundation.
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
Henry Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty~Read a short biography of Henry Koerner from Yale University.
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FUN FACTS
TEACHING IDEAS
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General Description
Painted during the artist’s most celebrated period, Henry Koerner’s June Night is an important example of magical realism, a movement characterized by imaginative yet realist imagery and a clean, highly finished style. Shortly after immigrating to the United States from his native Vienna in 1939, Koerner was drafted into the US Army and later served as a court artist at the Nuremberg Trials. Haunted by the death of his parents and brother—victims of the Holocaust—the young artist returned to the US, briefly settling in Brooklyn. There he explored the chaos of postwar America and sought to memorialize his family, formulaically combining real and imagined perceptions of daily life in deeply personal cityscapes.
In this painting balancing memory and reality, Koerner’s open windows are consciously voyeuristic. The artist’s son, art historian Joseph Koerner, writes of the deeply personal familial allusions painted within each open-window vignette, noting his father’s emphasis on interpersonal relationships. The artist’s juxtaposition of intimate, private spaces viewed through the exterior of an apartment building’s brick façade is echoed in his personal motives for painting, stating, “Art is just a hole through which we can see life.”
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
Henry Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty~Read a short biography of Henry Koerner from Yale University.
Notes
Created in 1948-49
Hilary Bober will provide Powerpoint that includes this work in a few months. JR
Would be good for a magical realism content chunk
Object file reviewed
------------
From letter 15 February, 1980, Josh Logan to Tom Nabors:
"Dear Tom,
I bought June Night after I had seen a color reproduction of it in Time Magazine. I was fascinated by the pictures of Koerner.
I went to the gallery and bought June Night, but I had a difficult time finding a place to hang it. It was too elaborate for my office and too depressing for the bedroom or living room.
Finally, I decided to give it to a museum as I still admired it enormously. Since the Stanley Marcuses were friends of mine, I asked them if they would like to see it with the idea of putting it in the Dallas Museum. I chose that museum because I was born in Texas and that museum was the nearest to my birthplace, Texarkana.
Best wishes,
Josh Logan"
-------------
From letter 3 July 1992, Tom Nabors:
"A few months before Josh Logan died, he and Mrs. Logan (Nedda) were in Dallas for some theatrical event and visited with them. Nedda had a modification to the story of how they came to give the painting to the Dallas Museum of Art.
Nedda had always found the subject matter of the painting distasteful and hung it in the dining room. She connived with the decorator to paint the room in colors that were totally incompatible with the colors of the painting. Josh agreed. Later Stanley Marcus was a guest in their home. Josh told Stanley his plight and asked for his advice. Stanley advised him to give it to him and he would take it to the Dallas Museum of Art."
--------------
Pink card, 6/18/81, handwritten: "couple (bride and groom): portrait of Morris and Edna Goldberger (parents of architecture critic for New York TImes Paul Goldberger) they were friends of Koerner Morris is a publisher Edna a speech therapist"
----------------
Exhibitions: Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, "From Vienna to Pittsburgh: The Art of Henry Koerner," May 28-July 31, 1983, p. 51, cat. no. 23 (illus.)
References: A. Eliot, Three Hundred Years of American Painting, Time Inc., New York, 1957, p. 261 (illus.).
"Emerging one evening from the Kings Highway elevated station in Brooklyn, he came face to face with a scene very much like June Night. The mural ad (for a photographer who specialized in wedding pictures), the poster with the sleeping baby, even the blimp, were all there. The mural, of course, made him think again of his parents, but it also seemed a gigantic "illusion" of wedded bliss, superimposed on the brick reality of the apartment house and pierced with glimpses into cramped, sweaty lives. Koerner slowly squeezed what he had seen into a tightly integrated picture, flushed with hot, wet, rosy light. The actual blimp had carried a Goodyear sign; Koerner substituted the flying red horse "because I thought it was a nicer shape." He considerably enlarged the baby's head in the poster and embellished it with sinister rips. By virtue of its size and leaden slumber, the baby almost dominates the picture; he might in fact be dreaming it all. As a whole the painting surpasses mere illustration because it implies so much more than it tells. The very theatricality of the picture seems to say that the 'real' manmade world is equally a fabric of illusions." pp. 261-63
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Koerner, Henry (America, born Austria, 1915-1991)
Cultures
Geography
Depicted location and place of origin: New York (New York/United States): TGN: 7007567
Process/materials
Oil on composition board
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
1963: Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts, gift of Joshua L. Logan
From 1963: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Foundation for the Arts Collection, transferred from the above, May 30, 1963 [1] [2]
[1] Pursuant to the April 19, 1963 Agreement of Merger between the Dallas Association and the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA), the collection of the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts was transferred to the Foundation for the Arts.
[2] The Foundation for the Arts is a non-profit corporation created as a title-holding entity to serve the people of Dallas but to operate independently of the City. The Dallas Museum of Art (at its own cost) is responsible for the care, storage, insurance, conservation and maintenance of the collection, and agrees to maintain the highest museum standards in the management and handling of the Foundation’s collection. The title to all works of art purchased or otherwise acquired by the Foundation for the Arts is retained by the Foundation.
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