American Art Collaborative

For all its specificity of detail, Henry Koerner’s image of the exterior of a Brooklyn apartment building raises more questions than it answers. While containing recognizable elements, such as the blimp with the Mobil Pegasus symbol and the apartment building itself, the relationships among the images, especially the apartment dwellers and the fictive advertisements outside and near it, remain mysterious and unclear. Koerner’s juxtaposition of several types of representation in a highly finished style is called magic realism. Beginning with this painting, the artist frequently used imagery of brides and grooms—here posed for by Edna and Harris Goldberger, friends of the painter.