Koerner Center showcases ‘Real Portraits’ by its namesake

The Henry Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty is paying tribute to its namesake this fall with an exhibition titled “‘Real Portraits’: Time Covers by Henry Koerner.”

The center “is by design a community of fellows interacting with each other,” writes Gary L. Haller, director of the Koerner Center, in an introduction to the catalog. “Previous exhibitions have been of the art by Koerner Fellows, but I reasoned that no fellow could object to an exhibition of our namesake …”

Annabel Patterson, Sterling professor emeritus of English and curator of the exhibition, chose 22 “inarguable great figures from the different worlds of politics, music, the stage, sports, medicine, business, education, and the arts” for display.

“The size of Koerner’s talent was already known from his striking wartime posters (‘Save waste fats,’ the terrifying ‘Someone Talked!,’ and the militaristic ‘United we will win’), but these were representations of objects rendered symbolic of the war effort, with no humans involved,” notes Patterson in an essay in the catalog. Both the artist’s style and goals had changed by the time he was contacted by Alexander Arthur Eliot, editor of Time Magazine. “Koerner insisted on painting these new, real, important subjects from life,” she notes.

Her essay includes a passage by the artist’s son, Joseph Leo Koerner, who writes, in part: “[The insistence on painting from life] cost Time money and was sometimes annoying to the sitters who … would have been at the busiest time of their lives. He always did the whole portrait from life: over many sittings, though without a preparatory sketch. He had to work fast. He painted an underpainting in oil paint thinned with turpentine, let that dry, and painted the rest in 2 or 3 more sittings. All this took several days. Some sitters were rude.”

Of the images in the exhibition, Patterson writes, “The collection stands as an extraordinary record of an extraordinary slice of American history, from the middle of the 1950s through 1967.  The realism of the figures and their settings is modified by the Cézanne-like abstraction of the brushwork, which says above all ‘I am not a camera.’…”

The exhibition will be on view through Dec. 11, on the second floor of the Koerner Center, 149 Elm St. Those interested in seeing the show can make an appointment by calling 203-432-8209 or 203-432-8227.