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¶ The River is dominated by one of the piers for the since-completed Fort Pitt Bridge. The pier has the quality of an ancient monument, and perhaps the giant Negro who helped build it is descended from a builder of the Pyramids. His handshake sets the theme for the whole: friendship, love and earned reward. It is a surprisingly happy picture for Koerner, but more important is the fact that in an age when few even try to paint deep space, he has painted it so well as to bring even the most reluctant viewer straight inside the picture. In the foreground, like a sunny signature he has put his own self-portrait with his wife, daughter an grandmother-in-law.
For all his wealth of sentiment, there is little sentimental about Koerner, and the America he pictures in kaleidoscopic fashion is more disturbing, all in all, than delightful. Future generations may well debate how much of this disturbing quality was in the man and how much in the nation.
*And a TIME cover artist since 1955. His 1959 cover subjects: Harry Belafonte, Paul Tillich, Henry Moore and Stuart Symington.