Joseph Delaney was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father was an itinerant minister who moved his family of ten children frequently. Both Joseph and his brother Beauford (see no. 12) became artists of note. In 1930 Joseph Delaney settled in New York, where he studied art with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Under Benton’s tutelage, Delaney learned the value of depicting genre scenes in which the seemingly mundane is transformed into something timeless or symbolic. By 1936 Delaney himself had become an instructor of drawing under a federal art program administered by the College Art Association. Two years after his move to New York, the artist created one of his most interesting works, Coney Island, inspired by the famed public beach and recreational area off Long Island, New York. The site was a popular gathering place for the city’s working classes, immigrants, and blacks.

Coney Island is a small painting whose palette is dominated by a hazy blue, giving the image a rather dreamlike quality. The composition focuses on a merry-go-round on which children are riding. Placed front and center is the only black child on the ride; he sits atop a lion, unlike the other children, who ride horses. While the white children are painted rapidly and expressionistically, the black child and his mount are carefully articulated in tight brush strokes, which adds to their weight and underscores their presence. The child seems passive, even motionless, amidst the sense of commotion and laughter that surrounds him. Beyond the merry-go-round wait a black mother and child. They too strike a discordant note, in that they are rendered almost in a shorthand style. With their clothing and features indicated summarily in white pigment, they resemble gingerbread figures. Thus, here Delaney’s blacks occupy two poles: one fully realized and the other two-dimensional. Yet, are the artist’s depictions of blacks really that far apart? The young boy rides what appears to be a wild animal that happens to be native to Africa, which could imply that he is circumscribed by stereotype. Using the commonplace, Delaney crafted a subtle exposition of perception and race, questioning whether one can penetrate racial archetypes to perceive the individual. (KPB)