1914, Joseph Stella, Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras -- Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven)
From the museum label: The Italian-born Joseph Stella wrote that Coney Island presented the "most intense arabesque... [of the] surging crowd and the revolving machines generating... violent, dangerous pleasures." This cacophony of electric lights, gyrating dancers, and radiating steel beams of the Ferris wheel and roller coasters was his first American subject. Fragments of honky-tonk signs make reference to the resort's popular attractions, such as Steeplechase Park and Feltman's restaurant, where the hotdog was invented. The letters C-O-M allude to the commedia dell'arte, the European equivalent of secular Mardi Gras.
1914, Joseph Stella, Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras -- Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven)
From the museum label: The Italian-born Joseph Stella wrote that Coney Island presented the "most intense arabesque... [of the] surging crowd and the revolving machines generating... violent, dangerous pleasures." This cacophony of electric lights, gyrating dancers, and radiating steel beams of the Ferris wheel and roller coasters was his first American subject. Fragments of honky-tonk signs make reference to the resort's popular attractions, such as Steeplechase Park and Feltman's restaurant, where the hotdog was invented. The letters C-O-M allude to the commedia dell'arte, the European equivalent of secular Mardi Gras.