The Flying Codonas

Two aerialists occupy a brilliantly lit space high inside a circus tent. One is curled into a compact shape near the upper left; the other extends diagonally across the foreground, suspended upside down with arms reaching outward. In The Flying Codonas , John Steuart Curry makes the relationship between their bodies the centre of the performance.

Whitney Museum of American Art dates the painting to 1932 and identifies its medium as tempera and oil on composition board. The work, accession 33.10, belongs to the museum's collection by purchase. ^[1] Its tall format concentrates attention on the air occupied by the performers, with little opportunity to settle into an ordinary ground-level view.

Bodies suspended in the tent

The foreground aerialist stretches from the right edge towards the lower left. His inverted position turns the familiar proportions of a standing figure into a long diagonal. Arms and torso lead the eye downwards, while the bent legs and supporting apparatus connect the body with the upper right of the picture.

The second performer has a markedly different shape. Curled tightly above and to the left, this figure appears almost circular beside the other's extended form. Curry uses that contrast to make the two bodies distinct at once. The eye moves between compression and extension, following different phases of aerial movement within a single composition.

An unoccupied trapeze appears at the left. Its narrow bar and curved suspension lines introduce another part of the apparatus without competing with the figures' scale. The empty space around it matters: the painting allows the viewer to notice where a body is absent as well as where the performers are now positioned.

The picture does not provide a complete sequence of the act. It holds a particular arrangement of bodies, ropes and open space, inviting the viewer to imagine the movement that connects them. That incompleteness contributes to its suspense. The bodies are clearly formed, but their changing relationship remains the painting's active question.

Colour, light and the supporting structure

Warm orange clothing links the performers across the composition. Against the lighter tent interior, their colour gives them a shared prominence even though they differ greatly in size and position. Shadows model their limbs and torsos, preserving a sense of physical weight within an image of flight.

Pale circular lights stand out behind the foreground performer. Elsewhere, warmer illumination spreads across the tent fabric, interrupted by darker passages and the lines of its supports. The effect is theatrical rather than evenly descriptive: some areas become strongly visible while others remain less definite.

Curry also gives the apparatus an important organizing role. Ropes cross the upper space, and a strong upright near the right helps anchor the more unstable diagonals. The performers' apparent freedom depends visually on this supporting framework. Their bodies may dominate the picture, but the surrounding equipment makes the act intelligible.

The viewpoint intensifies this concentration. No clearly described audience or circus floor supplies an ordinary place from which to measure the action. Instead, the foreground body extends so close to the picture's edges that the viewer seems to share the elevated space. The farther figure is smaller, but its compact outline remains conspicuous against the illuminated tent. Distance becomes a relationship between bodies and apparatus rather than a view across rows of spectators. This choice makes the act feel immediate while keeping its larger setting only partly visible.

The circus journey and the drawings

Curry travelled with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1932. RISD Museum's account connects that experience with drawings of aerialists that supplied material for later paintings and prints. Its collection includes the charcoal drawing Tamara Codona on the Trapeze , dated 1932, accession 1988.007. ^[10]

The drawing presents another aspect of aerial performance: the ascent of a performer and the watching figures below. It is a separate composition from Whitney's painting, with its own medium and collection history. Its value here is to show the range of situations Curry considered, rather than to identify it as a precise preliminary design for the two painted figures.

Worcester Art Museum's exhibition Collective Images emphasized the importance of Curry's sketchbooks, bringing together finished drawings, quick marks and working notes. Circus drawings formed part of that material. ^[11] Such pages allowed the artist to attend to changing poses and arrangements before deciding which relationships could sustain a larger composition.

Beach Museum of Art also owns The Codonas , a 1932 ink drawing, accession 2002.1234, from Kathleen G. Curry's bequest. ^[12] These surviving records show that the subject extended beyond a single painting. They do not make every circus drawing a study for the same finished work.

Tempera and oil on composition board

Whitney's medium description matters because the painting is sometimes loosely described as an oil on canvas. Its support is composition board, and the museum records both tempera and oil. ^[1] Those terms identify the object more accurately without supplying a complete account of how Curry built its surface.

The combination should not be treated as a licence to assign it a recipe from another painting. The visible forms can be discussed through their modelling, colour and arrangement; the exact sequence of layers would require evidence specific to this work. The apparent softness of the tent's light, for example, is a pictorial effect rather than proof of a particular varnish or pigment.

The first Whitney biennial

Whitney lists The Flying Codonas in its First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, held from 22 November 1932 to 5 January 1933. The museum's exhibition archive preserves the dates, installation photographs and a link to the original catalogue. ^[13]

That early exhibition history places the circus picture within a broad survey of contemporary American painting. Curry's subject was a public entertainment rather than an isolated farm scene, expanding the range of experiences represented by an artist associated with Regionalism. The painting's strong organization of bodies and apparatus also gave the familiar spectacle a distinctly concentrated visual form.

The separate lithograph and other circus pictures

Syracuse University Art Museum owns a lithograph titled The Flying Codonas , dated 1933, accession 1966.2164. It came from Mr. Harry and Maria Wickey. ^[14] This print is a separate object from Whitney's 1932 painting; its later date should not replace the date of the work on board.

Together with the drawings, that record establishes Curry's continuing engagement with the aerialists across different media. For another side of his circus work, see Circus Elephants , where animals, handlers and tent equipment organize a scene closer to the ground.

In The Flying Codonas , the emphasis rests on suspended human bodies. Their contrasting shapes, the empty trapeze and the tent's intersecting supports create a picture whose energy depends on the coordination of several parts. The spectacle remains convincing because Curry makes the apparatus and the physical demands of performance visible alongside the moment of flight.