Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell’s
biography, if such an entity were
imaginable to him, could have
seemed only a grim joke, an as-
semblage of remarkably unre-
markable moments. A biography
needs a hero, a Picasso or a Jack-
son Pollock,someone to get drunk,
smash up cars, and bed women.
Cornell didn’t drink, never learned
to drive, and, to his regret, died a
virgin. On the other hand, Cornell
was no stranger to desire. For
women he felt a deep reverence (Cover)
as well as a nearly breathless Object (Roses des Vents).
longing. In his sixties, he finally
relented and had his first physical
1942-53 | Brown hinged box construction | 2.5 x
21 x 10 in.
A Pioneer of Assemblage.
relationships. But up until then The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
he was unable to permit himself
Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Murphy Fund.
Signed.
1903-1972
anything as imulsive as a love
affair. An art monk, Cornell was Wood lid divided into 3 latched parts, interior
determined to repent, for what of lid lined with German maps of the Coral Sea
and the Great Autralian Bight.
sin he was not quite sure. Of one
thing, however, he was sure: he Interior divided into upper and lower areas
was drawn to a vision of chaste- by removeable wood panel, its bottom surfaced
ness for himself, a vision that gov- with plexiglass on which rest 21 compasses, fit-
ted into holes (3 rows 0f 7) pierced through pan-
erned the arc of his life as well as el. Lower area divided by corrugated cardboard
his work. Paradoxically, the same and wood strips into 17 compartments of un-
impulse that condemned him to a equal size, which contain maps, spirals, marbles,
lacerating aloneness would lead to plaster chips, spring, seeds, shells, glass balls,
beetle, sequins, torn paper,pins, paper fish, con-
romantic rapture in his art. stelllation diagrams, etc.

-From “Utopia Parkway: The Life Five compartments are covered in clear, green,
and Work of Joseph Cornell” by yellow, or blue glass; some are painted or lined
with paper. Rose des vents is French term for
Deborah Solomon compass dial.

(From top to bottom)
Untitled
1942 | Construction | 13 1/8 x 10 x 3 1/2 in.
Private collection, New York
Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall)
1945-46 | Construction | 20 1/2 x 16 x 3 1/2 in.
Collection Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Bergman, Chicago
Untitled (Medici Boy)
1942-1952 | Construction |13 15/16 x 11 3/16 x
3 7/8 in.
Estate of Joseph Cornell
He had no formal training in
art and his most characteristic
works are his highly distinctive
`boxes’. These are simple boxes,
usually glass-fronted, in which he
arranged surprising collections of
photographs or Victorian bric-à-
brac in a way that has been said
to combine the formal austerity
of Constructivism with the lively
fantasy of Surrealism. Like Kurt
Schwitters he could create poetry
from the commonplace. Unlike
Schwitters, however, he was fasci-
nated not by refuse, garbage, and
the discarded, but by fragments
of once beautiful and precious
objects, relying on the Surrealist
technique of irrational juxtaposi-
(Top)
Untitled (Solar Set)
c.1956-58 | Construction | 11 1/2 x 16 1/4 x 3 5/8 in.
Collection Donald Karshan, New York
(Bottom)
Untitled (The Hotel Eden).
c.1945 | Brown box construction |15 x 15 x 5 in.
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Signed.
Interior partially lined with paper, painted white,
divided into 3 areas by white wood strips.
Contains yellow wood ball resting on white wood
dowels; spiral-painted paperboard cutout and
metal spiral behind wood-framed glass window
painted with spiral; cutout of parrot, mounted
on wood, resting on wood branch; cord passing
from bottom of box through parrot’s beak to
spiral; music box enclosed in wood in which sits
inverted glass bottle with newspaper stopper
containing 12 white cylindrical wood blocks;
3 loose cylindrical wood blocks; white dowel
placed at angle below parrot; and 3 printed
labels affixed to back of box, including adver-
tisement for Hotel Eden, which is splattered with
white paint.

(From top to bottom)
Untitled (Window Facade)
c.1950 | Box construction| 18 5/8 x 12 3/8 x 3 1/2 in
The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas
painted wood, glass, cracked glass, and mirror
. pigeonholes, sometimes - as in
A Parrot for Juan Gris
Winter 1953-54 | Construction | 17 3/4 x 12 3/16x 4 5/8 in.
Collection Paul Simon
Tilly Losch
c.1935 | Construction | 10 x 9 1/4 x 2 1/8 in.
Collection Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Bergman, Chicago
in unsullied purity, expressed in
the strict architecture within his
boxes: white compartments and
his series of ‘Dovecotes’ - without
anything else in them. It is an im-
agery of New England spareness,
suggesting clapboard meeting-
houses, plain fences, and rectitude
above all.”
- From “American Visions”, by
Robert Hughes
L’Egypt de Mlle Cléo de Mérode.
1940.| 4 x 10 x 7 in.
Collection Richard L. Feign, New York.
Signed.
Hinged Casket; lid lined with marbleized paper,
cutouts of printed phrases
L’EGYPT /de Mlle de Cléo de Mérode/COURS
ELEMENTAIRE/D’HISTOIRE NATURELLE and
picture of seated Egyptian female; box divided
by sheet of glass into 2 horizontal levels. Con-
tents of sealed lower level: loose red sand, doll’s
forearm, wood ball, German coin, several glass
and mirror fragments. Contents of upper level: 12
removeable cork-stopped bottles (tops of corks
covered with marbleized paper, most bottles la-
beled with cutout printed words), in 4 rows of 3
set in holes in sheet of wood covered with mar-
bleized paper, strips of glass forming 2 rows of
glass-covered compartments (3 each) at sides of
bottles.
Contents of each bottle (and labels): (1) cutout
sphinx head, loose red sand; (2) numerous short
yellow filaments with glitter adhered to one end
(Gameh, Kontah/Blé [Triticum sativum, Linn]); (3)
2 intertwined paper spirals (Les reptiles des illes
du Nile); (4) cutout of Woman’s head (CLEO DE
MERODE/momie/sphinx); (5) cutout of camels
and men, loose yellow sand, ball (sauterelles).
Cléo de Mérode was a famous courtesan and
ballerina in the 1890s.
tion and on the evocation of nos-
talgia for his appeal (he befriended
several members of the Surrealist
movement who settled in the USA
during the Second World War).
Cornell also painted and made
Surrealist films.
“[Cornell] spent most of his life in
a frame house on Utopia Parkway
in Queens, New York, with his
mother and his crippled brother,
Robert. From there this reclusive,
gray, long-beaked man would
sally forth on small voyages of
discovery, scavenging for relics of
the past in New York junk shops
and flea markets. To others, these
deposits might be refuse, but to
Cornell they were the strata of
repressed memory, a jumble of
elements waiting to be grafted
and mated to one another. “In the
studio he would sort his finds into
their eccentric categories - ‘Spi-
ders,’ ‘Moons,’ and so forth - and
file them with boxes of his own
mementos, like love letters to Jen-
nifer Jones and other movie stars
or ballet dancers he’d never met;
and from them he made boxes. He
would tinker with them for years.
Object (Roses des Vents) was
begun in 1942 and not finished
until 1953. It is full of emblems
of voyages Cornell never took, a
little box of mummified waves and
shrunken exotic coasts, peninsu-
las, planets, things set in com-
partments, with a drop-in panel
containing twenty-one compasses,
each with its needle pointing in-
souciantly in a different direction
from that of its neighbor. Even
the map on the inside of the lid,
cut from some nineteenth-century
German chart book, depicts an
excessively remote coastline: that
of the Great Australian Bight. The
earth is presented not as our daily

(Top)
Untitled (Soap Bubble Set).
c. 1936 | Construction | 15 x 14 x 5 in.
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford Connecticut,
The Henry and Walter Keney Fund.
Brown box with recessed metal handle on each
side and removable glass front. Interior lined with
pale blue fabric held in place by blue thumbtacks,
rear wall partially lined with French map headed
CARTE GEOGRAPIE DE LA LUNE .
Interior divided into 7 compartmentsby 6 sheets
of glass painted white on outside edges and held
in place by metal pins.
Upper compartment: 4 hanging cylindrical blocks
painted white with reproductions adhered to the
blocks on each end;
left compartment: cordial glass holding egg paint-
ed blue with gold highlights;
right compartment: small blue and gold child’s
head attached to wood block;
center compartment: clay pipe, flanked by two
white wood elements attached to rear wall rest-
ing on glass shelf, below which are three glass
discs, each in its own compartment.
habitat but as one strange planet
among others, which to Cornell it
was.
“Some of his beginnings in the
1930s lay in Surrealism: Cornell
was particularly affected by the
collages of Victorian steel engrav-
ings in Max Ernst’s series La
Femme 100 tetes. Yet nowhere in
Surrealism is there an imagery
quite like his. Cornell distin-
guished between what he called
‘the Max Ernst white magic side’
of Surrealism and its darker, more
violent aspects. He embraced the
first but shied away from the
second. He didn’t share the revolu-
tionary fantasies of the Surrealists
or their erotic obsessions. There
isn’t a sexual image, let alone a
trace of amour fou, in his entire
output. The most he would permit
himself was a gentle fetishism. If,
as some have thought, Cornell’s
imagery had to do with child-
hood, then it was one which no
child has ever known, an infancy
without rage or desire. Sometimes
he would crack the glass pane
that protected the contents of the
box, but that is all he allowed in
the way of violence - it suggests
that the sanctuary of imagination
has been attacked. That glass,
the ‘fourth wall’ of his miniature
theater, is also the diaphragm
between two contrasting worlds.
Outside, chaos, accident, and
libido, the stuff of unprotected life;
inside, sublimation, memory, and
peace, one of whose chief emblems
was the caged bird, the innocent
resident of The Hotel Eden, 1945.
“At times, though not often,
Cornell’s imagination looks fey
or precious. There is a treacher-
ous line between sentiment and
sentimentality, particularly in his
(Top )
Untitled (Bébé Marie).
Early 1940s | Construction | 23 x 12 x 5 in.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Purchase
(Bottom)
Habitat Group for a Shooting Gallery
1943 | Construction |15 1/2 x 11 1/8 x 4 1/4 in.
Des Moines Art Center, Coffin Fine Arts
evocations of his own Edwardian
environment as a child. Yet his
gothic fantasies and fussily rever-
ential evocations of dead Victorian
ballerinas - Marie Taglioni be-
ing a special favorite - are usu-
ally drawn back from the edge by
Cornell’s rigor as a formal artist.
Not for nothing did he call him-
self a ‘constructivist.’ Cornell was
intensely Francophile, though he
had never been to France - witness
his many references to French
provincial hotels, and even by the
worn, comfy French colors of his
box interiors, the ivory whites
and pinks and faded bluegrays.
But he was, just as intensely, an
American artist, with his asexual
Puritan imagination and his belief