Joseph Cornell

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Joseph Cornell (1903-1973) 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.
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In the studio he would sort his finds into their
eccentric categories - 'Spiders,' 'Moons,' and so
forth - and file them with boxes of his own
mementos, like love letters to Jennifer 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, peninsulas, planets, things set in
compartments, with a drop-in panel containing
twenty-one compasses, each with its needle
pointing insouciantly 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 habitat but as one strange planet among
others, which to Cornell it was.
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Cornell, JosephObject (Roses des
Vents)1942-1953Construction2 5/8 x 21 1/4 x 10
3/8 in.The Museum of Modern Art, New York
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Cornell, JosephCassiopeia 1
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Cornell, JosephVerso of Cassiopeia 1
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Cornell, JosephGrand Hotel Semiramis
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Cornell, JosephHabitat Group for a Shooting
Gallery1943Construction15 1/2 x 11 1/8 x 4 1/4
in.Des Moines Art Center, Coffin Fine Arts
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Cornell, JosephL'Egypte de Mlle Cleo de Merode
cours elementaire d'histoire naturelle1940Const
ruction4 11/16 x 10 11/16 x 7 1/4 in.Collection
Richard L. Feigen, New York
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Cornell, JosephObject (Abeilles)1940
Construction9 1/8 x 14 1/8 x 3 7/16 in.
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Cornell, JosephA Parrot for Juan GrisWinter
1953-54Construction17 3/4 x 12 3/16 x 4 5/8
in.Collection Paul Simon
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Cornell, JosephTilly Loschc. 1935Construction1
0 x 9 1/4 x 2 1/8 in.
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Cornell, JosephToward the Blue
Peninsula1951-52Construction10 5/8 x 14 15/16
x 3 15/16 in
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Cornell, JosephUntitled (Bebe Marie)Early
1940'sConstruction23 3/8 x 12 5/16 x 5 1/4
in.The Museum of Modern Art, New York
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