Joseph Cornell
By collecting and carefully juxtaposing found objects in small, glass-front boxes, Cornell created visual poems in which surface, form, texture, and light play together. Using things we can see, Cornell made boxes about things we cannot see: ideas, memories, fantasies, and dreams.
He was a kind of magician, turning everyday objects into mysterious treasures. In Homage to the Romantic Ballet, plastic ice cubes become jewels when set in a velvet-lined box, souvenirs of a famous ballerina's midnight performance on the frozen Russian steppe. A small glass jar filled with coloured sand is transformed into powdered gold from a
Mayan temple, carefully preserved in Cornell's Museum.
A symbolist, Cornell used the found materials that inhabit
his boxes—paper birds, clay pipes, clock springs, balls, and rings—to hint at abstract ideas. A metal spring from a discarded wind-up clock may evoke the passage of time; a ball might represent a planet or the luck associated with playing a game. Although his constructions are enveloped in nostalgia—the longing for something that happened long ago and far away—their appearance is thoroughly modern.
Cornell grew up in a grand house in Nyack, New York, a picturesque Victorian town on the Hudson River. Cornell's parents shared their love of music, ballet, and literature with their children. Evenings were spent around the piano, or listening to music on the family Victrola. Trips to New York meant vaudeville shows in Times Square or magic acts at the Hippodrome. His father often returned from his job in Manhattan with new sheet music, silver charms, or a pocket full of candy. But Cornell's childhood was not without sadness. His brother, born with cerebral palsy, was confined to a wheelchair. Joseph, who was extremely attached to Robert, became his principal caretaker.
Cornell hardly ventured beyond New York State, yet the notion of travel was central to his art. His imaginary voyages began as he searched Manhattan’s antique bookshops and dime stores, collecting a vast archive of paper ephemera and small objects to make his signature glass-fronted ‘shadow boxes’.
These miniature masterpieces transform everyday objects into spellbinding treasures. Together they reveal his fascination with subjects from astronomy and cinema to literature and ornithology and especially his love of European culture, from the Romantic ballet to Renaissance Italy. -
Reflection
As I employ the use of objects through out my practice I am reminded of the work of Joseph Cornell, and his poetic theatres. Having already done a lot of research on Cornell on previous projects and writing essays on him in the past, I am using this page as more of an illustration on the things that I find interesting about his work. To that end the main thing I love about Cornell are the layers of metaphors in his work, that leave the viewer intrigued and yet content because of the sense that you have taken away and understood at least some of the work. It was also through thinking about the work of Cornell that I had my idea to begin to develop a series of 'Time Capsules for People that don't Exist' a body of work that is dedicated to creating a series of narratives using objects and concealing them into time capsules for people to re-discover year from now. By placing these objects in the form of a time capsule an intimate bond between the object is created. The objects I have chosen to feature within the boxes are from many time periods, as I feel that it is through many time periods that a person is made. Influences are drawn from a wide variety of stimuli, making each person true an individual.
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