Joseph Cornell

Illustrations

Fig.5. Nymphlight (1957)

Research Notes

The box is the central metaphor of Joseph Cornell’s life, just as it is the signature element of his exquisite and disturbing body of work, his factory of dreams. He made boxes to keep wonders in: small wooden boxes that he built in the basement beneath the small wooden house he shared with his mother and disabled younger brother, the two fixed stars of his existence (Laing, 2015)

he made obsessive, ingenious versions of the same story: a multitude of found objects representing expansiveness and flight, penned inside glass-fronted cases. Ballet dancers, birds, maps, aviators, stars of screen and sky, at once cherished, fetishised and imprisoned.(Laing, 2015)

The same tension between freedom and constriction ran right through Cornell’s own life. A pioneer of assemblage art, collector, autodidact, Christian Scientist, pastry-lover, experimental film-maker, balletomane and self-declared white magician, he roved freely through the fields of the mind while inhabiting a personal life of extraordinarily narrow limits. (Laing 2015)

In this period, Cornell also began to assemble what he called dossiers on his favourite subjects: folders crammed with cuttings and photographs of the ballerinas, opera singers and actresses he worshipped, among them Gloria Swanson and Anna Moffo. Other explorations, which sometimes ran for decades, were meticulously catalogued by way of topic: Advertisements, Butterflies, Clouds, Fairies, Figureheads, Food, Insects, History, Planets. Categorisation mattered to Cornell, though so, too, did intuitive leaps and flights of fancy. “A clearing house for dreams and visions,” he called his files – part research project, part devotional act. (Laing, 2015)

Prosaic work that was followed by the poetry of assemblage, of finding the right objects or images to convey the subtle, transient feelings – nostalgia, say, or joy – that Cornell experienced on his voyages through the city and which he logged in his voluminous and ardent diary (itself a collage composed of scribbled notes on napkins, paper bags and ticket stubs). (Laing, 2015)

“I certainly was not relaxed or comfortable in his presence, but why should I be? That’s hardly a complaint. He was a delicate, complicated person whose imagination worked in a very special way.” (Sontag s.d. cited in Laing, 2015)

And yet he never lost his ability to look and be moved – bowled over, even – by the things he saw, from birds in a tree (“cheery-upping of insistent Robin”), or shifts in the weather, to the marvellous traffic of his dreams and visions. (Laing, 2015)

Where his contemporaries might begin to conceptualize a work by drawing, Cornell would gather materials (typed and handwritten notes, exhibition announcements, newspaper and magazine clippings, postcards, etc.) in a dossier whose contents could be mined later for box compositions. Building these files was a form of creative exploration, an “imaginative pictorial research akin to the image-making of poetry. (Chen, 2020)

While Cornell bristled at his boxes being called “toys for adults,” he was often seeking a specific response to his creations that emulated the pure wonder and guileless pleasure a child would have in response to a favorite toy. As his boxes became increasingly valuable and desirable to art collectors, he occasionally would lend them out to neighborhood children to play with and keep safe, rather than sell them.(Chen, 2020)

List of Illustrations

Fig.1. Cornell, J (1956-58) Untitled (Celestial Navigation) [Mixed media assemblage] At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/25/joseph-cornell-wanderlust-royal-academy-exhibition-london (accessed 25/07/26)

Fig.2. Cornell, J (1943) Habitat Group for a Shooting Gallery [Mixed media assemblage] At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/25/joseph-cornell-wanderlust-royal-academy-exhibition-london (accessed 25/07/26)

Fig.3. Cornell, J (1954) Andromeda: Grand Hôtel de l’Observatoire [Mixed media assemblage] At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/25/joseph-cornell-wanderlust-royal-academy-exhibition-london (accessed 25/07/26)

Fig.4. Cornell, J (1953-54) A Parrot for Juan Gris [Mixed media assemblage] At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/25/joseph-cornell-wanderlust-royal-academy-exhibition-london (accessed 25/07/26)

Fig.5. Cornell, J (1957) Nymphlight [Film] At: https://youtu.be/8Dgw_Lqa_zk?si=jO2FwpU4VnAXMvL- (accessed 25/07/26)

Fig.6. Cornell, J (1950-1960) Space Object Box “Little Bear etc” [Mixed media assemblage] At: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/905 (accessed 25/07/26)

Fig.7. Cornell, J (c.1940) Untitled Butterfly Habitat [Box Construction with Painted Glass] At: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/99766/untitled-butterfly-habitat (accessed 25/07/26)

Fig.8. Cornell, J (c.1949) Forgotten Game [Box Construction] At: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/99773/untitled-forgotten-game (accessed 25/07/26)

Fig.9. Cornell, J (c.1948) Nouveaux Contes de Fées (New Fairy Tales) [Box Construction] At: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/99778/nouveaux-contes-de-fees-new-fairy-tales (accessed 25/07/26)

Fig.10. Cornell, J (1956) Untitled (Homage to Blériot) [Box Construction] At: https://www.artic.edu/articles/816/creative-filing-as-joyous-creation-the-works-of-joseph-cornell (accessed 25/07/26)

References

Laing, O (2015) Joseph Cornell: how the reclusive artist conquered the art world – from his mum’s basement At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/25/joseph-cornell-wanderlust-royal-academy-exhibition-london (Accessed 25/07/26)

Chen, N (2020) Creative Filing as Joyous Creation: The Works of Joseph Cornell At: https://www.artic.edu/articles/816/creative-filing-as-joyous-creation-the-works-of-joseph-cornell (Accessed 25/07/26)