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{{Short description|American visual artist and film-makerfilmmaker (1903–1972)}}
{{About|the artist and sculptor|the writer|Joseph Bharat Cornell}}
{{more footnotes needed|date=October 2016}}
{{Infobox artist
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'''Joseph Cornell''' (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) was an American visual artist and film-makerfilmmaker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of [[Assemblage (art)|assemblage]]. Influenced by the [[Surrealist]]s, he was also an avant-garde [[experimental filmmaker]]. He was largely self-taught in his artistic efforts, and improvised his own original style incorporating cast-off and discarded artifacts. He lived most of his life in relative physical isolation, caring for his mother and his disabled brother at home, but remained aware of and in contact with other contemporary artists.
 
==Life==
Joseph Cornell was born in [[Nyack, New York|Nyack]], New York,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wydcAgAAQBAJ&q=Joseph+Cornell+nyack&pg=PA13|title=Joseph Cornell's Vision of Spiritual Order|first=Lindsay|last=Blair|date=June 1, 2013|publisher=Reaktion Books|isbn=9781780231600|via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nyacknewsandviews.com/2014/08/nsl_haunted-by-art/|title=Nyack Sketch Log: A House Haunted by Art|website=Nyack News and Views|date=26 August 2014 }}</ref> to Joseph Cornell, a textiles industry executive,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2pdIAQAAIAAJ&q=Joseph+Cornell+nyack+merchant+father|title=Exploring Joseph Cornell's Visual Poetry: Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, Missouri, April 9-May 9, 1982|first1=James H.|last1=Cohan|first2=Arthur M.|last2=Greenberg|date=April 19, 1982|publisher=WuWU Gallery of Art|isbn=9780936316031|via=Google Books}}</ref> and Helen Ten Broeck Storms Cornell, who had trained as a nursery teacher.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D-ChDwAAQBAJ&q=Ten+Broeck+Storms+Cornell+nursery+teacher&pg=PT95|title=A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century|first=Jerome|last=Charyn|date=February 22, 2016|publisher=Bellevue Literary Press|isbn=9781934137994|via=Google Books}}</ref> Both parents came from socially prominent families of Dutch ancestry, long-established in New York State.<ref>{{cite book |title=Joseph Cornell: Fernweh |publisher=Kunsthistorisches Museum |first1=Jasper |last1=Sharp |first2=Sarah |last2=Lea |location=Vienna, Austria |date=2015 |url=https://press.khm.at/fileadmin/content/KHM/Presse/2015/Joseph_Cornell/KHM_Booklet_Cornell_Presse_engl.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230417153821/https://press.khm.at/fileadmin/content/KHM/Presse/2015/Joseph_Cornell/KHM_Booklet_Cornell_Presse_engl.pdf|archive-date=2023-04-17 |access-date=2023-12-26 |isbn=9783990200964}}</ref> Cornell's father died April 30, 1917, leaving the family in straitened circumstances.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xzcrDwAAQBAJ&q=Joseph+Cornell+father+1917&pg=PA211|title=Children's Stories and 'Child-Time' in the Works of Joseph Cornell and the Transatlantic Avant-Garde|first=Analisa|last=Leppanen-Guerra|date=July 5, 2017|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781351572057|via=Google Books}}</ref> Following the elder Cornell's death, his widow and children moved to the borough of [[Queens]] in [[New York City]]. Cornell attended [[Phillips Academy]] in [[Andover, Massachusetts|Andover]], Massachusetts, in the class of 1921. Although he reached the senior year, he did not graduate.<ref name="ChildrensStories">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xzcrDwAAQBAJ&q=Joseph+Cornell+Phillips+Academy+in+Andover%2C&pg=PA3|title=Children's Stories and 'Child-Time' in the Works of Joseph Cornell and the Transatlantic Avant-Garde|first=Analisa|last=Leppanen-Guerra|date=July 5, 2017|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781351572057|via=Google Books}}</ref> Following this, he returned to live with his family.<ref name="ChildrensStories"/>
 
Except for the three-and-a-half years he spent at Phillips, he lived for most of his life in a small, [[wood-frame house]] on [[Utopia Parkway (Queens)|Utopia Parkway]] in a working-class area of [[Flushing, Queens|Flushing]], along with his mother and his brother Robert, whom [[cerebral palsy]] had rendered physically disabled.<ref name=Cotter2007/><ref name="artinfo.com"/> Aside from his time at Andover, Cornell never traveled beyond the New York City area.<ref name="Dime-Store Alchemy"/>{{rp|xiii}}
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Like [[Kurt Schwitters]], Cornell could create poetry from the commonplace. Unlike Schwitters, however, he was fascinated not by refuse, garbage, and the discarded, but by fragments of once beautiful and precious objects he found on his frequent trips to the bookshops and [[thrift store]]s of New York.<ref name=webmuseum/> His boxes relied on the Surrealist use of irrational juxtaposition, and on the evocation of [[nostalgia]], for their appeal.
 
Cornell never regarded himself as a Surrealist; although he admired the work and technique of Surrealists like [[Max Ernst]] and [[René Magritte]], he disavowed the Surrealists' "black magic", claiming that he only wished to make white magic with his art.{{citation needed|date=October 2016}} Cornell's fame as the leading American "Surrealist" allowed him to befriend several members of the Surrealist movement when they settled in the United States during the [[World War II|Second World War]].{{citation needed|date=October 2016}} Later he was claimed as a herald of [[pop art]] and [[installation art]].{{citation needed|date=October 2016}}
 
Cornell often made series of boxed assemblages that reflected his various interests: the ''Soap Bubble Sets'', the ''Medici Slot Machine'' series, the ''Pink Palace'' series, the ''Hotel'' series, the ''Observatory'' series, and the ''Space Object Boxes'', among others. Also captivated with birds, Cornell created an ''Aviary'' series of boxes, in which colorful images of various birds were mounted on wood, cut out, and set against harsh white backgrounds.<ref name="artinfo.com"/>
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{{blockquote|Somewhere in the city of New York there are four or five still-unknown objects that belong together. Once together they'll make a work of art. That's Cornell's premise, his metaphysics, and his religion. ...<ref name="Dime-Store Alchemy" />{{rp|14}} [[Marcel Duchamp]] and [[John Cage]] use chance operation to get rid of the subjectivity of the artist. For Cornell it's the opposite. To submit to chance is to reveal the self and its obsessions.<ref name="Dime-Store Alchemy" />{{rp|61}}}}
 
Cornell was heavily influenced by the American [[Transcendentalists]], [[Hollywood (film industry)|Hollywood]] starlets (to whom he sent boxes he had dedicated to them), the French [[Symbolists]] such as [[Stéphane Mallarmé]] and [[Gérard de Nerval]], and 19th-century [[ballet]] dancers such as [[Marie Taglioni]] and [[Fanny Cerrito]].{{citation needed|date=October 2016}}
 
In his later years, Cornell utilized the help of assistants to create his artworks. These assistants included both local art students and practicing artists such as [[Larry Jordan]] and Terry Shutté. He greatly enjoyed working with young artists and teaching them his methods and art practices.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hartigan |first=Lynda Roscoe |editor-last=McShine |editor-first=Kynaston |title=Joseph Cornell |chapter=Joseph Cornell: A Biography |publisher=The Museum of Modern Art |year=1980 |isbn=978-0870702723 |location=New York |page=113}}</ref>
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Joseph Cornell's 1936 found-film montage ''[[Rose Hobart (film)|Rose Hobart]]'' was made entirely from splicing together existing film stock that Cornell had found in New Jersey warehouses, mostly derived from a 1931 [[B movie|"B" film]] entitled ''[[East of Borneo]]''.<ref name=Corman2010/> Cornell would play [[Nestor Amaral]]'s record ''Holiday in Brazil'' during its rare screenings, as well as projecting the film through a deep blue glass or filter, giving the film a dreamlike effect. Focusing mainly on the gestures and expressions made by [[Rose Hobart]] (the original film's starlet), this dreamscape of Cornell's seems to exist in a kind of suspension until the film's most arresting sequence toward the end, when footage of a solar eclipse is juxtaposed with a white ball falling into a pool of water in slow motion.
 
Cornell premiered the film at the [[Julien Levy]] Gallery in December 1936 during the first [[Surrealist]] exhibition at the [[Museum of Modern Art]] (MoMA) in New York.<ref name=Frye2001/> [[Salvador Dalí]], who was in New York to attend the MoMA opening, was present at its first screening. During the screening, Dalí became outraged at Cornell's movie, claiming he had just had the same idea of applying collage techniques to film. After the screening, Dalí remarked to Cornell that he should stick to making boxes and stop making films. Traumatized by this event,<ref>[https://vimeo.com/668682566 Borrowed Dreams: Joseph Cornell and the Archive as Psychic Imprint - Art & Trash on Vimeo]</ref> the shy, retiring Cornell showed his films rarely thereafter.
 
Joseph Cornell continued to experiment with film until his death in 1972. While his earlier films were often collages of found short films, his later ones montaged together footage he expressly commissioned from the professional filmmakers with whom he collaborated. These latter films were often set in some of Cornell's favorite neighborhoods and landmarks in New York City: [[Mulberry Street (Manhattan)|Mulberry Street]], [[Bryant Park]], [[Union Square Park]], and the [[IRT Third Avenue Line|Third Avenue Elevated Railway]], among others.
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==Exhibitions==
Cornell’s first major museum retrospective, curated by legendary museum director [[Walter Hopps]], was entitled ''An Exhibition of Works by Joseph Cornell''. It opened at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the [[Norton Simon Museum]]) in December 1966, curated by legendary museum director [[Walter Hopps]] whichthen traveled to the [[Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum]] in New York.<ref name="ra"/>
 
{{div col}}
* In 1970, the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] in New York mounted the second major museum retrospective of his collages, curated by the well-known [[Henry Geldzahler]].<ref name="ra"/>
* In 1972, ''A Joseph Cornell Exhibition for Children'' was held at a gallery at Cooper Union which was a show he arranged especially for children, with the boxes displayed at child height and with the opening party serving soft drinks and cake. Another retrospective was held at the [[Albright–Knox Art Gallery|Albright-Knox]] in 1972.<ref name="ra"/>
* In 1980, Cornell was subject to hisHis fourth major museum retrospective was in 1980 at [[MoMA]] as, part of a series of exhibitions celebrating its 50th anniversary.<ref name="moma"/>
* In 2007, Cornell was subject to hisHis fifth major museum retrospective was in 2007 at [[SFMOMA]], which traveled to the [[Smithsonian American Art Museum]] and the [[Peabody Essex Museum]].<ref name="mca"/>
* In 2015, Cornell was subject to hisHis sixth major museum retrospective was in 2015 at the [[Royal Academy of Arts]] in London, which traveled to [[Kunsthistorisches Museum]] in Vienna.<ref name="ra"/>
{{div col end}}
 
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Cornell's brother Robert died in 1965, and his mother in 1966. Joseph Cornell died of apparent [[heart failure]] on December 29, 1972, a few days after his sixty-ninth birthday.<ref name="Dime-Store Alchemy" />{{rp|xiv}} The [[executor]]s of his [[Estate (law)|estate]] were Richard Ader and Wayne Andrews, as represented by the art dealers [[Leo Castelli]], Richard Feigen, and James Corcoran. Later, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation was established, which administers the [[copyright]]s of Cornell's works and represents the interests of his heirs. Currently, the Foundation is administered by Trustees, Richard Ader, and Joseph Erdman.
 
==In popular culture==
==Popular culture references==
*[[Anne Tyler]]'s ''[[Celestial Navigation (novel)|Celestial Navigation]]'' (1974) is a fictional riff on being Joseph Cornell.
*The cyberpunk novelist [[William Gibson]] uses the finding of mysterious boxes similar to those by Joseph Cornell as a narrative element in his novel ''[[Count Zero]]'' (1984).<ref name="looking glass"/>
*The [[Netherlands|Dutch]] pop band [[The Nits]] releasesreleased a song, "Soap Bubble Box", on their 1992 album ''Ting'', about seeing some of Cornell's boxes in the [[Museum of Modern Art]] in [[New York City]]. The song was a minor hit in the Netherlands.
*Scholarship on Joseph Cornell’s art and life led to Michael Brayndick’s dissertation ''Joseph Cornell and the Dialectics of Human Time;''<ref>{{Cite thesis |title=Joseph Cornell and the dialectics of human time |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26696670 |date=1987 |language=English |first=Michael |last=Brayndick|oclc=26696670 }} OCLC Number: 26696670, University of Iowa</ref> and inspired Brayndick's 1999 play, ''How to Make a Rainbow'' with workshop performances in: New York (1998), Connecticut (2000), and the UK (2003), and the world premiere production by On the Spot Theatre at the Greenhouse Theater Center in Chicago (2013).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://onthespottheatrecompany.weebly.com/how-to-make-a-rainbow.html|title=How to Make a Rainbow|website=On the Spot Theatre Company}}</ref>
*In 1992, poet [[Charles Simic]] published a prose collection inspired by and with images of the work of Joseph Cornell: ''Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell'' (published by [[New York Review Books]], originally published by Hopewell, N.J.: Ecco Press).<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Simic |first1=Charles |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/52052866 |title=Dime-store alchemy: the art of Joseph Cornell |last2=Cornell |first2=Joseph |date=1993 |publisher=Ecco Press |isbn=978-0-88001-348-2 |location=Hopewell, NJ |language=English |oclc=52052866}}</ref>
*Singer-songwriter [[Mary Chapin Carpenter]] imagines Cornell going about his creative life in the song "Ideas Are Like Stars", found on her 1996 album ''[[A Place in the World (Mary Chapin Carpenter album)|A Place in the World]]''.
*The English band [[The Clientele]] has a song titled "Joseph Cornell" on the group's 2001 album ''[[Suburban Light]]''.
*[[Jonathan Safran Foer]]'s anthology ''[[A Convergence of Birds]]'' (2001) is a collection of fiction and poetry inspired by Cornell's work. Foer, then an undergraduate, solicitssolicited all of his favorite authors to contribute to the collection by sending each of them a print of one of Cornell's bird boxes, and an explanation of the project. He iswas surprised when well-known authors such as [[Joyce Carol Oates]], [[Rick Moody]] and [[Barry Lopez]] respondresponded to his prompts with Cornell-inspired works.{{citation needed|date=March 2020}}
*The American novelist and short story writer [[Robert Coover]] published a series of stories entitled ''The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell)'' in 2002. Akin to short fables, the stories refer to various themes and images in Cornell's ''Hotel'' series of boxes.
*[[Charles L. Mee]]'s play ''Hotel Cassiopeia'' (2006) is based on the life of Joseph Cornell.
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[[Category:American people of Dutch descent]]
[[Category:People from Queens, New York]]
[[Category:ModernAmerican modern sculptors]]
[[Category:Artists from New York City]]
[[Category:Phillips Academy alumni]]
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