CORNELL’S BOXES
by Joan K. Yanni
Is it a game played with sliding balls? A shadow box with personal memorabilia? A mysterious reference to the universe? Joseph Cornell’s The Admiral’s Game (98.77) looks simple at first glance, but with further examination gets and enigmatic.
The Gallery’s The Admiral’s Game is a glass-covered box 12” high, 18” wide, and 4” deep. It contains two parallel metal rods about one-third of the way from the top with two white balls resembling ping pong balls resting on them. A smaller red ball lies on the floor of the box. These elements are set against a background of a large compass rose surrounded by what looks like the night sky. But what does it all mean? Each viewer will have his own answer.
A textbook on American Art calls Cornell a unique and mysterious sculptor who created box constructions “which deserve to be placed in the highest level of contemporary American creation.” Such an artist deserves study.
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) was born in Nyack, New York, and moved to Queens in 1921 where he was employed by a textile firm. He lived there with his mother and invalid brother for the rest of his life. He had no formal art training, but he explored the city’s museums, theatres, second hand shops and bookstores and began collecting old books, engravings, and objects from past eras that interested him.
He was always fascinated by astronomy. As a child he wondered about the patterns in the night sky. As an adult he was an avid stargazer who read histories of astronomy and constellation mythology, subscribed to Scientific American, visited the Hayden Planetarium and was a subscriber to the planetarium’s Sky Reporter. In the bookstores he frequented, he sought out antique maps and early astronomy texts with illustrations. He stored all of his discoveries in shoeboxes in his basement, carefully labeling them so that, even though they were crammed full with continuing purchases, he could find what he wanted. Most of these found their way into his shadow boxes.
In 1931, while browsing around the city, he saw examples of Surrealistic art at the newly opened Julien Levy Gallery, and was captivated by it. He became a frequent visitor to the gallery, where he met other artists and probably encountered Max Ernst’s book of juxtaposed engravings, La Femme 100 Têtes. Ernst’s unrelated images taken from books of old engravings inspired Cornell to begin making collages from the materials he had been collecting. Some of his collages were included by Levy in his Surrealism exhibit in January, 1932, the first show of Surrealism in New York. Levy gave Cornell his first one-man show in November of the same year. It included the first of his shadow boxes—found boxes, round or rectangular, containing engravings and objects. One of the boxes in the show, Jouet surréaliste, contained small toys with the addition of collage elements, suggesting a relationship between art and play. This idea continues in his later works. During the next few years Cornell continued to create his boxes and even learned woodworking techniques from a neighbor so he could build his own containers.
One of Cornell’s early hand-made box assemblages, Untitled (Soap Bubble Set) was included in the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism, organized by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., at MOMA in 1936. The work uses the elements of much of Cornell’s work: a series of compartments containing objects and engraved images: four cylindrical weights, an egg in a wine glass, a clay pipe, a cast of a child’s head, and a map of the moon. All are unified by visual associations: the pipe can be used for making soap bubbles, a relationship to childhood, hence the child’s head. Round bubbles relate to the lunar map and the circular forms of the egg, the moon, and even the head.
Around 1934 Cornell found a job designing textiles for a textile studio in New York and worked there until 1940. During this time he became interested in filmmaking. He made his first film in 1939, Rose Hobart, a drastically edited version of an early film called East of Borneo, in which the actress Rose Hobart had starred. He cut the film, rearranging parts, breaking up transitions from one scene to another, and destroying the narrative sequence. Thus he created a startling new work from the placid, run-of-the-mill original. The film was shown at the Levy Gallery.
Such unexpected combinations found throughout Cornell’s work are also found in Surrealist art, but Cornell did not want to be considered part of the Surrealist movement. He was not interested in psychology, the subconscious or erotic themes. His art was unique and independent.
In 1940 Cornell left his job in tapestry design and devoted himself fully to his art, though he undertook some freelance work illustrating and designing layouts for magazines such as Vogue and House and Garden. He began to produce thematic series, further soap bubble sets and a pharmacy series. Birds, particularly cockatoos, owls and parrots, recurred in his works
In the 1950s Cornell resumed filmmaking, this time using a cameraman rather than found footage, but he continued to make his boxes. In the mid 60s, because of declining health and grief caused by the deaths of his brother and mother, he produced few boxes, though he continued to make collages. A special room at the Metropolitan was devoted to his work in 1970. Because he had an ongoing affection for children, the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture organized an exhibit of his work in late 1972 dedicated to the children of lower Manhattan. He died in December 1972. Though his work is unique, Cornell influenced artists such as Louise Nevelson, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
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