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Lot Essay
"JOSEPH CORNELL: or Twelve Needles Dancing on the Point of an Angel".
"I put my life in my hands" (The Book of Judges)
I first saw Joseph Cornell at a time when the Surrealists in a laboratory in Paris sat with four heads like the Cherub of Ezekiel, one with green hair, one with silver, one with gold, and one with midnight hair. They had just sealed some of their special ingredients, particularly an umbrella and the structural membrane of a bat's wing, into a glass globule, and were looking at their work. What they saw were the enigmas of Space, of Death, of Sex, of Revolution. But when I looked I saw also Joseph Cornell, very tiny but moving about inside the glass sphere as lifelike as you might wish, and he too was putting fragments of stuff into much smaller glass balls, each as fragile as a soap bubble, and his bat's wings were overlayed with magic dust like butterflies' wings, and his umbrella was a very enchanting parasol shining with sequins and artificial snow.
His room was unmistakeably an attic room, a gingerbread room in Nyack (New York, U.S.A.) and there must have been two other children there, for I heard a chanting noise and a ball of twine was continuously shuttled across my field of vision although I could not see who threw and who caught it. They must, also, have been dissatisfied, even threatening or provoking. Joseph put to one side his soap bubble pipe (the bowl clasped in a plaster simulacrum of Loplop's claw revealed when Joseph withdrew his own hand) He chose a book and read from it aloud. He also took scissors and cut fragments out of a book. For Joseph Cornell a book was really full of a number of things, where many souvenirs of the imagination were carefully partitioned and labelled. W ere not only letters are combined into words, but words into objects, and objects sometimes into minute continents which could be preserved in jars and phials and arrayed upon shelves like pharmacopoeia.
Someday there would be minuscule people! That is the whole problem of animism inherited by Cornell and so important for our dreamed future, if the animal birthrate will decline and there will be fewer worthy people for our love. "Verdâtre, rougeâtre, noirâtre, Cléopâtre": - there is just one more syllable needed in this alchemy of words for the recreation of Life. I would expect him, with his strangely timid manner, to edge into my door one day and, modestly fumbling in his vest pocket, produce and set upon the table a little pill-box out of which would step a dainty "Thumbeline", a live inch-high ballet dancer who could twirl away across the table top until Joseph Cornell should whistle her back into her box.
His derivation from the Surrealists is of humble respect, even of adoration for those from whom he once stole nourishment. And that was only the stealing of a word out of books, or an image to take home from a museum while the picture remained on the wall. He has practised this while dreaming. His transparent hand would move towards the cake on a shelf. The cake would detach itself from itself, like a double exposure, leaving the same cake on the shelf and sometimes two. There could be no harm, and I was surprised that the great Salvador Dali should stoop over to slap Joseph Cornell on both cheeks and to cry at him in furious catalan-french: "brrrcrrr mrrrd, mrrd!" like a beaver, like a muskrat, his upper teeth biting into his lower lip, defending something.
To attack is of course a form of defense. To dominate the enigma of space Dali expands his landscape to the furthest horizon of his agoraphobia, his cannibal imperialism, while Cornell compresses his world into a thimble, a thimble which in fact can be plugged safely by his own finger. Cornell places his faith in the microcosmic tradition whereby one's self becomes the temple of infinity. He brushes fitfully at a shred of material depending from one corner of his mouth, until that moment when, in a burst of self assurance, he plucks the string of his inspiration to produce those endless silken flags from his mouth like a magician to the delight of some children's party. With practice he is able to absorb the outside world without social cost. His material is whatever may be found on beaches, in back yards, attics, and the over-produce of wholesale accesssories. This is in the pure line of Marcel Duchamp's "readymades", transformed in the last product by Duchamp we have seen, into the "Desirable Valise". With this, as if with a spiritual library in microphotograph, one can travel. It remains for Joseph Cornell or another to convert such flight into attack. I believe Joseph Cornell may succeed.
He came into my Gallery while I was arranging the first Surrealist exhibition in America. Wrapper in mussed paper under his arm he carried a toy boat, and I included this in the exhibition because he had tied the North Star to his mast and spun the wind like hair for the sails of his boat.
- (excerpt from Art and Artillery)
Julien Levy
Each of the six prints is captioned by Levy with excerpts drawn from his essay. The portrait of Cornell, ...spun the wind like hair for the sails of his boat, followed by images of Cornell's work and another portrait, ...continents preserved in jars and phials; ...fragments of stuff into glass balls, ...for the recreation of Life, ....a book was really full of a number of things, ...magic dust...
"I put my life in my hands" (The Book of Judges)
I first saw Joseph Cornell at a time when the Surrealists in a laboratory in Paris sat with four heads like the Cherub of Ezekiel, one with green hair, one with silver, one with gold, and one with midnight hair. They had just sealed some of their special ingredients, particularly an umbrella and the structural membrane of a bat's wing, into a glass globule, and were looking at their work. What they saw were the enigmas of Space, of Death, of Sex, of Revolution. But when I looked I saw also Joseph Cornell, very tiny but moving about inside the glass sphere as lifelike as you might wish, and he too was putting fragments of stuff into much smaller glass balls, each as fragile as a soap bubble, and his bat's wings were overlayed with magic dust like butterflies' wings, and his umbrella was a very enchanting parasol shining with sequins and artificial snow.
His room was unmistakeably an attic room, a gingerbread room in Nyack (New York, U.S.A.) and there must have been two other children there, for I heard a chanting noise and a ball of twine was continuously shuttled across my field of vision although I could not see who threw and who caught it. They must, also, have been dissatisfied, even threatening or provoking. Joseph put to one side his soap bubble pipe (the bowl clasped in a plaster simulacrum of Loplop's claw revealed when Joseph withdrew his own hand) He chose a book and read from it aloud. He also took scissors and cut fragments out of a book. For Joseph Cornell a book was really full of a number of things, where many souvenirs of the imagination were carefully partitioned and labelled. W ere not only letters are combined into words, but words into objects, and objects sometimes into minute continents which could be preserved in jars and phials and arrayed upon shelves like pharmacopoeia.
Someday there would be minuscule people! That is the whole problem of animism inherited by Cornell and so important for our dreamed future, if the animal birthrate will decline and there will be fewer worthy people for our love. "Verdâtre, rougeâtre, noirâtre, Cléopâtre": - there is just one more syllable needed in this alchemy of words for the recreation of Life. I would expect him, with his strangely timid manner, to edge into my door one day and, modestly fumbling in his vest pocket, produce and set upon the table a little pill-box out of which would step a dainty "Thumbeline", a live inch-high ballet dancer who could twirl away across the table top until Joseph Cornell should whistle her back into her box.
His derivation from the Surrealists is of humble respect, even of adoration for those from whom he once stole nourishment. And that was only the stealing of a word out of books, or an image to take home from a museum while the picture remained on the wall. He has practised this while dreaming. His transparent hand would move towards the cake on a shelf. The cake would detach itself from itself, like a double exposure, leaving the same cake on the shelf and sometimes two. There could be no harm, and I was surprised that the great Salvador Dali should stoop over to slap Joseph Cornell on both cheeks and to cry at him in furious catalan-french: "brrrcrrr mrrrd, mrrd!" like a beaver, like a muskrat, his upper teeth biting into his lower lip, defending something.
To attack is of course a form of defense. To dominate the enigma of space Dali expands his landscape to the furthest horizon of his agoraphobia, his cannibal imperialism, while Cornell compresses his world into a thimble, a thimble which in fact can be plugged safely by his own finger. Cornell places his faith in the microcosmic tradition whereby one's self becomes the temple of infinity. He brushes fitfully at a shred of material depending from one corner of his mouth, until that moment when, in a burst of self assurance, he plucks the string of his inspiration to produce those endless silken flags from his mouth like a magician to the delight of some children's party. With practice he is able to absorb the outside world without social cost. His material is whatever may be found on beaches, in back yards, attics, and the over-produce of wholesale accesssories. This is in the pure line of Marcel Duchamp's "readymades", transformed in the last product by Duchamp we have seen, into the "Desirable Valise". With this, as if with a spiritual library in microphotograph, one can travel. It remains for Joseph Cornell or another to convert such flight into attack. I believe Joseph Cornell may succeed.
He came into my Gallery while I was arranging the first Surrealist exhibition in America. Wrapper in mussed paper under his arm he carried a toy boat, and I included this in the exhibition because he had tied the North Star to his mast and spun the wind like hair for the sails of his boat.
- (excerpt from Art and Artillery)
Julien Levy
Each of the six prints is captioned by Levy with excerpts drawn from his essay. The portrait of Cornell, ...spun the wind like hair for the sails of his boat, followed by images of Cornell's work and another portrait, ...continents preserved in jars and phials; ...fragments of stuff into glass balls, ...for the recreation of Life, ....a book was really full of a number of things, ...magic dust...