JOSEPH CORNELL ARTIST RESEARCH

JOSEPH CORNELL

Joseph Cornell was an American artist (24^th December 1903-29^th December 1972) who heavily influenced the art of assemblage and was influenced my surrealist artists and filmmakers of the time. In addition to being an artist, Cornell was also an experimental film maker. He is most famous for his boxes in which he would assemble old Victorian collectibles to create a scene -as a self-taught artist due to his reclusive nature he created a unique style of art. Despite spending most of his time looking after his mother and brother with Cerebral Palsy at home, Cornell managed to keep in touch with other contemporary artists at the time.

Cornell was born in Nyack, New York and attended Phillips Academy in Massachusetts. He had always been shy, but his extreme shyness was noticed by the headmaster as he appeared to be terrified of seemingly insignificant things. When he was in his early 20s, he found the religion Christian Science and became devout as he believed it had cure him of a reoccurring stomach ailment. Christian Science believe that sickness and ailments can be resolved by prayer alone, more can be found out about their beliefs here.

Cornell was poor most of his life, working during the Great Depression in the 1920’s as a fabric whole sale salesman to support his family, which, Cornell then lost again in the 1931 due to the American Great Depression. After this, Cornell  worked as a door-to-door salesman, then worked in a plant Nursery and designed covers and feature layouts for Haper’s Bazar and other magazines. Only after his solo in 1949 at the Charles Egan Gallery did Cornell begin to earn significant amounts of money from selling his boxes.

Yayoi Kusama and Cornell developed a passionate but platonic relationship in the 1960s during her stay in New York. She was 26 years younger than Cornell, but they would draw together, and he would send her personalised collages even after she returned to Japan.

Cornell ended his career as a highly regarded artist but remained out of the spotlight. His family responsibilities began to take over and by the 50s and 60s he was producing less boxes. During this time, he hired a series of assistants, including both students and established artists, to help him make his artwork and run errands. He also collaborated with filmmakers Rudy Burckhardt, Stan Brakhage and Larry Jordan to make moving collage films.

Cornell’s brother died in 1965 and his mother followed in 1966. Cornell died in of apparent heart-failure on 29^th December 1972 aged 69. During 1966, Cornell had his first major retrospective entitled ‘An Exhibition of Works’ by Joseph Cornell at the Pasadena Art Museum-curated by Walter Hopps. Then in 1970 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York mounted the second major museum retrospective of his collages. He then went on to have six retrospectives in galleries in London and Vienna.

"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.... 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”-Charles Simic

Cornell’s boxes create a nostalgia trip in his use of materials. Preferring to use Victorian bric-a-brac over rubbish or discarded and withered items in his collages-which give them a sense of purity. The Soap Bubble Sets, Observatory Series and Space Object boxes reflect his interests. Then, the Aviary boxes began when he took an interest in birds in which he sets colour images of birds mounted on wood, cut out and set against a harsh white background. From boxes designed to entertain his brother with Cerebral Palsy, Cornell created masterpieces later heralded by pop art and installation art circles alike.