Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) was an American visual artist and filmmaker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, 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, to Joseph Cornell, a textiles industry executive, and Helen Ten Broeck Storms Cornell, who had trained as a nursery teacher. Both parents came from socially prominent families of Dutch ancestry, long-established in New York State. Cornell's father died April 30, 1917, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. 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, in the class of 1921. Although he reached the senior year, he did not graduate. Following this, he returned to live with his family. the dossiers served as repositories from which Cornell drew material and inspiration for boxes like his "penny arcade" portrait of Lauren Bacall. He had no formal training in art, although he was extremely well-read and was conversant with the New York art scene from the 1940s through to the 1960s.

His methodology is described in a monograph by Charles Simic as:

Further reading

  • Ashton, Dore. A Joseph Cornell Album. New York: Viking Press, 1974.
  • Blair, Lindsay. The Working Method of Joseph Cornell. Reaktion Books; Illustrated edition, April 1, 1998.
  • Bonk, Ecke; Davidson, Susan; d'Harnoncourt, Anne; Hartigan, Lydia Roscoe; Hopps, Walter; Temkin, Ann. Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp ... in resonance. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 1998.
  • Caws, Mary Ann. Joseph Cornell's Theater of the Mind: Selected Diaries, Letters, and Files. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
  • Corman, Catherine. Joseph Cornell's Dreams. Cambridge: Exact Change, 2007.
  • Foer, Jonathan Safran (ed.). A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2001.
  • Hartigan, Lydia Roscoe. Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
  • Hartigan, Lydia Roscoe; Vine, Richard; Lehrman, Robert; Hopps, Walter. Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay Eterniday. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003.
  • Leppanen-Guerra, Analisa; Tashjian, Dickran. Joseph Cornell's Manual of Marvels. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2012.
  • McShine, Kynaston (ed.). Joseph Cornell. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980.
  • Rogers, Holly and Jeremy Barham (ed.). The Music and Sound of Experimental Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Schaffner, Ingrid. The Essential Joseph Cornell. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003.
  • Starr, Sandra Leonard. Joseph Cornell: Art and Metaphysics. New York: Castelli Corcoran Feigen, 1982. LC Catalogue Card Number 82-71787
  • Tashjian, Dickran. Joseph Cornell: Gifts of Desire. Miami Beach: Grassfield Press, 1992.
  • Joseph Cornell letters and papers, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession No. 2014.M.30. The collection of thirty-three unpublished letters from Joseph Cornell to Susanna De Maria Wilson, one of his assistants and wife of the minimalist sculptor Walter De Maria.
  • Joseph Cornell Papers, 1804–1986, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.
  • Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.