Co-organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum, the exhibition features 177 of Cornell's finest box constructions, collages, dossiers, films and graphic designs from public and private collections, and an array of source materials from the museum's Joseph Cornell Study Center. Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, chief curator at the Peabody Essex Museum and nationally recognized Cornell scholar, is the curator of the exhibition.
"Navigating the Imagination"Â presents a number of new ideas and new opportunities for understanding Joseph Cornell's work. This retrospective is organized thematically to suggest for the first time Cornell's interpretation of the imagination as a metaphorical "echo chamber"Â or "mirror of the mind."Â Unlike previous chronological presentations, the exhibition mingles Cornell's series and media across four decades of his career to convey the conceptual and formal cohesiveness of his body of work. This approach emphasizes Cornell's perception of art as a means of creating and communicating connections and possibilities through repetition and variation. The exhibition also is the first time that his films, a greater range of his collages and the open-ended projects that he called "explorations"Â are being shown in the company of the box constructions for which he is best known.
More than 30 Cornell objects will be on public display for the first time in the exhibition, including the box construction "Bel Echo Gruyère" and the collages "Untitled [Tamara Toumanova]," "Untitled [Flying Machines]," "Untitled [Mary Taylor by Lee Miller]" and "Goop Joe's Poultry Pages" from the museum's collection, and "Quiet Autumnal-for Jeanne Eagels," a collage from the Peabody Essex Museum's collection.
"We are thrilled to open this exhibition which is an ambitious and imaginative consideration of Joseph Cornell, one of America's most inventive modern artists,"Â said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "'Navigating the Imagination' continues the Smithsonian American Art Museum's tradition of presenting groundbreaking exhibitions that contribute to new interpretations of American art and artists."Â
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) looked at art as a way to discover connections and bring together disparate visual elements and ideas from the arts, humanities and sciences. Cornell owed much of his experimentation to his origins as a self-taught artist. His work often is associated with surrealism's emphasis on dreams and poetic dislocation, yet Cornell drew imagery and inspiration from sources as wide-ranging as Victorian educational pastimes, cabinets of curiosities, optical devices, literature and the performing arts.
"We are delighted that the Peabody Essex Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum have partnered in organizing this landmark exhibition,"Â said Hartigan. "Cornell's transformation of far-flung ideas and transitory materials goes hand in hand with his elegant integration of woodworking, painting, drawing and piecing. The result is a remarkable synthesis of the sophisticated and the vernacular that positions him as a modern American artist with a singular way of seeing."Â
The first major presentation of Cornell's work since The Museum of Modern Art's retrospective in 1980, the exhibition is organized in 10 sections. "Navigating a Career,"Â an introductory section, features a selection of collages, box constructions, dossiers and graphic designs from 1931 to 1972 that provides an overview of Cornell's evolution as an artist. The following sections-"Cabinets of Curiosity,"Â "Dream Machines,"Â "Nature's Theater,"Â "Geographies of the Heavens,"Â "Bouquets of Homage,"Â "Crystal Cages"Â and "Chambers of Time"Â-each represent a particular recurring idea or theme explored by the artist.
"Wonderland"Â offers a selection of Cornell's source materials from the museum's major research archive, the Joseph Cornell Study Center. More than 150 objects are presented for the first time as a survey of his encyclopedic interests and to provide a rare public glimpse into his working methods. This repository, along with more than 700 artworks by Cornell in the museum's permanent collection, establishes the museum as an essential destination for any scholar interested in understanding the whole of Cornell's career.
"Movie Palace"Â features a selection of Cornell's films: "Rose Hobart"Â (about 1936); "Untitled (Bookstalls)"Â (late 1930s; restored 1978); "The Aviary"Â (1954); "Angel"Â (1957); "Nymphlight"Â (1957); "A Legend for Fountains"Â (1957; completed 1965, with Larry Jordan); and "GniR RednoW"Â (1955), based on outtakes from Stan Brakhage's "Wonder Ring"Â (1955). For the first time the artist's films are presented within the context of an exhibition as part of his body of work. The presentation is based on digital images of the original 16mm films, which are intended to be projected on a larger scale.
About Joseph Cornell
Joseph Cornell was born in 1903 in Nyack, N.Y. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., from 1917 to 1921. Beginning in 1929, Cornell lived in Flushing, N.Y., with his mother and his brother Robert. Cornell often visited New York City's galleries, theaters, museums, libraries and secondhand shops, collecting ideas and materials for his artworks. Self-taught but amazingly sophisticated, he created his first collages, box constructions and experimental films in the early 1930s. His first solo exhibitions in 1932 and 1939 were held at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York.
During this period, Cornell became familiar with the work of Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. By 1940, Cornell's boxes contained found materials artfully arranged, then collaged and painted to suggest poetic associations that drew on the arts, humanities and sciences. In the 1940s and 1950s, Cornell created some of his most memorable and compelling boxes, including the "Medici,"Â "Aviary,"Â "Hotel"Â and "Observatory"Â series, as well as boxes devoted to stage and screen personalities. His art has been described as romantic, poetic, lyrical and surrealistic. He believed aesthetic theories were foreign to the origin of his art and said his works were based on everyday experiences, "the beauty of the commonplace."Â Cornell died in his home in Flushing in 1972. -- www.americanart.si.edu
Posted January 18th, 2007 by ruzik_tuzik
