Deborah Solomon - Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell

Masterly a meticulously researched and deeply considered examination of how Cornells daily life contributed to his imaginative life the only real life he knew. Deborah Solomon brings to [Cornells] life a lucid intelligence, an incisive knowledge of art history, and a rare sensibility. Her generous understanding illuminates Cornell as a knight errant of art.

ANNE TRUITT, WASHINGTON POST

With literary flair and shrewd interpretation, Deborah Solomon supplies the drama that Cornells life outwardly lacked.

KENNETH BAKER, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BOOK REVIEW

His life of quiet deliberation has found an exceptionally apt biographer in Deborah Solomon, whose graceful prose well suits the master collagist whose boxed congeries illuminated the kinetic poetry of ordinary things.

ALBERT MOBILIO, VOICE LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Joseph Cornells art juxtaposed the most ordinary objects, and transformed them into magical presences by placing them in boxes. Deborah Solomons clear-eyed and sympathetic narrative does for his life what he, as an artist, did for his penny world. Her book models itself upon its subject and, without sensational revelation or arcane theory, displays it as something rare. It is the book about Cornell I would not dare to have hoped for in our mean and deconstructionist age.

ARTHUR C. DANTO, SLATE

Fascinating reading Skillfully weaving together fact, anecdote, and conjecture, Solomon brings Cornells place in the art world and his legacy to artists of the younger generation into sharp focus.

ALLISON KEMMERER, BOSTON BOOK REVIEW

Joseph Cornell loved ballet and ballerinas; he was a friend and I thought I knew him well. But only in Deborah Solomons poignant book did I discover the complexity of his inner life and the extent of his creative powers.

ALLEGRA KENT, FORMER PRINCIPAL DANCER, NEW YORK CITY BALLET

As perfectly composed, richly nuanced, and quietly surprising as one of Cornells boxes.

DONNA SEAMAN, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell

Jackson Pollock: A Biography

Copyright 1997 by Deborah Solomon

First published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, in 1997

Preface to the 2015 edition 2015 by Deborah Solomon

Photographs of works by Joseph Cornell

the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation

Photographs by Hans Namuth Hans Namuth

Photographs by Harry Roseman Harry Roseman

Cover: Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Owl Box) [detail], c. 1948

Frontispiece: Joseph Cornell reading in his back yard

(photograph by Harry Roseman)

Production editor: Yvonne E. Crdenas

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Solomon, Deborah, author.

Utopia Parkway : the life and work of Joseph Cornell / Deborah Solomon.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-59051-714-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-59051-715-4 (ebook)

1. Cornell, Joseph. 2. Artists United States Biography.

I. Title.

N 6537. C 66 S 64 2015

709.2 dc23

[ B ]

2015028854

v3.1

For Kent Sepkowitz

Cornell reading in his yard at Utopia Parkway, 1971

The Cornell family at Coney Island, c. 1908

The Cornell family residence in Nyack, c. 1915

Joseph and Robert Cornell in Nyack, c. 1915

Cornell and his father in Maine, 1916

Cornell and his mother

Phillips Academy yearbook photograph of Cornell, 1921

Cornell with his sister Betty and his mother, c. 1928

The house on Utopia Parkway, 1930

Julien Levy

Untitled (Schooner), 1931

Untitled paperboard box, c. 1935

Untitled (Glass Bell), c. 1932

Announcement for Surrealisme exhibition, 1932

Untitled (Portrait of Lee Miller), c. 194849

Soap Bubble Set, 1936

A scene from Rose Hobart

Cornell contemplating Garbo: The Crystal Mask, c. 193940

Taglionis Jewel Casket, 1940

LEgypte de Mlle Clo de Mrode: Cours Elementaire dHistoire Naturelle, 1940

Untitled (Swan Box), c. 1945

Enchanted Wanderer: Excerpt from a Journey Album for Hedy Lamarr, 1941

Cornells workshop, 1970

Cornells workshop, 1971

Medici Slot Machine, 1942

Setting for a Fairy Tale, 1942

Ballet (for Jacques Offenbach), 1942

Untitled (Pharmacy), c. 1942

Detail of The Crystal Cage (Portrait of Berenice), 1943

Cornells letter to Tilly Losch

Announcement for the Romantic Museum exhibition, 1946

Object 1941, 1941

Napoleonic Cockatoo, 1949

The Aviary exhibition, 1949

Untitled (Hotel de LEtoile: Night Skies, Auriga), 1954

The dwarf in the film Aviary

Untitled (Andromeda Hotel), c. 195354

A scene from Nymphlight

Untitled, c. 195659

A Parrot for Juan Gris, Winter 195354

Where Does the Sun Go at Night?, c. 1964

Untitled (Blue Nude), c. mid-1960s

The Heart on the Sleeve, 1972

Untitled (Time Transfixed), c. 1966

Announcement for the Robert Cornell memorial exhibition, 1966

The Uncertainty Principle, 1966

Laundry Boys Change, c. 1964

Cornell with Leila Hadley, 1971

Cornells garden, 1972

Cornells bedroom, 1972

Cornells dresser, 1972

Cornell with Yayoi Kusama, 1972

COLOR INSERT

A Dressing Room for Gilles, 1939

Rose Castle, 1945

Untitled (Bb Marie), early 1940s

Medici Slot Machine, 1946

Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall), 1946

Untitled (Owl Box), c. 1948

Untitled (Aviary with Parrot and Drawers), 1949

Penny Arcade (re-autumnal), 1964

This book was first published in 1997. In the years since, Joseph Cornell has been the subject of a steady profusion of tributes at galleries and museums. His work has even surfaced in, of all places, the hit television comedy The Simpsons. In an episode aired in 2009, Homer Simpsons ebullient eight-year-old daughter, Lisa, visits a museum and pauses in admiration before five enchanting Cornell boxes hanging on a wall.

Its a nifty homage but theres a slight error. The museum that Lisa Simpson visits is called the Springfield Museum of Folk Art, emphasis on folk, and Cornells boxes are displayed among patchwork quilts, oval Shaker boxes made from cherrywood, and other objects that evoke the agrarian ways of Americas past. But Cornell was not a folk artist. And the museums that own his work and keep it on permanent display, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, or the Art Institute of Chicago, are by no means folk art museums. The label folk art refers to artists who lack formal training and operate outside of an elite tradition. Cornell, by contrast, was very much a part of the New York art world. He began making art in the context of French Surrealism, exhibited his work at leading American galleries and art museums, and in spite of his extreme reticence befriended avant-garde figures ranging from Salvador Dal in the forties, to Willem de Kooning in the fifties, to Yayoi Kusama and Yoko Ono in the sixties.