More Thoughts on Joseph Cornell, aka The Universe with 90-degree Angles

I saw this show, Navigating the Imagination, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., where it was installed all summer, and recently at SFMoMA within days of when you saw it. To make an institutional comparison, I’d say that I liked the PEM installation better. The vitrines were contained in a sequence of rooms, which made sense for the work—boxes with boxes, as it were, rather in the larger SF gallery spaces. The light was lower in Salem, which made the work harder to see, but which underlined the mystery of his work (though of course the low lights were for archival protection).

Some of the conventional ideas about Cornell still ring true for me: his obsessiveness, the idea of his looking to the stars while working in his mother’s basement. And, of course there’s the delicious coincidence that his extraordinary miniature universes were made on Utopia Parkway—doesn’t that sound like a road to the heavens, or a terrestrial version of The Milky Way? (Except that Utopia Parkway is a busy street in Queens, and the house was a modest one-family, and his basement studio, judging from the pictures in the show, was cluttered and cramped.) I loved your reference to the Scrovegni Chapel, but I'm thinking his own home was the more mundane version of the big box.

Harry Roseman, Back of Cornell, 1971, above right; below, the house on Utopia Blvd. in Queens

As I’ve learned more about him from the show, he was only reclusive when it came to women. Otherwise, he regularly went out and about, at least in New York (apparently he never traveled much past the boroughs). He had a job in Manhattan, and he went to openings. He was also an avid collector of books and objects. (I loved the photograph in the show of his boxes of stuff. Such an organized obsessive!) Cornell was not only aware of the Surrealists, he did a collaborative work with Duchamp, who was an admirer of his work. Untrained in art though he may have been, he was no naif but I do think his work has a kind of naïve poetry.

Image from the Peabody Essex Museum site, a promotional collage of Cornell's work (Don't you love that? A collage of Cornell's assemblages and collages)

As someone who works with the grid as an organizing principle, I love that part of his work—the compartments, the repetition, the everything-in-its-place compositions (like his boxes of stuff). I find these compostions infinitely more compelling than the dioramas and what look like miniature stage sets. I’d like to think his work was meditative, but it could equally have been fraught with obsession. One thing was surely obsessive, and it gives me the creeps: his focus on certain women, whether movie stars, divas or dancers. There was a little too much of the voyeur for me in his female figures. Nowadays it’s the stuff of Law and Order: SVU.

But just as I’m getting creeped out, I walk to another vitrine and find a little box with a dancer backed by a chorus line of little plastic lobsters, wearing tutus. Dancing lobsters! The piece was made in about 1945, long before Pop sensibility roared into the zeitgeist. I saw those klutzy terpsichorean crustaceans and laughed out loud. Then I thought of Dali’s big, floppy lobster telphone. So we’re back to Surrealism.

Zizi Jean Marie Lobster Ballet Box," 1949, by Joseph Cornell

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And then there are the pieces with watchsprings, lovely little spirals stretching out like miniatire galaxies, metaphors for space and time, and graphically just beautiful to look at. So we’re spiraling back into poetry.

The poetry is also there in the boxes with the soapbubble pipes, and the marbles and glass balls. Material, tangible objects suggesting the ephemeral. Because my studio is around the corner from the PEM, I visited the show half a dozen times, allowing myself to wander in the half light. That was probably the best part of the show for me, the repeated, extended viewing of the work, seeing it not objectively or reportorially, but emotionally—which is why this post is more stream of consciousness than what I normally write.

This sounds corny, but there is a magical quality to it the work. You get the sense that Cornell kind of disappeared into his little creations, like Alice down the rabbit hole. I imagine his mind as having little compartments, some lined in velvet, others stacked like drawers with little knobs, each filled with all kinds of marvelous or marvellously mundane things, or little stage sets with theatrical vignettes. Maybe there was another little door that opened onto the stars. Now that's a Surrealist image. Or maybe the universe was indeed in minature and existed inside a box in his head.

From Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York. This piece has a flat box that opens under the main diorama, the heavens contained just like those marbles in the little glasses

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OK, back to reality. One thing I found horrifying was the materials he used—an object lesson, if ever there was one, for artists unconcerned with archival issues. You saw the photograph of his materials. Yikes, kiddie art supplies! I guess this is where the naif part comes in. School paste, cheap tempera and brushes. In another vitrine there was a photograph of one of the boxes showing how it has once looked, with a brilliant an Yves-Klein-blue interior; the actual piece had faded to gray.

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The show was curated by PEM chief curator Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, who was the former director of the Joseph Cornell Study Center at the Smithsonian Institution, where the exhibition originated. It caps an extended reprise for Cornell, who died in 1972.

Pace Gallery (on 57th Street, before the "Wildenstein" was added) did a major show of his work in the mid 90s. Then this past May, just as the Cornell show opened at the PEM, Pavel Zoubok did a small but lovely show of the artist's work in his 23rd Street gallery . Considering that so few of Cornell's works must be for sale, Zoubok had a surprising number of very good works. And no doubt there have been other small Cornell shows in between.

Above and below: Joseph Cornell at the Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York City, in May

But back to Cornell. This Smithsonian-to-Salem-to-SFMoMA show is the big one, 35 years after his death. So in addition to poetry, magic, and dreams, this show is, in its way, about reincarnation.

Thoughts on Joseph Cornell

Hey Joanne- so, as we agreed while sitting in the SFMoMA cafe last Friday, we're going to talk about Joseph Cornell, since Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination is now there.

Here is an excerpt from a piece I just wrote, SFMoMA: Cornell, Wall, Eliasson, that is at my place, and is also now posted on the brand new group blog focusing on Bay Area art: Bay Area ArtQuake.

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Thoughts on Joseph Cornell
I thought I knew Cornell's work pretty well, the collages and boxes and films and drawers full of photographs and ephemera, but I was wrong.  Of course there is the myth about him as the obsessive naif, and I suppose I bought into that. But this exhibition shows him as an artist with extreme focus and clarity of vision, and the nerve and chops to realize his vision.

While Cornell's focus and vision might initially seem narrow, they were not simple; this work is complex in ways I don't think I can understand.  It's mysterious, and layered, and cinematic.  I think there is something in much of his images that is about capturing the feeling of singular moments in film- a moment or person of beauty, a certain juxtaposition, a movement, some kind of grandeur, something that happens in one moment in a film and then is gone; sitting in a dark theater watching moving images of projected light is thrilling, but certain moments in this medium can feel magical.  I think Cornell was after that magic.

That, and backyard astronomy, which is another kind of camera and cinematic experience. And celebrity worship, another kind of star gazing, And also the theater of the Peeping Tom or voyeur. And something that might look to us like nostalgia, but which was in Cornell's time the objects and images from his childhood, and from the generation just prior to him. These probably aren't original ideas on my part; they're probably in the literature, but Cornell's art definitely works in these many areas, as you can see for yourself.

Think of the Scrovegni Chapel, which is really one big box, and looking up at the ceiling, which is a deep cobalt blue above littered with gold stars, and substitute Lauren Bacall for Mary, and you're drifting towards Cornell.

It is a huge, impressive show, a bit of a landmark.  The biggest surprise for me was seeing the skill with with Cornell made things.  Components of some of the boxes are quite finely crafted, and there are collages that show genuine sophistication in terms of how color from different pieces are combined, how texture is laid next to another, how line and edge are used.  This formal kind of stuff is something I did not expect to be bowled over by. He knew what he was doing.

The low light in the galleries combined with the amount of work can tire the observer, so plan your visit: at first, you might quickly walk through the show; next walk back through and carefully see the first half the show; after that, take a break at a cafe; finally, go see the rest of the show.  Take your time-- it's worth it.

"The Geometry of Hope"

I'm alive and well, Chris, just trying to find daylight here under this pile of work. First, congratulations on your show at Root Division. The work looks fabulous and in the picture you posted you look--dare I say it?--pleased. I hope that's the case. We need to take full pleasure in the exhibitions we work so hard to create.
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One of my ongoing pleasures is discovering so much in the art world that I never learned in art school. Discovering Latin American art and artists has been one of those pleasures. I fully intend to write about The Geometry of Hope, Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection that's at NYU's Grey Gallery until December 8. This show is not news to you, as you posted an image on September 15--that of Juan Mele's prism-like shaped canvas, with a link to the Roberta Smith review in the New York Times.

Until I can put any serious thoughts down, let me post two images from the show:

Gego: Reticularea Cuadrada 71/11 (the catalog translates the title as "Square Reticularea"), 1971; metal, copper and stainless steel, app 80 x 55 x 22 inches

This piece, above, is a dimensional drawing of articulated metal and wire--you can call it sculpture if you wish--by the Venezuelan-by-way-of-Germany, Gego (aka Gertrud Goldschmidt), who was the subject of a fabulous solo show at the Drawing Center last June. The shadow, so integral to the work, brings full dimensionality to a relief hanging.

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Ideia Visivel (Visible Idea), 1956, acrylic on masonite, 23.5 x 23.5 inches

This image is of an easel-size paintingby the Brazilian painter Waldemar Cordeiro. The geometry is based on the Golden Rectangle, an element that shows up in other works as well.
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The gallery was extremely touch about photography. When I went to photograph, the student sitting the gallery all but seized my little camera. Something about the artists not wanting the images reproduced. Yet I notice they had no problem using the artists' work for cards and posters, plastering type all over the images. Hmmm.
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More on this show soon. Meanwhile, fresh from a tour of the Boneyard--er, the Chelsea Galleries--I posted a report on my blog about the preponderance of shows with skulls and bones. I've called it Skeleton Crew. Take a look.
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And one other thing: If you're wondering why I've been so infernally busy, I've become the director of the Second Annual Encaustic Conference, a national event (which I conceived last year) that takes place at Montserrat College of Art just north of Boston. I've been securing speakers and maintaining the blog. Again, if you have a moment, take a look.
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And there's that other thing I do. Um, um. Oh, yes, painting.

At Root Division

At Root Division opening, Saturday, September 8. Photo by Raymond Yee. See work in the show.

Good stuff at the Brooklyn Rail

I'm really heartened by three articles currently at the Brooklyn Rail that focus on artists who had their moment in the 70's, kept working, and now at this time are getting back into the spotlight- it's a little bit of history being rewritten, and also points to some possible shifts away from an emphasis on youth, gratuitously "adventurous" or "cutting edge" art, and the quick buck. Even though I am a generation or more behind these artists, I really identify with a lot of what's being talked about here- when I started as an art student this is work I saw in recently past issues of magazines, and this information has always been down inside of me, almost hibernating, but present. Some of the social/political things Whitten and Kass talk about are stuff I think about a lot in regards to my own development and outlook, and my art. I particularly like that these three articles all represent different groups- a black man, a woman, and an artist who left NY to make his work. Also, all three of these artists have or have had shows in NY right now. Finally, there is a look at Clyfford Still in Denver.

1. Interview with Jack Whitten
   

   Whitten: By 1970 I was seeing a lot of Henry Geldzahler, who was a great supporter of my work at that time. He would come to the studio and we would talk a lot about the grid; the grid being a kind of, as he put in a little essay he wrote for me once, “aspect of civilization.” In my own way, I was introduced to it by my afro-comb. That’s where it started.
   
   Rail: So that’s when you began to use your comb as a painting tool?
   
   Whitten: Yes. First I used the afro-comb with a couple of paintings, and then I began to recognize a pattern. That’s when I wanted more control, so I started making the device myself. The afro-comb became a big carpenter saw. In fact, MoMA has one from 1978.

Now showing at Alexander Gray.

2. THE SEVENTIES by Deborah Kass
   

   When I saw Elizabeth’s (Murray) show at Paula Cooper the earth moved, because a seismic change was occurring in my life as I stood there looking. I had been oblivious to feminism, I was entirely and erotically male identified. But looking at her paintings, I realized that for the first time the subject, which I previously and unconsciously assumed to be male, had changed. I recognized what was traditional in her painting—traditional as I had come to understand it through my sojourns to MoMA and at college, a New York School, Cezanne-through-Stella thinking. This painting was clearly coming from there, but with a different point of view and speaking in a different voice about something else altogether. The subject was female. And I mean subject as we defined it in the 80’s and 90’s. The speaking subject, the specific subject. The subject with agency.

   
   Now showing at Paul Kasmin.


3. TRACKS: Peter Young: An Unlikely Artist by Ben La Rocco
   

   If the “art star” status enjoyed by a few is the brass ring, it is a dangerous standard because of the unlikelihood of attaining it and because of its lack of correlation with the development of richer ideas in the arts.

   
   Young's PS1 show reviewed was reviewed a few weeks back in the NYT.


4. Also, more about Still in Denver by James Kalm, and his video tour below.

Juan Melé: Marco recortado n.º 2

I think this is fascinating:



Juan Melé
Marco recortado n.º 2 [Irregular Frame No. 2], 1946
Oil on masonite, 27 15/16 x 18 1/8 x 1 in.
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, 1997.102

“The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art From the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection,” at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University; reviewed by Robert Smith, NY Times:

Our notions of the origins of shaped paintings are readjusted by “Irregular Frame No. 2,” a distorted grid in shades of green, blue, rust and yellow made startlingly early, as these things go, by the Argentine artist Juan Melé in 1946. In this flamboyant little work geometry turns blunt, in advance of Minimalism, and cartoonishly savvy, in advance (and somewhat contradictorily) of the abstract painter Elizabeth Murray.

The Computer Ate my Blog

Chris,
You have been a model of conscientious posting on this blog. I have not. Well, not recently, anyway. (I hope my long piece on New York's Extended Minimal Moment last fall will keep me as a collaborating blogger in good standing.)

For here, let me note a couple of things that involve us singly or jointly:
.Congratulations on your show at Root Division in San Francisco. This has been a great summer of shows for you! I hope you'll post some installation pics here.
. This follows group shows you'be been in around the country, including Philadelphia and Atlanta. How did they go?
. Apropos of Atlanta, boo-hoo, the show that I curated that you're in, Luxe, Calme et Volupte, is now down. The gallery website still has the great online catalog of the show. And my blog account of the show will remain up for the forseeable future.
. The Richard Serra show is coming out your way soon. I hope we can dialog about that. I had quite a lot to say on my own blog--two posts worth.
. And, of course, a new season is just starting up. Things should be interesting in NY and elsewhere. I'll be in Chicago this weekend, so perhaps I'll have something to say from there. I trust you'll make your usual rounds in SF.
. I had a good spring, with solos in Scottsdale and New York --with two reviews in NY and sales all around. (That breeze you feel is me still exhaling.)

Now, about that title. The computer DID eat my blog. I'd been wanting to clean up the font mess on my pages--all those default pinks and blues (who chooses those colors, anyway?)--and streamline it. Not being even remotely conversant with HTML, I took advantage of Blogger's new features. I even saved the code for my blogroll--my one stab at cyber intelligence. Well, while the sidebar type and the font colors look quite snappy, if I say so myself, the leading between the lines of text was all mooshed together, as if it had been put under pressure. Clearly it was (and is) a code thing, but I'm at a loss to rectify it in any kind of conventional way.

So I spent today--Labor Day, appropriately--toiling paragraph by paragraph, to set things right. There were some good paragraphs. I found that if I imported them (and their embedded code) into posts with mooshed text and then introduced the mooshed text into it, somehow, miraculously, the leading between the lines would be restored. I've been at it all day. I think I should have it mostly fixed by tomorrow.

Then I should be more up for a real post here, one with pictures. And how was your Labor Day?