Connoisseur of Stars
Joseph Cornell
From a basement in New York, Joseph Cornell channelled his limitless imagination into some of the most original art of the 20th century. Imaginary voyages began as he searched Manhattan’s antique bookshops curating a vast archive of paper ephemera and small objects to make his signature glass-fronted shadow boxes. These miniature masterpieces transform everyday objects into spellbinding treasures. Together they reveal his fascination with subjects from astronomy and cinema to literature and ornithology and especially his love of European culture, from the ballet to Renaissance Italy. The New York Times called Cornell “a poet of light; an architect of memory-fractured rooms and a connoisseur of stars, celestial and otherwise.”
Planet Set, Tête Etoilée, Giuditta Pasta (dédicace), 1950
© The Joseph & Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/VAGA, New York and DACS, London 2023
Cornell documented his passion for "exquisite surprises"- the poignant connections between memory and sensory experience. He recorded his impressions of music, art, ballet and the intertwined sensations of seeing, feeling, and remembering in his diaries and on scraps of paper - the backs of envelopes, magazine clippings, and wrapping papers.
Deeply romantic, with wide-ranging cultural interests, Cornell collected material for his exploration of astronomy, books, birds, butterflies, clouds, poetry, stars, stamps and sunsets and re-made them into unforgettably beautiful images, redolent of longing and memory.