Cornell, Joseph

Cornell, Joseph (1903–1972). American sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. He was born in Nyack, New York, and after leaving Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1921, he worked for a while as a salesman in his father's textile firm. In 1929 he settled at Flushing, New York, where he lived quietly for the rest of his life, becoming rather reclusive in his later years. He had no artistic training, but he had a strong interest in the arts in general and he began frequenting the Julien Levy Gallery—which became a major venue for Surrealism—soon after it opened in New York in 1931. He was also a keen collector of old books, engravings, and other articles of historical interest, and influenced by Surrealism—especially Max Ernst—he began to make collages, using his own hoard as source material. In 1932 his work was included in a show at the Levy Gallery, and by 1936 he was well enough known to be included in a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art—‘Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism'. By this time Cornell had developed his distinctive form of expression—small boxes, usually glass-fronted, in which he arranged collections of photographs, magazine illustrations, trinkets, and all manner of bric-a-brac. His work is sometimes compared with that of Schwitters, but whereas Schwitters was fascinated by refuse, Cornell concentrated on fragments of once beautiful and treasured possessions, using the Surrealist technique of irrational juxtaposition to evoke a feeling of nostalgic reverie. From the late 1940s—perhaps influenced by Mondrian, whom he much admired—his work began to become more abstract. Cornell also painted, and from the late 1930s he made several Surrealist films, sometimes using discarded Hollywood movie footage. Towards the end of his life several major exhibitions were devoted to his work, notably one at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1967.