Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell American artist, 1903-72, b. Nyack, N.Y. Cornell is best known for his surrealist-flavored shadow boxes. These are relatively small constructions, within glass-fronted shallow boxes or frames, made of a wide variety of found objects, maps, photographs, engravings, and other materials. The Cornell boxes possess a unique visual magic, and their selection and arrangement are extraordinarily evocative and filled with personal symbolism. Hôtel du Nord (c.1953; Whitney Mus., New York City) is a representative work.

Bibliography: See biography by D. Solomon (1997); D. Ashton and J. Ashbery, ed., A Joseph Cornell Album (1974, repr. 2002); studies by D. Waldman (2002), I. Schafffner (2003), and L. R. Hartigan (2007).

Cornell, Joseph (1903–72). American sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. He had no artistic training, but in about 1931, influenced by Surrealism, he began making collages, and from these developed the distinctive type of work that he made his own—small wooden 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.