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JOSEPH CORNELL

Born 1903, in Nyack, New York. Although he attended the Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, he always refused to bend his natural talents to any traditional mould. He was associated with the Julien Levy Galleries and exhibited there from 1932 to 1943. Since the end of the war, he has held several exhibitions of his works, particularly at New York: Peggy Guggenheim's 'Art of this Century' Gallery (1944-1945), the Egan Galleries (from 1947 to 1953), the Stable Gallery (since 1953); and at Chicago at the Allen Frumkin Gallery (1953). There are examples of his work in the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York.

Joseph Cornell is an altogether singular artist: by divorcing himself from the changing currents of his time he has attached himself to its main stream. Self-taught, he has learned the essence rather than the manner, and given his work a timeless quality. His art belongs both to Constructivism and to Surrealism, incompatible traditions, which he has not only succeeded in reconciling, but even uniting. Like members of an aristocratic family his caracteristic offspring always resemble each other, but never anyone else, and always remain entirely themselves. Cornell's sculptures are abstract constructions, arrangements of volume, color and line, put together with objectivity and dignity, and employing a minimum of means (the curve is rare) and a maximum of restraint. They are also evocative presentations of the trivia of our lives, brought together with poetic freedom, and a subtlety, wit and humour that combine to arrest the attention and compel the imagination. Innocence of vision, both interior and exterior, is mysteriously fused with infinite nuance both in execution and intention. Thirty years' concentration has created an art as retiring and single-minded as the artist, a distillation of light-hearted, but sometimes melancholy Dada and unsinister Surrealism.

Robert Goldwater
from "Dictionary of Modern Sculpture"
New York, 1960

BOXES 
1. Caravaggio Box
2. Suzy's Room
3. Bird
4. Soap Bubble Set
5. Colombier Series: Dovecote - American Gothic
6. Ondine's Thrush
7. Medici Slot Machine - Reprise

COLLAGES 
8. Pour Valery
9. The Distance to the Moon
10. Sunset Collage
11. Natural Philosophy - Americana
12. Hölderlin Home 

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ART COLLECTION
Exhibition at Loeb Student Center
December 3 - 18, 1963
all work loaned by the artist