Mixed media artist Joseph Cornell was not a sculptor, a draftsman, or a painter.
This internationally famous contemporary artist never had professional training.
He was first and foremost a collector.
He liked to check old book shops and second-hand stores of New York looking for mementos, theatrical collectibles, old prints and pictures, music scores, and French literature.
Joseph Cornell was born on Christmas Eve 1903.
Cornell grew up in a great home in Nyack, New York, a stunning Victorian town on the Hudson River.
He was the oldest of four kids born to Helen and Joseph Cornell.
He had 2 sisters, Betty and Helen, and a brother, Robert.
In spite of his relatively sheltered life, living as a grown-up with his mother and brother, his art was cutting-edge and advanced.
His most well-known and special works were boxes he made from wood, glass, and innumerable things and pictures he gathered in New York City's antique and second-hand shops, which presented a lyrical and magical feeling.
His first job at 18 was as a salesman in the textile business.
At this moment, he as well started to collect a lot of natural objects, memorabilia and antique and modern pictures, and arranged these 'found' materials into collages and constructions.
In 1931, he saw an exhibition of Surrealist artwork in a New York gallery, and later on met Surrealist writers as well as artists at the Julien Levy Gallery, eventually showing his work in Surrealist exhibitions.
Artistic influences involved Dada artists Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, and Surrealist Max Ernst; some other influences were his interest in ballet, music as well as literature.
By the year 1936 Cornell had established his signature format: the glass-fronted, handmade wooden box containing evocative arrangements of such objects as thimbles, old photographs, marbles, and seashells.
Untitled (Soap Bubble Set) (1936, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut) is actually the earliest work in this particular genre.
The work includes a container that Cornell lined with light blue cloth and an antique French map of the moon and in which he arranged a clay pipe, a cordial glass having a painted egg, a doll's head mounted on a white wooden pedestal, and other materials.
He additionally made boxed homages to historic opera performers and ballerinas, and he frequently drew from art history.
One example of this is The Medici Slot Machine (1942, private collection, New York City), which features a reproduction of a portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, a significant Renaissance patron of the arts.
Cornell's boxes influenced American pop artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, who in the mid-1950s mixed disparate things to make large, collage like sculptures called combines.
During the mid-1950s Cornell resumed creating two-dimensional collages, sticking with each other multi-colored cuttings from modern books, mags, and art reproductions.
He also made a lot of motion pictures, most of which he made from discarded Hollywood video footage to create a surrealist effect.
Mixed media artist Joseph Cornell provides a fantastic example regarding how art isn't defined by only 1 medium.
He was definitely one of the best American artists; one of many innovators and most famous exponents of assemblage and was also an avant-garde experimental moviemaker.
This internationally famous contemporary artist never had professional training.
He was first and foremost a collector.
He liked to check old book shops and second-hand stores of New York looking for mementos, theatrical collectibles, old prints and pictures, music scores, and French literature.
Joseph Cornell was born on Christmas Eve 1903.
Cornell grew up in a great home in Nyack, New York, a stunning Victorian town on the Hudson River.
He was the oldest of four kids born to Helen and Joseph Cornell.
He had 2 sisters, Betty and Helen, and a brother, Robert.
In spite of his relatively sheltered life, living as a grown-up with his mother and brother, his art was cutting-edge and advanced.
His most well-known and special works were boxes he made from wood, glass, and innumerable things and pictures he gathered in New York City's antique and second-hand shops, which presented a lyrical and magical feeling.
His first job at 18 was as a salesman in the textile business.
At this moment, he as well started to collect a lot of natural objects, memorabilia and antique and modern pictures, and arranged these 'found' materials into collages and constructions.
In 1931, he saw an exhibition of Surrealist artwork in a New York gallery, and later on met Surrealist writers as well as artists at the Julien Levy Gallery, eventually showing his work in Surrealist exhibitions.
Artistic influences involved Dada artists Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, and Surrealist Max Ernst; some other influences were his interest in ballet, music as well as literature.
By the year 1936 Cornell had established his signature format: the glass-fronted, handmade wooden box containing evocative arrangements of such objects as thimbles, old photographs, marbles, and seashells.
Untitled (Soap Bubble Set) (1936, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut) is actually the earliest work in this particular genre.
The work includes a container that Cornell lined with light blue cloth and an antique French map of the moon and in which he arranged a clay pipe, a cordial glass having a painted egg, a doll's head mounted on a white wooden pedestal, and other materials.
He additionally made boxed homages to historic opera performers and ballerinas, and he frequently drew from art history.
One example of this is The Medici Slot Machine (1942, private collection, New York City), which features a reproduction of a portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, a significant Renaissance patron of the arts.
Cornell's boxes influenced American pop artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, who in the mid-1950s mixed disparate things to make large, collage like sculptures called combines.
During the mid-1950s Cornell resumed creating two-dimensional collages, sticking with each other multi-colored cuttings from modern books, mags, and art reproductions.
He also made a lot of motion pictures, most of which he made from discarded Hollywood video footage to create a surrealist effect.
Mixed media artist Joseph Cornell provides a fantastic example regarding how art isn't defined by only 1 medium.
He was definitely one of the best American artists; one of many innovators and most famous exponents of assemblage and was also an avant-garde experimental moviemaker.