"A Very Misunderstood Artist"

By: Bobbie Leigh

May 2007

SALEM, MASS.—Peabody Essex Museum curator Lynda Roscoe Hartigan , a nationally recognized expert on American Assemblage artist Joseph Cornell, hopes to provide new ways of appreciating his work in “Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination.” This retrospective exhibition, formerly at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C, and now at the Peabody (through Aug. 19) is organized around such themes as Cabinets of Curiosity (Cornell’s principal format was the box) and Movie Palace (experimental films the artist composed and directed) rather than chronology.

“He believed in art’s ability to touch people and to invite them to explore the world around them in personal and creative ways,” Hartigan says. Cornell (1903–72) had a strong perception of the mind as a mirror. “He tried to provide people with an echo chamber, a chance to move through his imagination, to grasp all the disparate things we pull together and create associations.” Indeed, Cornell was the supreme master of connections and of “making something from nothing,” drawing from his collections of feathers, shells, marbles, postage stamps, vintage photos of movie starlets, all carefully catalogued in the basement of his Queens, Long Island, house.

But as Hartigan emphasizes, Cornell’s work is not narrative: He was a poetic arranger rather than a storyteller. “Think of his constructions as butterfly nets gathering ideas from art, culture and science,” says Hartigan. “He had a very concrete image of what he was trying to accomplish, a series of non-linear cross currents.” While great examples of the artist’s work have exceeded the million-dollar mark, collectors still can acquire Cornell boxes from L&M Arts in New York for roughly $100,000 to $250,000. The gallery also has quite a few collages from the 1930s to the 1960s which tend to range from about $30,000 to $50,000.

This landmark exhibition demonstrates that Cornell is exceedingly contemporary in his emphasis on process and transformation with a goal of discovering new possibilities and connections. After August, the exhibition will move to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Oct. 6–Jan. 6, 2008).