Joseph Cornell (1903-72) lived in Queens with a domineering mother and severely handicapped brother while creating unique, haunting art: boxes filled with lovingly assembled objects and printed images. But this sympathetic biography demonstrates that he was more than an eccentric recluse, chronicling his friendships with other artists and his immersion in the avant-garde movements of his time. Art critic Deborah Solomon spikes her astute judgments with humor--noting her subject's fondness for epistolary relationships that spared him the unease of physical contact, she comments, "Cornell would have been great on the Internet."


The New York Times Book Review, James R. Mellow
Sometimes--unaccountably--a seemingly marginal artist illuminates a period or a styly, giving it an unforeseen perspective. In the case of Joseph Cornell, the secretive, shy maker of shadow boxes featuring cutouts of birds, ballerinas and movie stars, five-and-dime trinkets, specimen bottles of colored sand or butterfly wings, scraps of wallpaper or cryptic newsprint messages, it was not the art (unique as it was in the annals of American modernism) but the artist's life that placed him at the margin of the New York art world.


From Booklist
Solomon, art critic for the Wall Street Journal, has written the very first biography of Joseph Cornell (1903^-72), one of the world's most elusive artists, and it is a work of compelling perception and glorious inclusiveness. A self-taught artist uncomfortable with traditional mediums, Cornell made provocative collages and reliquary-like boxes, unprecedented creations inspired by his fascination with the quiet poetics of found objects and recycled images, French literature, the magic of movies and dance, and a highly romanticized notion of innocence. Cornell is usually characterized as an isolated genius constructing his beautiful assemblages in the cluttered basement of a deceptively ordinary house on Utopia Parkway in Flushing, New York, where he lived with his shrewish, widowed mother and sweet-natured, handicapped brother. This image of Cornell as an "art monk" is accurate to a point, but--and this is the main thrust of Solomon's eye-opening interpretation--he was profoundly affected by the art world percolating intensely just a train ride away in Manhattan and forged mutually inspiring associations with Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Andy Warhol. Solomon also analyzes Cornell's troubled sexuality, his work as a devout Christian Scientist, and his highly influential experimental films. The quiet storm of Cornell's art arose from a conflict of universal significance: the clash between his "spiritual aspirations and sensual compulsions." Donna Seaman


From Kirkus Reviews
Joseph Cornell, an American artist most famous for his quirky shadow boxes, is astutely revealed by Wall Street Journal art critic Solomon as a shy, complex figure--even more enigmatic than his art. Cornell's shadow boxes and collages played on juxtapositions of common objects--pictures of ballerinas and movie stars (his Marilyn Monroe file predated Andy Warhol's), bits of costumes, pennies, feathers. Understanding his work requires making connections among these odd bits. Solomon (Jackson Pollock, 1987) likewise sifts through the seemingly disconnected minutiae of the artist's life and pieces together a convincing portrait of the man and his work. It's been hard to label Cornell: His genre-bending art has been linked with Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and eventually Pop Art. Cornell's life, spent in New York City, similarly defies classification, providing none of the usual seedy grist available to biographers of famous artists. He was for most of his life a virgin. He catered to the whims of his overbearing mother and cared for his sickly brother in their small house on Utopia Parkway in Flushing, Queens. His pleasures were small- -sifting through trinkets in five-and-dime stores for objects to use in his art, riding the old Third Street El, and consuming an alarming amount of sugar. Cornell's diary, a hodgepodge of 40 years' worth of notes, includes catalogs of sweets the artist ate and annotations on the many infatuations he developed--from the great 19th-century ballerina Fanny Cerrito to a down-on-her-luck waitress. Cornell, ever the observer, was socially awkward: A movie clerk once mistook his hastily offered flowers for a gun and called the police. Solomon intertwines a secret, small life with the great artistic movements of the century and tells a story that will intrigue even those who know nothing of the artist's work. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Anne Truitt, The Washington Post Book World
Deborah Solomon brings to [Cornell's] life a lucid intelligence, an incisive knowledge of art history and a rare sensibility. Her generous understanding illuminates Cornell as a knight errant of art.


Donna Seaman, Chicago Tribune
As perfectly composed, richly nuanced and quietly surprising as one of Cornell's boxes.


Book Description
Back in PrintNo artist ever led a stranger life than Joseph Cornell, the self-taught American genius prized for his disquieting shadow boxes, who stands at the intersection of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. Legends about Cornell abound--as the shy hermit, the devoted family caretaker, the artistic innocent--but never before Utopia Parkway has he been presented for what he was: a brilliant, relentlessly serious artist whose stature has now reached monumental proportions. Cornell was haunted by dreams and visions, yet the site of his imaginings couldn’t have been more ordinary: a small house he shared with his mother and invalid brother in Queens, New York. In its cluttered basement, he spent his nights arranging photographs, cut-outs, and other humble disjecta into some of the most romantic works to exist in three dimensions. Cornell was no recluse, however: admired by successive generations of vanguard artists, he formed friendships with figures as diverse as Duchamp, de Kooning, and Warhol, and had romantically charged encounters with Susan Sontag and Yoko Ono--not to mention unrequited crushes on countless shop girls and waitresses. All this he recorded compulsively in a diary that, along with his shadow boxes, forms one of the oddest and most affecting records ever made of a life. It is from such documents, and from a decade of sustained attention to Cornell, that Deborah Solomon has fashioned the definitive biography of one of America’s most powerful and unusual modern artists. American Library Association Book of the YearNew York Times Notable Book of the YearNew York Public Library Book to Remember By Deborah Solomon. Paperback, 6.25 x 9.25 in. / 444 pgs / 60 b&w.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

No artist ever led a stranger life than Joseph Cornell (1903-72), the self-taught American genius prized for his enchanting and disquieting shadow boxes, an art form all his own. By now, many legends surround Cornell: that of the painfully shy hermit lost in a world of books, silent movies, and long-gone ballerinas; that of the patiently devoted caretaker who would rush home from an afternoon at the Manhattan galleries to minister to his mother and invalid brother; that of the artistic innocent whose creations emerged as happy accidents from his hands. Yet Cornell and his work were cherished by the leading avant-garde figures of his day, and artists who agreed on little else agreed on Cornell's originality. Utopia Parkway - the product of Deborah Solomon's decade of sustained attention to Cornell, and the first serious biography of him - reveals him as a brilliant and relentlessly serious artist whose works are among the monuments of modern art. Admired by successive generations of vanguard artists - the Surrealists of the 1940s, tbe Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s the Pop artists of the 1960s - Cornell cultivated friendships with artists as diverse as Marcel Duchamp, Willem de Kooning, and Andy Warhol. He had romantically charged encounters with women, including Tamara Toumanova, Susan Sontag, and Yoko Ono, and unrequited crushes on anonymous waitresses and shop girls. All this he recorded compulsively in a diary, which stands with the boxes themselves as a strange and affecting record of his extravagant inner life.

SYNOPSIS

Many legends surround self-taught American artist Cornell (1903-72), but Solomon, art critic for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal cuts through those to portray him as a brilliant and relentlessly serious artist. He was haunted by dreams and visions, she says, in the small house he shared with his mother and invalid brother in Queens, New York, and far from being reclusive, he formed relationships with other artists and writers. This is a paperbound reprint of a 1997 book. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Wall Street Journal art critic Solomon offers a brilliant portrait of Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), who lived with his mother and handicapped brother in Queens, talked to pigeons and seemed determined to keep his art unsold. Wanderlust for him was satisfied by a 10-minute bus ride to Flushing. Despite this circumscribed existence, Cornell's fame spread, and collectors still covet his glass-fronted shadow boxes, in which textiles, mirrors and found objects create haunting little worlds. Now, a quarter-century after his death, this authoritative biography should advance his status as a major figure in American art. It places Cornell in the context of the New York art scene. Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, Charles Egan and Parker Tyler are just a few of the memorable characters who inhabit these pages. With sympathy, intuition and wit, Solomon details Cornell's repressed sexuality, crushes on live women and 19th-century ballerinas, and late-life attempts at erotic experience. For all the pigeon-watching, Cornell's life didn't lack drama. Salvador Dali staged a jealous temper tantrum at a viewing of a Cornell film, and a waitress whom Cornell befriended stole some of the celebrated boxes from his garage and met a violent end. Filmmakers make blockbusters from less. (Mar.)

Anne Truitt

Deborah Solomon brings to [Cornell's] life a lucid intelligence, an incisive knowledge of art history and a rare sensibility. Her generous understanding illuminates Cornell as a knight errant of art. --The Washington Post Book World

Donna Seaman

As perfectly composed, richly nuanced and quietly surprising as one of Cornell's boxes. --Chicago Tribune

James R. Mellow

...[A] thoroughly detailed, highly informative biography. -- The New York Times Book Review

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