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Joseph Cornell Research Paper

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Joseph Cornell was born on December 25th, 1903, in New York. He spent the first half of his childhood in Nyack, growing up with his brother and two sisters. However, when Joseph was only 13 years old, he and his siblings moved to Long Island with his mother, after the unexpected passing of his father due to leukemia. Perhaps both the absence of a father and his brother’s development of cerebral palsy where what lead to Joseph’s reclusive, yet responsible, disposition. Joseph later attended Phillips Academy in Massachusetts for four years, but did not graduate with a formal diploma. Afterwards, he moved back in with his mother, never receiving formal art training. Known by his friends to have serious anxiety and odd fears, Joseph found peace …show more content…

These interests dictated his life’s direction and were communicated strongly through his art. Cornell became a well-known film writer and editor, working on projects such as Rose Hobart and Flushing Meadows. In terms of his visual artwork, his depicted other forms of art in his “shadow boxes”. These were Joseph Cornell’s most famous creations, as known as “poetic theaters” or “memory boxes”, which were glass covered containers with ornamental objects arranged in contrasting ways. Some of the boxes were bought at antique shops, while others he made himself. The most common descriptor of Cornell’s “shadow boxes” is ethereal, or dream-like. Joseph created strong underlying messages and themes to accompany his pieces by tying everyday objects to thoughts and feelings associated with them. He commonly included elements of art forms, such as actresses and objects which were linked to theatre. Another common reoccurring theme in his works is travel and space. Cornell would use a variety of ethnic or celestial objects pinned in place in his boxes. This was his ironic, antagonistic way of presenting exotic things in a trapped setting. Many critics feel this was Joseph’s way of communicating how he feels. Due to the fact that he lived all his life with his mother, these profound creations were all made in the basement of his mother’s house, and these messages seemed to communicate his feelings for …show more content…

These were newspaper clippings and images, which he had carefully arranged. He kept over 160 of these pieces, each which he felt had meaning, and categorized him by such. As demonstrated by these two examples, Joseph liked to deal with themes and topics close to him, another example is youth. Although creating art became Joseph Cornell’s sole source of income, he despised parting with his pieces. In particular, he did not want one person or gallery to have too much of his work, so he sold it sparingly. Interestingly though, he did not mind giving away his art. I was generally to women, although he was not known to be in romantic relationships. One relationship he was in for a while, was his romantic connection to the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. They inspired each other but ultimately parted ways due to his obsessive nature and jealous mother. This is a specific example of his isolation. His mother overall discouraged Joseph from having any ideas of sex and love, leaving him alienated and

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