Joseph Cornell

Rating:
Summary: A Compromise
Review: If you seen the work of Joseph Cornell before and loved it then you will find much to learn from in this book. But, I'm not sure readers encountering Cornell for the first time through this book will be won over. The detailed text by McShine is thorough, covering his life, his surrealist box constructions, collages and cinema. A huge amount of his work is reproduced, and an extensive bibliography are included. However, most of the plates are in black and white, with only a handful of colour photographs of his work. Moreover, the photographs of his work lack depth, so the three-dimensional tactile qualities of his enigmatic box constructions are lost. Perhaps these qualities would be difficult to convey in any photographs. So, it is not the perfect Joseph Cornell book. But the writing is interesting and I still loved looking at the less-than-ideal reproductions of his work.