Joseph Cornell: Stargazing in the Cinema (Yale Publications in the History of Art)

Rating:
Summary: great photos and text
Review: This work on Cornell is one of the best out there. The author gives a thorough history on the artist and delves into his motivations for making art. The works selected are comprehensive. Quite impressive are the quality of the photos, very clear and detailed.

Rating:
Summary: great photos and text
Review: This work on Cornell is one of the best out there. The author gives a thorough history on the artist and delves into his motivations for making art. The works selected are comprehensive. Quite impressive are the quality of the photos, very clear and detailed.

Rating:
Summary: Shadow Boxing with Cornell
Review: While having a cohesive collection of photographs of Cornell's multiform works is a plus for any book, Hauptman gets out her microscope and unscrews his shadow boxes, exposing the seam attached to feminist and psychoanalytical critiques. In the process of her research, she delves into Cornell's research as obsession; obsession as research, illuminating his aesthetic and politicizing his seemingly-anti political sexuality. The photographs in this substantial book are excellent and well-chosen and the stills from Cornell's films add a cinematic dimension, often over-looked by Cornell scholars. This book, through close readings of many of Cornell's works, examines his obsession with childhood (& that great goddess of time), Lauren Bacall, Jennifer Jones, and the elusive Garbo (whose disapproval of one of Cornell's boxes, inspired him to destroy it [lucky for you a photo of it is included in this book]). Hauptman avoids the pitfall of falling into an oppositional critique along the lines of gender, yet brightens the sexual politics blurred in the shadow of the boxes. By the final chapter (dealing with Cornell's dedication to Marilyn Monroe (a most-unlikely sensual/sexual subject for a Cornell project), in which Hauptman very astutely identifies the problematics of Cornell's desire to be both master and guardian, I was watery in the eyes. This is a touching critique and underscoring of Cornell, who, for many reasons, some addressed in this book and some not, was both a failed and successful master and guardian--an artist collapsed in a paradox.