For months, my friend Susan and I had been talking about the Joseph Cornell exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Cornell (1903-1972) was an American artist known for his fantastical boxes, collages, and assemblages. His works combined "unique ideas, traditions and the elegant integration of woodworking, painting, papering, and drawing" to create “visual poetry,” as Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, the exhibit’s curator, describes.
Art, collage in particular, had been a common thread of conversation for Susan and I since we met over a year ago. We both dabble with collage and mixed-media pieces, and the chance to see one of the founding fathers of this medium was exciting. The exhibit, "Navigating the Imagination," was the first major retrospective of Cornell's work in 26 years. Organized by the PEM and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, it featured 180 examples of his work.
Susan and I had both been feeling a little life-weary, and were looking forward to the great escape. We planned on everything--road trip, a change of scenery, long conversations, good food...a little R&R. We just hadn't planned on the heat.
Somehow, we had managed to plan our summer get-away during the hottest weekend of the year. And it was hot. Not perfect summer day hot, but Al Gore is right, this is global warming and an inch of clothing will feel like a parka when I step out that door--hot!
But, despite the heatwave--and the hotel that thought air conditioning was optional--we were determined to make something memorable out of the cards we were dealt.
Stepping into the museum was like stepping into an oasis--literally, given the 90 degree heat at 10 in the morning. But more so, creatively. The grand atrium, with its skylight-lined roof, filtered light and elegant tiled floors provided backdrop to colorful exhibit banners and giant origami creatures floating above. Staircase and secret-like doorways bid visitors “come here,” “come in.”
And so we did. Up a curved staircase, through doors flanked by poster-size reproductions of Untitled (Tamara Toumanova) and Medici Slot Machine...into the magical world of Joseph Cornell.
Inside, eight dimly lit rooms to wander through and explore the imagination of this remarkable artist. It was hard to know where to look first, or how to take in the vast collection of collages and shadow boxes and assemblages made from found objects and found words. Imagine moonlit embraces, solar systems, waves of poetry, floating women and dancing lobsters...all in one place! Imagine the most ordinary and familiar objects--a drinking glass, a child’s toy, a cork, a map--disassociated, then reassociated and translated from ordinary to surreal, to sublime.
“Although Cornell’s exploration of art, culture, and science was highly personal, even spiritual, his goal as an artist was to inspire others to pursue uplifting voyages into the imagination...” explains Hartigan. “His lyrical, often surprising combinations of materials and ideas are usually associated with surrealism, a European art movement that emphasized dreams and poetic dislocation in the 1920s and 1930s. Surrealism, however, was just one of many resources that Cornell called upon as an artist driven by innate curiosity and creativity rather than by theories and formal art training. He often described himself as a maker because he valued his “natural” and “spontaneous” origins as an artist. Making something new from nothing or the pre-existing is critical to the processes of many self-taught artists. It is also central to the modern concept of creativity as the collision and recombination of ideas. Traditions can be reinterpreted; connections can be forged between the seemingly random or disparate.”
We spent four hours in the exhibit. Mesmerized, at times overwhelmed, by the visual interpretations before us. We wandered off on our own. We met back to confer on what we’d seen. We took notes. We were inspired.
And that is how...as we were leaving the exhibit, down a golden-lit corridor, a light became the moon. |
