Untitled

Maker Joseph Cornell (American, 1903 - 1972)

ClassificationsCOLLAGES

Daten.d.

Mediumon fiberboard panel: black and white magazine photo of shuttered windows in brick wall with detail of magazine photo of tree sgainst cloudy blue sky, manilla paper stained dark blue around edges; verso covered with manilla paper stained dark blue

Dimensions12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm.)

SignedSigned in lower right of verso on text strip stained medium blue in black ink: Joseph Cornell

InscribedSigned in lower right of verso on text strip stained medium blue in black ink: Joseph Cornell

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation

Status

Not on view

Label TextCornell encountered Surrealism in 1931 when he saw Max Ernst's collages at the Julian Levy Gallery in New York. The following year, he showed his first objects and collages alongside Ernst, Salvador Dali, and Marcel Duchamp in one of the first major exhibitions of Surrealism held in the United States.

Although Cornell denied he was a Surrealist, the movement's motifs appear frequently in his work. Here, the window of a foreboding black building reveals a bright image of the outdoors appearing as if inside an apartment. Juxtapositions that invert objective reality are found in paintings by Dali and Belgian Surrealist René Magritte.

Object number2005.19.5

Terms