Dime-Store Alchemy
A small, short book (82 pages) that I'm slowly reading now, as much about Simic's views as Cornell's. Much of it seems very similar to the interests of photographers, especially amateurs who wander around looking for pictures and accumulating them nowadays on their computer hard drives, combining them into albums, photostreams, sets, slideshows, and even outright collages sometimes. Cornell was one of the first to become absorbed in making collages and assemblages. His life and methods interest me a lot, but the majority of his collages and boxes don't happen to appeal to me. However, some I like very much, like his box (untitled) illustrated on the left side of this picture (a small picture of this same box is also in Simic's book). To do Cornell justice I should have put Simic's little book together with lots more other appropriated images. (Here it's sitting on two pages of the one other book I own about Joseph Cornell, Master of Dreams by Diane Waldman, which I haven't yet started reading -- though I've often looked at the illustrations.)
Here is what Charles Simic has written on page 14 of his DIme-store alchemy: the art of Joseph Cornell.
WHERE CHANCE MEETS NECESSITY
Somewhere in the city of New York there are four or five still-unknown objects that belong together. Once together they'll make a work of art. That's Cornell's premise, his metaphysics, and his religion, which I wish to understand.
He sets out from his home on Utopia Parkway without knowing what he is looking for or what he will find. Today it could be something as ordinary and interesting as an old thimble. Years may pass before it has company. In the meantime, Cornell walks and looks. The city has an infinite number of interesting objects in an infinite number of unlikely places.
Dime-Store Alchemy
A small, short book (82 pages) that I'm slowly reading now, as much about Simic's views as Cornell's. Much of it seems very similar to the interests of photographers, especially amateurs who wander around looking for pictures and accumulating them nowadays on their computer hard drives, combining them into albums, photostreams, sets, slideshows, and even outright collages sometimes. Cornell was one of the first to become absorbed in making collages and assemblages. His life and methods interest me a lot, but the majority of his collages and boxes don't happen to appeal to me. However, some I like very much, like his box (untitled) illustrated on the left side of this picture (a small picture of this same box is also in Simic's book). To do Cornell justice I should have put Simic's little book together with lots more other appropriated images. (Here it's sitting on two pages of the one other book I own about Joseph Cornell, Master of Dreams by Diane Waldman, which I haven't yet started reading -- though I've often looked at the illustrations.)
Here is what Charles Simic has written on page 14 of his DIme-store alchemy: the art of Joseph Cornell.
WHERE CHANCE MEETS NECESSITY
Somewhere in the city of New York there are four or five still-unknown objects that belong together. Once together they'll make a work of art. That's Cornell's premise, his metaphysics, and his religion, which I wish to understand.
He sets out from his home on Utopia Parkway without knowing what he is looking for or what he will find. Today it could be something as ordinary and interesting as an old thimble. Years may pass before it has company. In the meantime, Cornell walks and looks. The city has an infinite number of interesting objects in an infinite number of unlikely places.