After a long meeting today in London, I strolled down to the Royal Academy to see an exhibition by a man who has intrigued me for a long time. A collection from his lifetimes work, meticullously assembling series upon series of beguiling and enchanting boxes. Boxes filled with a lifetimes worth of dreams and yearnings of a magical world. His name JOSEPH CORNELL 1903-1972
A man who never left his country of birth, spending most of his life in the Bronx looking after his ailing mother and brother, working as a textile salesman during the day and spending his nights engrossed in his abundant collections of ephemera, found objects, letters, old books in fact anything that would help him create these masterpieces in such detail,,,,,,,,,,, Constantly searching in dimes stores, sorting and cutting and preparing all the pieces, almost like he was “assembling” his life in boxes without actually having to live it himself.
I also read he invented people and collected artifacts, letters, photographs to support their imaginery lives. Each person would be stored in a manilla envelope in readiness for the day when it was there turn to be boxed.
