Cassiopeia 1 (c. 1960) Estate of Joseph Cornell
A child's things
speak of the shock
enigma world
forever
star charts
movie actresses
ballerinas
soap-bubble sets
Untitled (Soap Bubble set) (1936) Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
marbles
toy birds
seen though
the magic prism
a child's vision
the mind
assembles
a cosmology
a bricolage
of bits of this
and bits of that
maps
pieces of cloth
illustrations
in encyclopedias
Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall) (1945-46) Collection Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Bergman, Chicago
The child grown
alone
is driven
to note down
on scraps
of ephemerae
envelopes
cafeteria napkins
slips
of paper
inserted into
books
each particulate
of dream
and wanderlust
Untitled (Paul and Virginia) (c.1946-48) Collection Mr. and Mrs. E.A. Bergman, Chicago
His explorations
quests
for the materials
to objectify
his dreams
drove him
and then
he was driven
to contain
those objects
that occupied him
endlessly
in assemblages
His boxes
became universes
of buttons
stuffed birds
Grand Hotel Semiramis (1956) (The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation)
sequins
toys
feathers
spools of thread
in the dead
season
prowling
five and dimes
in Flushing
and Manhattan
an unexpected
"flowering
in the teeth
of winter"
of a Woolworth's
window
display
Untitled (Solar set) (c. 1956-58) Collection Donald Varshan, New York
Angels
fairies
and "sylphides"
populated
his "shadow boxes"--
windows
facing in
and out --
embodied
in his dreamgirl
shop clerks
waitresses
librarians
"sales girls"
"Courtesy Drugs
check-out girl --
seen in Food
Shop
Piled up hair
again --
warm light
brown
corduroy
slacks, no
socks
but the same
dreamy
docileness
remembered
the immense
innocence +
beauty of
expression"
Untitled (Pharmacy) (c.1943) Collection Mrs. Marcel Duchamp, Paris
Intense
imaginal
"relationships"
mood
swings
violent
turbulences
creative
elations
out of nowhere
lifting him
into the clouds
in his suburban
back yard
Untitled (Grand Owl Habitat) (c.1946) Collection Mr. and Mrs. Richard H. Kaplin, Toledo, Ohio
Ghostly
gaunt almost
sepulchral
Christian
Scientist witness
sings
his "temoignages"
the moment of witness
to a condition
of sudden
grace
marked in
his diaries
by a star
as "special
signs"
the in
expressibility
of life's
significant
moments its
transitory
epiphanies
a brief shading
of light
on the side
of a building
Toward the Blue Peninsula (1951-52) Collection Daniel Varenne, Geneva
the abrupt rising
of a flock
of birds
into the air
a piece
of classical music
heard on the
radio
a face
on the bus
his brother's
smile the ineffable
quality
of being alive
a rare
harmony
and calm
as if a dark
obscure sky
opened suddenly
to reveal
with wondrous clarity
the constellations
he so loved
Verso of Cassiopeia 1
Dec. 9, 1948 (Wednesday)
the "all over" feeling that makes of the incidental a never ceasing wonder and spectacle of the spiritual
(diary entry from Joseph Cornell's Theater of the Mind: Selected Diaries, Letters and Files)
2 comments:
How like assemblage some poems are, that turning inside out to capture or contain the evanescent expansiveness of that gold star moment.
One of the artists I lived with in the warehouse in East Oakland did assemblages, but the scale of hers lacked any intimacy of compulsion.(Maybe that's why she ended up doing "stage sets" for a touring Hindu saint...) Collections/arrangements of things should always throb with some secret passion or discovered wonder, that magical coincidental connection between some external object and inner life that happens more easily when we are young. (I guess when we get older, we label it desire.) Otherwise it's just a bunch of stuff.
Annie,
Absolutely. And of bunches of stuff, we have too much already.
The staying young, or miraculously somehow returning to the state of being young, despite all the bunches of stuff cluttering up our gray matter, would seem (as you suggest) to be the secret, or the trick, of this infinite/finite game -- called Life or Art or what you will -- which we play for all we are worth... while also knowing we will never win.
Though even as I say that, in my heart I know that in Art there are indeed some winners, like JC's boxes, lucky for us all.
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