JOSEPH CORNELL

Joseph Cornell: artist/collector/archivist 

Joseph Cornell Taglioni's Jewel Casket 1940 MOMA

The first of dozens Cornell made in honor of famous ballerinas, this box pays homage to Marie Taglioni, an acclaimed nineteenth-century Italian dancer who, according to legend, kept an imitation ice cube in her jewelry box to commemorate dancing in the snow at the behest of a Russian highwayman. The box is infused with erotic undertones—both in the tactile nature of the glass cubes, velvet, and rhinestone necklace (purchased at a Woolworth's dime store in New York) and in the incident itself, in which Taglioni reportedly performed on an animal skin placed across the snowy road.  read more

                                             

Untitled drawing / collage by Joseph Cornell 1030-40

read more - Smithsonian American Art Museum

read more

and more