Joseph Cornell’s boxes, so particularly arranged, tap our mind’s insistence on putting two and two together to create narratives even where none exist. Some correspondences are easily deciphered, but the boxes’ power and pleasure lie in how they never fully give up their mysteries.
Cornell's most characteristic art works were boxed assemblages created from found objects. These are simple boxes, usually glass-fronted, in which he arranged surprising collections of photographs or Victorian bric-à-brac, in a way that combines the formal austerity of constructivism with the lively fantasy of Surrealism. Many of his boxes, are interactive and are meant to be handled.
He uses the form of the box to almost frame a story, or a contained landscape. The box is often compartmentalised to fragment the narrative, to take you from object to object and construct a whole. You may needn't have to understand the symbology of it. It still has the power to speak to you. In essence i see them as story telling devices.
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