Joseph Cornell’s first major retrospective was held from January 9 to February 11, 1967, at the Pasadena Art Museum (PAM). The critically acclaimed exhibition presented 74 of Cornell’s signature shadow-box collages—small, glass-fronted enclosures that house meticulously arranged found materials. It was the last show that the famed curator and museum director Walter Hopps organized at PAM (then located on North Los Robles Avenue), and it was seen as a fitting send-off for the man responsible for many of PAM’s groundbreaking exhibitions. The rapturous reception to this exhibition bolstered Cornell’s stature as one of the foremost innovators of American assemblage. READ
Hotel du Nord (Little Dürer)
c. 1950
Joseph Cornell (American, 1903-1972)
Not on View
Using found materials from New York City thrift stores, Joseph Cornell created dozens of fantastical worlds in glass-covered boxes. A self-taught artist, he rarely left his home in Flushing, Queens, where he lived with his mother and cared for his brother with cerebral palsy. Despite his rather reclusive life, Cornell was extremely well read and equally well versed in the contemporary New York art scene. Drawing on the complexity and whimsy of surrealism, he layered materials in his assemblages to speak to a profound artistic sophistication championed by fellow artists. Here he has reproduced Albrecht Dürer’s Self-Portrait at Age 13 in a prominent position, as well as an anonymous 15th-century portrait of a child with clasped hands. The incorporation of portraiture here is multilayered, speaking to Cornell’s affinity with the artists who have preceded him as well as to the formal qualities found in the pictures themselves.
Details
- Artist Name: Joseph Cornell (American, 1903-1972)
- Title: Hotel du Nord (Little Dürer)
- Date: c. 1950
- Medium: Assemblage: painted box, metal ring and chain, wood blocks, printed paper, reproductions of Durer's "Self-portrait at age 13," Durer's drawing of a rabbit, and a reproduction of an anonymous fifteenth century portrait of a child with clasped hands
- Dimensions: 17-7/8 x 12 x 3-13/16 in. (45.4 x 30.5 x 9.7 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Museum Purchase with funds contributed by the Charles and Ellamae Storrier-Stearns Fund and Fellows Acquisition Fund
- Accession Number: P.1967.10
- Copyright: © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Object Information
The artist (Pasadena Art Museum, on long term loan beginning 8 October 1964; donated by the artist in 1967 to;
League in Aid of Crippled Children, Inc., New York, sold for $13,500 (in two payments, first installment 1 August 1967; second installment 1 February 1968) to;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, passed 1975 to;
The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.
League in Aid of Crippled Children, Inc., New York, sold for $13,500 (in two payments, first installment 1 August 1967; second installment 1 February 1968) to;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, passed 1975 to;
The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.
An Exhibition of Works by Joseph Cornell
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1967-01-09 to 1967-02-11
Kurt Schwitters and Related Developments
- , 1973-03-09 to 1973-05-06
New York Paintings and Sculpture 1940-1970
- New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1969-10-18 to 1970-02-08
Joseph Cornell
- Michigan, The J. L. Hudson Gallery, to 1965-10-30
4. Documenta Kassel '68
- Orangerie-Auepark, Museum Fridericianum, Galerie-Schone Aussicht, 1968-06-27 to 1968-10-06
Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres
- Norton Simon Museum, 2009-10-30 to 2010-04-05
A Salute to the Ferus Gallery
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Impossible Realities: Marcel Duchamp and the Surrealist Tradition
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46 N. Los Robles: A History of The Pasadena Art Museum
- USC Pacific Asia Museum, 2011-11-17 to 2012-04-08
Dark Visions: Mid-Century Macabre
- Norton Simon Museum, 2016-09-02 to 2017-01-16
Lost but Found: Assemblage, Collage and Sculpture, 1920-2002
- Norton Simon Museum, 2004-11-05 to 2005-03-28
Significant Objects: The Spell of Still Life
- Norton Simon Museum, 2012-07-20 to 2013-01-21
Modernism in Miniature
- Norton Simon Museum, 2022-08-12 to 2023-01-09
Radical Past: Contemporary Art and Music in Pasadena, 1960-1974
- Norton Simon Museum, 1999-02-07 to 1999-06-06
- Armory Center for the Arts, 1999-02-07 to 1999-04-11
- Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, Calif.), 1999-02-07 to 1999-04-25
- Farrell, John, Pasadena Star News, p. 34
- Pasadena Art Museum, An Exhibition of Works by Joseph Cornell, 1966, pp. 42-43, 64
- Armory Center for the Arts/Art Center College of Design, Radical Past: Contemporary Art & Music in Pasadena, 1960-1974, 1999, p. 82
- Sarah Lea, Roscoe Hartigan, Jasper Sharp and Ben Street, Joseph Cornell Wanderlust, 2015, Fig. 21 pp. 44-45
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