The House on Utopia Parkway, Joseph Cornell's Studio Re-Created by Wes Anderson

View of exhibition from opposite side of rue de Castiglione

Gagosian has outdone itself, yet again, with an exquisite exhibition in its rue de Castiglione window. Filmmaker Wes Anderson has recreated Joseph Cornell's studio in which he lived and worked until his death in 1972. The studio was in the basement of his mother's house in Queens where he lived. Cornell was known in his neighborhood as the solitary figure walking the streets of Queens and sifting through odds and ends in flea markets and antique shops. He was obsessive, and meticulous, a man who created beautiful worlds that meant everything to him. He may have been a recluse and somewhat of an oddball, but as a collector, an archivist of memories and emotions, and creator of curious worlds inside boxes, his work also enjoyed an enormous influence on mid-century American art. 

Installation View Gagosian Gallery, rue de Castiglione

Anderson's installation—done together with some of his longtime collaborators—is not the studio itself, rebuilt and transposed to Paris, but a recreation. Some of Cornell's possessions are too fragile to move, and others not available, so Anderson remade these objects as close to the original as possible. That said, a number of Cornell's most well known boxes, themselves now archival objects, are in the display. I must say, knowing the sheer amount of junk that Cornell kept in the basement, I was expecting his studio to be messier, more like Francis Bacon's than Cezanne's orderly arrangement of objects. But, of course, Cornell's studio as represented in this exhibition, was scrupulous, with every object in a box, labelled, ordered, neatly stored and within easy access. In addition, Cornell's tools and materials—glues, brushes, pliers, and metal wash basins—looked as though they were waiting to be used. 

Joseph Cornell, Rose Hobart, 1936

For me and my students, Cornell is known for his found footage film, Rose Hobart (1936) one of the earliest examples of surrealist collage on film. Cornell took images of the actor Rose Hobart from a B-movie adventure, and re-edited them into a hommage to the actor, replaced the soundtrack with Brazilian samba, slowed it down, and projected his 19 minute film through a blue filter. The film says everything about the eccentric Cornell who was fascinated from a distance with the exoticism of film, the eroticism of the star, and his drive to creatively reconceive the world as the rest of us saw it.

Installation view with reflection of Gucci sign

The most glorious thing about this exhibition was how the installation became a repetition of Cornell's boxes. Viewers peered in through the gallery windows at all the objects, drawings, and everything in its place in the same way that we would before his boxes. Along with some of Cornell's most well-known boxes—Lauren Bacall and the medicine cabinet—there were film cans, photographs, drawings, boxes waiting to be filled, pictures from books, books with the pictures town out, pieces of wood, iron, biscuit tins, scrap books, little bottles, jars, baskets—all the bits and pieces that would eventually make their way into Cornell's boxes. As I peered through the windows of the gallery on a bitterly cold January 2, hoards of tourists walked past, their legs and feet reflected in the window together with the exquisite tiles of the arcade. Further complicating the view into Cornell's studio is the reflection of the Gucci hoarding on the building construction on the opposite side of the street. This Gucci kind of consumerism would be the antithesis of everything Cornell valued: his love of things thrown away, deemed to be of no value to anyone else, but of great value to him. The forgotten, that which has been left behind by capitalism and the drive to entertain - like the genre actor Rose Hobart—was his treasure trove. 

Installation view @ Gagosian Gallery

Cornell never left America, in fact, he rarely ventured far from New York. But, he was the sort of person who had a voracious appetite for the world, for things, for adventure. National Geographic magazines, Baedekers, well-read and loved books, films watched, these were the source of Cornell's fascination for the world. He knew Paris from the movies, fellow artists, and from encyclopaedias, books, and magazines that he found in junk sales, so I am sure, he would have been tickled to see his work on display through a prominent city window. That said, I can't imagine that he would have felt comfortable on rue de Castiglione, just up from the Place Vendôme with Napoleon looking down on him. What Cornell would have thought aside, well done Wes Anderson and Gagosian, for inviting us to peek into the past, so lovingly recreated, as Cornell did his boxes, amid the freneticism of contemporary Paris.