Joseph Cornell - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 13, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    C&M Arts, New York; The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, New York

  • Exhibited


    Los Angeles, Manny Silverman Gallery, Joseph Cornell: Collages and Box Constructions, September 19 – November 9, 1996; West Palm Beach, Norton Museum of Art, Joseph Cornell: Box Constructions and Collages, March 7 – May 4, 1997; St.Louis, Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, Joseph Cornell: Collages and Box Constructions, April – June 1998; New York, Joseph Hellman Gallery, Joseph Cornell: Memories, March 31 – April 24, 1999

  • Literature


    D. Windham, C. Orr-Cahall, and E. Rea, Joseph Cornell: Box Constructions and Collages, West Palm Beach, 1997, n.p. (illustrated); D. Waldman, Joseph Cornell: Memories, New York, 1999, pl. 12 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Joseph Cornell began his series of Hotels in 1950 as a group of works sharing a spare structure that provides the illusion of looking through a hotel window onto aging facades papered with advertisements or up into the night skies. Cornell culled his extensive collection of old travel guides to reinvent the aura of grand European and American hotels gone into decadent disrepair. The present lot, with its deep blue hues and weathered wooden frame suggests a view into the northern hemisphere’s constellation Andromeda, named after a Greek mythological princess. Andromeda Hotel is a fine example of Cornell’s unequalled ability to coalesce the beauty, mystery and particular aura of objects.
    During a lifetime that coincided with an emphasis on change for the sake of change, theory and art as an ends unto themselves, and upheavals in technology, science, and international relations, Cornell deliberately chose to make art as a life-affirming act of communication and educational outreach. In describing his purpose as ‘making people at home with things generally considered aesthetic,’ he sought beauty, wonder, spirituality, and humanity as the outcomes of his invitation to journey with him into diverse arenas. First and foremost, Cornell— navigator of the imagination—was idealistic, radical, and contemporary in embracing the prospect of endless transformation while honoring the thread of history and the revolutionary strength of objects. L. Roscoe Hartigan, Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination, Salem, 2007, p. 87

136

Hotel Andromeda

1954

Wood, acrylic, paper collage, metal hardware, shell and glass.

18 1/4 x 12 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (46.4 x 31.8 x 9 cm).
Signed “Joseph Cornell” on the reverse.

Estimate
$150,000 - 250,000 

Sold for $170,500

Contemporary Art Part I

13 May 2010
New York