Flicking through a biography of Joseph Cornell, I find this photograph of the artist from 1969, sitting in his back yard. There is something deeply enigmatic about it, the way he looks away from the camera. I wonder if I am ‘overlooking’ and connecting him with his equally enigmatic work?
In the introduction to the biography, the author Deborah Solomon states that writing about artists’ lives is often frowned upon by art historians, keen to separate life and work. And for Cornell, who led a largely private and self-contained life, this act might seem intrusive. I have often wondered if biography really is a form of fiction, for to write about someone (particularly if you have never met them) requires plenty of imagination.
Yet I am curious to find out more about Cornell, to go beyond his art, those compressed boxes of something much greater than mere nostalgia for the early 20th century. I am intrigued by his friendship with Marcel Duchamp, who he helped to construct the series of Boite-en-valises. Or to think of him wandering around the long-closed junk shops of New York, buying odds and ends which caught his eye.
