Joseph Cornell (1903-1972)
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972)
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972)
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972)
3 More
Property from the Estate of Eugene V. Thaw
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972)

Untitled (Solar Soap Bubble Set Series)

Details
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972)
Untitled (Solar Soap Bubble Set Series)
signed 'Joseph Cornell' (on the reverse)
wood box construction—cork, clay pipe, nails, brass, metal, printed paper collage and paint
9 1/8 x 15 ¼ x 5 in. (23.1 x 38.7 x 12.7 cm.)
Executed circa 1955.
Provenance
Estate of the artist
Pace Gallery, New York
Private collection, New Orleans, 1987
Anon. sale; Sotheby's, New York, 20 November 1997, lot 83A
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Exhibited
New York, Pace Gallery, Joseph Cornell: Works from the Artist’s Collection, December 1986-January 1987, pp. 36-37 (illustrated).

Brought to you by

Rachael White
Rachael White

Lot Essay

Joseph Cornell’s Untitled (c. 1955) from the Solar Soap Bubble Set series unites art, science, and chance. Its rich midnight background recalls Cornell’s surroundings in his lifelong home on Utopia Parkway that, “like the blue glass over some of the boxes, or the blue filter through which his movies were projected,…enhanced distance, dissolved the walls of the house into that ‘azur’ Cornell seemed to need for many of his most ambitious voyages” (B. O’Doherty, Joseph Cornell, exh. cat., Pace Gallery, New York, December 1986-January 1987, p. 12). The soliform ball joins the artist in his voyage by traversing metal rods strung atop a mischievous cherub, clay pipe, liqueur glass and row of upturned nails. Overseen by the smiling sun himself against a celestial array, Cornell’s universe exists in perpetual equilibrium, a static interrupted only by the sphere’s potential movement toward the twisted brass bangle. Where one sees aesthetic wonder, another witnesses a dialogue with the great Copernicus, and yet another travels to the ring toss at Coney Island. Cornell’s personal history appears too, in the pipe purchased from the Dutch Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair as an homage to his family’s heritage. But is it merely an ancestral nod, or does the object also encapsulate the more recent time Cornell spent picking through treasures during his time at the Fair? Has the artist captured two histories in one? Thus, Cornell simultaneously compresses and expands time – in this box, past and future collapse into the present.

More from Post-War and Contemporary Art Morning Session

View All
View All