Charles Simic's Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell
reviewed by Guy Rotella
Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell.
Hopewell, New Jersey: The Ecco Press, 1992. 77 pp. $19.95.
"It goes without saying."
So nothing stays. But husks remain. As in "Deserted Perch." What's fled or flown can be evoked: the solace soothes; it menaces, too.
Nostalgic, enigmatic, even coy, Joseph Cornell's recuperating, scarifying work has urged a pride of poets to comment or verse. Octavio Paz wrote "Objects and Apparitions" for Cornell, calling his cased and uncontained constructions "cages for infinity." Elizabeth Bishop translated Paz's poem and made a "Cornell box" herself. In "Pantoum," John Ashbery enlists Cornell with other "connoisseurs of oblivion" who inhabit our "short, brittle" days. And Stanley Kunitz admires a Cornell work— "The Crystal Cage"—for its "basket of gifts," its "snowbox of wonders."
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Carey Young
Cautionary Statement (2007)
A bit of matter and a little bit more
Lawrence Weiner (1976)
Marcel Broodthaers holding Sadoul's L'Invention du Cinéma
Photo: Joaquin Romero Frias
Induction valve (Soupape d'admission) by Francis PICABIA
50x33 cm. Gouache over an engineering blueprint. Private collection.
Dada stirs up everything (Dada soulève tout)
15 January, 1921
The Bearded heart (Le Coeur à barbe)
Sole issue of a "transparent newspaper" published by Tristan Tzara in April 1922. 2x14 cm., 8 p. Black printing on pink paper.
SPIRIT VESSEL by Katherine Ng
WORKING NOTE: SPIRIT VESSEL is letterpress printed artist book produced through a Brody Arts Fund Grant. The hand set type was printed on two sides of the paper, then cut into strips (pages) and woven into the shape of a gourd. The text lists the uses of gourds from different cultures and so does the title of this piece. In the Chinese culture, the gourd is used as a container to capture evil spirits, whereas in the Japanese culture, the gourd is used as a vessel for intoxicating spirits.
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