Joseph Cornell

bidding is closed

Description

Joseph Cornell
Untitled (Grand Hotel)
paper collage, sand and objects in painted wooden box construction
18 1/4 by 10 3/4 by 3 1/2 in. 46.4 by 27.3 by 8.9 cm.
Executed circa 1954.

Provenance

Allan Stone Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above on June 2, 1976

Exhibited

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Joseph Cornell Retrospective, November 1980 - Januery 1981, cat. no. 129, illustrated

Catalogue Note

Working in the space between sculpture and collage, Joseph Cornell took his cues from the innovations of Dada and Surrealism. Cornell was also a devoted Christian Scientist, and his work invariably concerns itself with themes of the divine. In Grand Hotel, the sun is juxtaposed with a constellation of stars pasted on a cylinder, in contrast to the earthly space below (as signified by the yellow sand). The young boy with the horn – extracted from an illustrated story book – becomes the precocious explorer in Cornell's strange universe. With this work, Cornell marks an essential tenant of his religious belief – the distinction between the temporal and that which is eternal and divine.