JOSEPH CORNELL | THE PUZZLE OF THE REWARD #2

Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York

Private Collection, Baltimore

Private Collection, Baltimore

“[Cornell] had a deeply sensory and emotional understanding of and ability to link the natural, man-made, and poetic, and even the loosest consideration of synesthesia recognizes it as an associational and experiential union of the senses that expands knowledge and memory… Intrinsically, Cornell understood that our minds construct concepts primarily as sensory, experienced images rather than abstractions. Our thoughts, feelings, and memories are largely imagistic in form, and metaphor – whether for Cornell or each of us – is a bridge that we build between internal images and language, if we interpret language as art, music, writing, science, and even technology. And, as Cornell knew so deeply, sensory experience relates closely to spiritual experience because it moves us from the intellectual to the perceptual.”

(Roscoe Hartigan, Lynda, Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination, p. 87)