Property of an Important Collector
Joseph Cornell
Why? Is it Dark? At Night?
Lot Closed
December 18, 08:29 PM GMT
Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property of an Important Collector
Joseph Cornell
1903 - 1972
Why? Is it Dark? At Night?
titled on the reverse; signed on a label affixed to the reverse
ink and paper collage on artist board, in artist's frame
17⅝ by 14⅞ in. (44.8 by 37.8 cm.)
Executed circa 1964.
Baltimore Museum of Art Sales and Rental Gallery, Maryland
Collection of Ellen Levi Zamoiski, Maryland
Bequeathed by the above to the present owner
Collection of Ellen Levi Zamoiski, Maryland
Bequeathed by the above to the present owner
The Baltimore Museum of Art, 20 Year Review, October - November 1974
“[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