Joseph Cornell

Estimate

180,000 - 220,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Joseph Cornell
Untitled (Hotel - Winter Night Sky)
signed and dated 1953 on a label affixed to the reverse
acrylic on found wooden objects and paper collage in glass and wooden box construction
18 by 12 1/2 by 5 3/4 in. 45.7 by 31.8 by 14.6 cm.

Provenance

The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation
Serge Sabarsky Gallery, Inc., New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1981

Exhibited

London, Waddington Galleries, Joseph Cornell, March 1987, p. 13, illustrated in color

Catalogue Note

"Cornell, an armchair traveler, his head filled with dreams of distant places, really did roam far in his thoughts. In his mind's eye, he followed peripatetic romantic ballerinas on world tours and envisioned them in the cramped, meagerly furnished rooms where they rested overnight. But his Hotel boxes are not strictly sensual places. They're also spiritual palaces...[in which] Cornell [is allowed] to gather his visions of feminine beauty into a place that exists on no map. For the journey he is making is not merely between one city and the next. The journey is also between life and the next station that awaits us, and in his Hotels, he guarantees his beloveds a life that outlasts mere flesh." Deborah Solomon, Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell, Boston 1997, p. 217