JOSEPH CORNELL | UNTITLED (MART 12:10 AM)

Private Collection, Long Island (acquired directly from the artist in 1972)

Thence by descent to the present owner

“[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)