Joseph Cornell's Manual of Marvels: How Joseph Cornell Reinvented a French Agricultural Manual to Create an American Masterpiece - Hardcover

Ades, Dawn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500516499 ISBN 13: 9780500516492

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 2012

Synopsis

A fabulous facsimile of an almost unknown masterpiece by Joseph Cornell, presented in a box, along with a volume of essays and an interactive DVD

One of Joseph Cornell’s favorite pastimes was to meander through the used bookstalls of lower Manhattan, sorting through old books, magazines, postcards, photos, and other ephemera in search of items to spark his creative impulses. Sometime in the early 1930s he came upon the Journal d’Agriculture Practique (Volume 21, 1911), a voluminous handbook of advice for farmers. Though he was very much an urban creature, he adored French culture of that period, and the book was filled with charming black and white engraving and photographs of pigs, horses, vegetables, and farm machinery. Over time Cornell altered and reinvented many of the pages in the Journal. He inserted collages, photomontages, and occasional drawings; he crossed out words in the text and made French puns with others. Hand-colored engravings, cutouts, and lift-ups intricately transport the reader from page to page. The dazzling elegance of Cornell’s work on the Journal has rarely been viewed. It was discovered in his basement studio soon after his death in 1972 and is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Due to its fragility, the work is not well known, even among Cornell scholars. Now, in a unique venture, sixty of the most extraordinary pages have been re-created in virtual facsimile, with cutouts, glue-ons, and other unique handmade details. Included in a specially designed box are a DVD of the entire work, including pop-up commentaries, and a volume of illustrated essays on the Journal and Cornell’s artistic practice. 103 illustrations

About this title

About the Author:

Analisa Leppanen-Guerra is an art historian, cultural theorist, and writer. She works on the art and visual culture of the 19th and 20th centuries, with a focus on the historical avant-garde, and is one of the foremost experts on Joseph Cornell. Leppanen-Guerra uses an interdisciplinary approach to her scholarship, exploring the links between art, visual culture, film, literature, dance, and religion. She is also a writer and is currently completing a book of creative nonfiction, a literary memoir.

From Bookforum:

While only sixty pages have been printed for this facsimile edition (the rest are included on an interactive CD), they amply demonstrate the entrancing, evocative poetics of this redemptive art: Cornell took a discarded book, did something to it, and made it so new that over a century later we can peruse with delight the marvels to be found amid French farm facts. —Albert Mobilio

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0500516499
• ISBN 13: 9780500516492
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184
• Editor: Leppanen-guerra Analisa, Tashjian Dickran