Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 -" December 29, 1972) was an American artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde experimental filmmaker (Wikipedia, 2009).

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"Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 December 29, 1972) was an American artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde experimental filmmaker. (Wikipedia, 2009)"

To view my first article with Joseph Cornell's magical collages, click here.

While there, note the three books at Amazon.com by and about the artist in the advertisement at the bottom of the article.

I hope no one is offended by any of the following images, some of which may seem to disparage women. Taken all together, they seem to me to idolize women if distortion there be; and judging from Cornell's corpus of works at Artnet's Artist Works Catalogues, I believe that what may seem to be "disparaging" was simply the artist's outrage at the condition of many women he loved or knew about.

'Artists who work with found materials are frequently described as making something out of nothing. This characterization is based on the estimation that the salvaged materials are ordinary, their value transitory or forgotten, and their existence ephemeral until the artist has intervened and provided them with a new reality or reason for being. Cornell's interest in the ordinary and fleeting was so elevated that he named it the "metaphysique d'ephemera," suggesting that literal things can create an elaborate and subtle form of magic. - Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay... Eterniday, p. 23'

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The words in single quotation marks and the images are all presented courtesy of Artnet's Artist Works Catalogues. See here.

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Authors Bio:
I have a law degree (Stanford, 66') but have never practiced. Instead, from 1967 through 1977, I tried to contribute to the revolution in America. As unsuccessful as everyone else over that decade, in 1978 I went to work for the U.S. Forest Service in San Francisco as a Clerk-Typist, GS-4. I was active in the USFS's union for several years, including a brief stint as editor of The Forest Service Monitor, the nationwide voice of the Forest Service in the National Federation of Federal Employees. Howsoever, I now believe my most important contribution while editor of the F.S.M. was bringing to the attention of F.S. employees the fact that the Black-Footed Ferret was not extinct; one had been found in 1980 on a national forest in the Colorado. In 2001 I retired from the USFS after attaining the age of 60 with 23 years of service. Stanford University was evidently unimpressed with my efforts to make USFS investigative reports of tort claim incidents available to tort claimants (ie, "the public"), alleging the negligence of a F.S. employee acting in the scope of his/her duties caused their damages, under the Freedom of Information Act. Oh well. What'cha gonna do?