CORNELL, Joseph. Original Collage, with Hand-Painted Elements, Entitled "The Canister of Nokolai V. (Gogol.)" c. 1955. 30.5cm x 22.8cm, framed. A wonderful, subtly effected collage by the American surrealist, made for ballet dancer Allegra Kent. As with all of Cornell's best work -- and the present is an extraordinary collage -- the hand of the artist is scarcely in evidence. In his painstaking way, Cornell, the collector, the antiquary, the conservator of the lost fragments of civilization, has lovingly and almost invisibly applied highlights in oil to the found image of a teapot, onto and beneath which he has affixed the elements of the collage, including the word "Allegra." The effect, always so arresting in Cornell's work, of the redemption of forgotten things, of a refined, careful and loving intelligence applied to simple detritus, opens a world of allusion to the most fundamental practices of humanity -- to gathering, ordering, discrimination, to taxinomy (even to onomasty), and to memory. One somehow senses behind these artifacts the hand of a compassionate, if perhaps slightly confused, demi-urge who has taken it upon himslf to repair the broken shards that have accumulated unremarked alongside the career of civilization. Cornell, the balletomane, met Kent, then a nineteen year-old dancer in the New York City Ballet, in 1954. As was his wont, he immediately became enamoured and Kent would supply the material for his obsessive dream and waking life for some time. He had hoped to entice her to perform in a film he had conceived, but he was flatly refused by the callow girl. Although the beginning of the relationship must have been a bit disappointing for Cornell, he and Kent would become close friends in due course and maintain a friendship for years. The present work is set in a deep frame, made by Cornell, and highly reminiscent of his famous box structures. The entirety of the verso of the image is commented in pencil by Cornell, cryptically, and seemingly at random, and it is signed and titled there as well. Several gallery markings have been applied to the borders of the frame on the verso. The present Cornell is wonderfully subtle, conceptually significant, made for a close and important friend, highly worked on the verso -- where Cornell has written dozens of cryptic notes a la Duchamp, in a deep (ok, box-like, in case we didn't stress that enough) frame embellished by Cornell himself. You would be a fool not to buy this, and I would be a fool to sell it -- the unfortunate if little recognized dynamic of many transactions in the antiquarian trades. Like Gogol, Cornell died a virgin.

Patience and solitude

• Category: Extraordinary Books, Manuscripts & Art
• Keywords: American Literature · Art · collage · paris · SIGNED · surrealism
• Language: Englisch
• Inventory number: 6763LB

Our price: USD 125,000.00