Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp ... in resonance

Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp ... in resonance, published to accompany a 1998-1999 exhibit of the same name at the Philadelphia Museum, is not only an exceptionally well produced art book but also an excellent resource for readers with an interest in either of the two artists or in the Surrealist movement itself.

Although I had several years ago read Utopia Parkway, Deborah Solomon's biography of Cornell, as well as several works on Duchamp, including Calvin Tomkins's biography, none of these made more than passing reference to the friendship that existed between the two men.  I had never known, most importantly, that Cornell had assembled the Duchamp Dossier that provides the raison d'être for the present volume.  Perhaps one reason for this lack of documentation is that the two artists were, on the surface at least, complete opposites.  Cornell was naive and socially maladroit; he was a retiring personality who never traveled far from his home in Queens.  Duchamp, on the other hand, was the complete sophisticate, a lover of beautiful women who moved easily between New York and Paris.  While the one sat quietly on the fringes of the art world, the other was at its very center.

And yet in retrospect it is not at all surprising that a close association should exist between Cornell and Duchamp.  Not only were both active in creating art in a Surrealist style (though neither claimed membership in the movement itself) but both had independently hit on the same means of presentation of that art.  It was not a coincidence that Duchamp hired Cornell in 1942 to create the containers for his Boîte-en-valise.  More important than the fact that Cornell had prior experience in creating boxes to house his own artwork was Duchamp's recognition of a sensibility akin to his own.  He certainly appreciated Cornell's achievement.  In 1951 he wrote, "Personally I consider him [Cornell] one among the best American artists of today."

The key link between Cornell and Duchamp was that both elevated "found items" to the level of art.  While Cornell searched diligently through the second-hand bookstores on Fourth Avenue for material for his boxes, Duchamp took whatever caught his fancy and labeled it a "readymade."  Here was a convergence of vision that prefigured present day "appropriation art" as well as Pop Art.  No longer was it necessary for an artist to create an opus entirely on his own.  He could make do with what was at hand.  Art was what the artist said it was.  This truly revolutionary concept was what lay behind Duchamp's submission of Fountain to the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917.

The book contains five well written essays on the artists and their association with one another.  This includes a delightful virtual tour of Manhattan circa 1942 when Duchamp and Cornell first began working together.  (They had actually met much earlier in 1933 at a Brancusi exhibit installed by Duchamp at the Brummer Gallery.)  There is also a comprehensive chronology that traces the lives of both men.  In the margins of the essay pages are a number of photographs that illustrate very well the points made in the text and are therefore extremely useful to the reader, especially one lacking any previous knowledge of Surrealism.  One often wishes, though, that these black & white photos had been reproduced in a larger size than that shown.

At the heart of ... in resonance are the plates.  These are divided into three sections - the Dossier itself, a collection of Duchamp's works and another of Cornell's.  It's obvious that the selections shown have been deliberately chosen to demonstrate how well the work of one artist complements that of the other.  And this is certainly the case.  Looking at these plates, all of them magnificently photographed and reproduced, one becomes aware how alike these two eccentric personalities really were no matter how dissimilar to one another they may have appeared at first glance.