Frog Out of The Well
When I first get to know Joseph Cornell as an artist is when I read his introduction in Olivia Laing’s Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. I imagined him with the actual Cornell notes from Cornell University but was I wrong. He turned out to be a trash collector who had been surviving in the concrete jungle of New York for his entire course of life, a dreamer and a hoarder walking in his own pace. His journey of trash picking started with collecting random items on the streets and in the stores in New York. Thingamabobs like printed postcards, tobacco pipes, twigs, feathers, marbles were his to collect. He’d collect abandoned wooden or glass cabinets for the display of his collections. His collections frames are often depicted like drawings, with backgrounds, motifs, structure and decors, the objects are often positioned in relation to others with clear logical common sense. But because he has put real life objects into the cabinets with an open face, the audiences would be entering a mini play, a story told by the creator himself. with the interest of his to explore topics and the unknown in the world, he put his knowledge acquired from science fairs and books he read in to use to tell his stories from his perspective looking from a pinhole called New York.
Here are two of his works that I found interesting:
Soap Bubbles Set (1948) is made after Cornell visiting New York Expo in 1939 back and forth. In the middle of the cabinet sets a hourglass shaped drinking glass. On both sides of the glass lays a piece of drift wood and a piece of coral. He put up an old moon map as a background. On the very edge of the two sides he put two each Dutch tobacco pipes facing against each other, also stating his longing for his Dutch roots, and playa as a tribute to René Magritte’s painting. On the top of the cabinet hangs seven identical white cylinders perhaps suggesting the seven planets proposed in the Copernican heliocentrism theory.
Why did Cornell called this work Soap Bubbles? I’d argue that the two pairs of pipes blows not smoke but bubbles (Hey also a tribute to Magritte!) , and the bubbles here are the bubbles from ocean’s tides and waves, calling to the moon map on the background, tides only exist when the moon does. As the pipes are blowing out bubbles, they shifted into the round shape of the craters on the moon map, which are also another visual and imaginary forms of bubbles. The drift wood and the coral sets the scene of being on a beach, each representing sea water and the deposited sand, two elements that visualise the tidal system (A bit of A-level geography for you there). The hourglass-ish glass I guess can represent chronological order, in Cornell’s other pieces, some some the glasses are filled with sand, pointing out the affect that time has made on the natural environment and to human habitation, time runs along while the tides rises and falls, the environment around us are for ever changing and so are ourselves. We are growing as a species and as individuals, outside exploring ourselves and this world. At the same time we record it, explaining our perspectives in our own bubbles to our children with objects that we found.
Another Cornell’s Piece, Untitled (Beehive, Thimble Forest) (1948) explored another interaction that Cornell experimented with his audiences. This cylindrical wooden container opens at the top, and inside the container, mirrors circled around the walls. Five metal thimbles are placed in the middle with five sliver needles fixing them in the air, with five different coloured beads laying at each of their feet, with in the holes digger from the bottom grey pad. The pad was evenly sprinkled with painted sawdust, on the side of the container, a small hole is opened for the audiences to peep in. The piece itself has united functionality - the lid of the container can be taken off so the thimble can be outing actual use, with the needles supporting it made them easier to reach, not contaminated by the sawdust; and artistic connotation - when the thimbles and the needles are connected together they shape shift into pine trees. With the audiences peeping from the side hole, the mirror reflects the shapes of the pine trees to form an actual forest with no end.
The metaphor of forest put in this piece is again, brought by artificial objects (I thought there’s at least one element-the dust at the bottom is a primary produce of nature’s but nope). The forest is not actually, in anyway a true forest, the only two traits it has are just the mimicking silhouette and its endless illusion. Perhaps what Cornell wanted to express are the hollowness and despair living in a city, the needles and the thimbles are the skyscrapers, the city is the concrete jungle (wHerE drEaMS aRe mADe oF:/), build completely by human hands but also restricted in the same way. Hope may be seen though the skies but sometimes it will also be covered up by a giant dome. Cornell invited them to look though that peeping hole, and see what he sees. Like the Chinese phrase “A Frog in a Well”, looking up seeing only the part of the sky in a round hole, which the well drew. However we can see from this piece, how much Cornell urges to walk out from this city and free himself from just his containers and the cabinets, and perhaps his most dominating way of artstic expression is a giant metaphor of his own life, trapped inside a frame unable to get out. Instead of wasting away he picked up the tiny pretty moments to appreciate and to bring him the sense of achievement and satisfaction.
So Joseph Cornell, a “city bumpkin”, his thoughts and experiences towards the world seem to be so much more mature than some who have physically travelled the world. While some credit must be given to the internationalisation New York persisted to hold from the last century, it is mostly because of Cornell’s eager for knowledge and his endless imagination. We can perhaps sympathise with him, as he saw life as a colourful and full of novelty. Even in the tiniest corner, “trash”can be found as gold, and the “trash” are the windows he look through to preceive his inner and outer world. Even if he could be a frog in a well, the round hole he saw through is a kaleidoscope. Macroscopically, we are all restrained in some ways, physically/mentally speaking, our interpretation of satisfaction and hope forms our persona, and give us life, but explorations of the outside the frames makes us larger than life.
我第一次接触到约瑟夫 康奈尔这位艺术家（Joseph Cornell）是在奥利维亚 莱因（Olivia Laing）所写的书，可笑的天气（Funny Weather）里。我第一反应把他和康奈尔笔记联想到了一起，后面发现他其实是个喜欢捡垃圾的纽约钉子户。在这个钢筋水泥的森林中，走着自己步调的恋物癖梦想家。而他的捡垃圾，的是纽约街头上，小店里的各种奇特的小玩意，像小画片，烟斗，树枝，羽毛，玻璃弹珠，都能成为他的收藏品。康奈尔会在纽约各种小店里搜罗木头和玻璃制成的空展示柜，并把他收集到的“垃圾”放置或粘贴在展示柜中，形成柜中的一个个小风景。而他的创作后期他会自己制作陈列柜，康奈尔的展示柜中往往都会像一幅画一样，有背景，主题，结构和点缀。但是因为他将真实的物品以空间大小摆放在盒子中，这给予了观众们像在看一场迷你话剧的感觉。每一个物品的前后关系十分有层次，以至于如真实舞台一般。他本人也对世界上各处的议题都充满了浓厚的兴趣，他想去了解世界上的未知，他也将他在科学展和书籍中学习到的有关世界的知识，在玻璃陈列柜里，在纽约这口井里，讲给他的观众们听。
以下是我很喜欢的他的两个装制作品：
肥皂泡（Soap Bubble Set）是康奈尔反复参观了1939年纽约世博会后得到灵感创作出来的展示柜作品。柜子中间摆放着一个沙漏型的玻璃杯，杯子两边放着一块发了霉的浮木和一块珊瑚。背景贴着一幅他自己淘来的月球地形图。两侧分别放着两个荷兰烟斗，此处也有着康奈尔对自己荷兰老家的归属感，同时也致敬了超现实主义大师马格里特的烟斗画作。展示柜的上方吊着7个大小颜色相同的圆柱，或许是代表了哥白尼行星说里的7个行星。为什么这个作品叫做肥皂泡呢，我个人认为这四个烟斗吹出来的不是烟，而是泡泡（当然也是对马格里特的致敬），而这个泡泡指的是海洋潮汐和波浪的泡泡。即有了月球地球才会有潮汐，烟斗吹起泡沫和月亮上的洞洞呼应，月球坑也是一种视觉上和幻想中的泡泡，浮木和珊瑚则代表的是海水和沙滩，两个将潮汐可视化的元素。而这个沙漏型的杯子代表时间，康奈尔的其他作品也有这样的沙漏杯，里面装着沙子，这代表着时间对自然环境和人类生活的洗礼，周而复始潮起潮落，我们身边的环境在变化而我们自己也在变化，我们在成长，在发现和探索这个世界，并且记录了下来（也便有了背景上的月球地形图）。
另外一个作品，蜂窝顶针森林（Untitled: Beehive, Thimble Forest)探索了另外一种观众与康奈尔作品的互动方式。这个圆柱形的木头容器也是一个现成的容器。而在这个小盒子的里侧，放置着不同朝向的小镜子，盒子中央有着五个钢针，上面顶着五个银色顶针。而针的下方开口处放置着五个颜色不一的圆球。底部灰色的垫板上均匀的洒上木工锯锯下来的木屑。盒子侧边开了一个小洞。这是一个集实用性与艺术寓意于一身的物件——盒子上的盖子可以随意被取下来和盖上，每一个顶针都可以被拿出来使用，有了钢针架起提升了方便性。但同时当顶针和钢针连在一起的时候就形成了像松树形状一样的树木。当观众从盒子侧边的小洞看向盒子内部的时候，因为镜子反射的原因，便会看到一个无穷无尽的顶针森林。我认为这个无穷无尽的森林或许不是真正的森林，所有制作这个作品的材料均为人工制品（一开始以为下面的木屑是天然元素但是不是诶-是木工给刨下来的木屑）森林不再是字面意义上的森林，除了它拥有被顶针和针模仿出的轮廓外形，以及其看似毫无尽头这一特征。或许康奈尔是想表达居住在城市里的孤独感和无望。用钢针和顶针制成的树木或许是纽约城中的摩天大楼，而纽约是那个看不到尽头的钢筋水泥森林，完全在人类手中被制造，但也同时被其所限制。或许天空是可以被看见的，但是却有时会被穹顶遮盖住希望。而康奈尔却带着我们从他的眼睛里，往那个小洞看去，如坐井观天的青蛙一般。但同时我们却也能在这个作品中看出康奈尔想要走出纽约旅行的愿景，去将自己从自己的展示柜里解放出来，而且或许，这个占据了他大部分作品的创作形式是他对生活的呻吟。但与其逍遥度日，数尽岁月沉沦，他将生活的细节和它们带给他的快乐种在木头和玻璃里，开出了花。
所以到头来说，康奈尔这个从来没有出过纽约的“乡巴佬”，他对世界的成见和解读似乎比大部分环游世界的人还要成熟。有一部分原因归功于纽约国际化的影响，更有一部分是康奈尔自己本身对知识的渴求和无止境的幻想。在他看来，生活是充满新意和快乐的，即使在小小的角落也能发现金子般珍贵的“垃圾”，而这些“垃圾”则是他看向自己心灵和世界的窗户，就算他真的是坐井观天蛙，他的天空也如万花镜一般令人神往。宏观来说，我们不管是在生理或心理上都受到了一定程度的束缚，内心对生活的满足和目标帮助我们形成了我们的本体，赋予我们的生活以意义。但对框架和规则之外的探索使我们能够超越这层意义。
source of images:
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2019/contemporary-art-evening-n10149/lot.29.html
