Joseph Cornell, 1972 Photo: © Duane Michals Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York
If world famous fashion houses near Place Vendôme could walk, it would be a good - and fun - idea as well as a healthy experience for them to just cross the street and go to the Gagosian space at 9, rue de Castiglione. They would not even have to enter. They could see inside that small storefront of the Gagosian outpost. They would be looking at Joseph Cornell’s mysterious boxes made with fragments of once beautiful and precious objects Cornell found in his expeditions from his family home in Queens into Manhattan’s bookstores and thrift stores. The fashion houses would see how short the life of once beautiful objects could be - but also how they could be transformed into something so original and mysterious.
Joseph Cornell Untitled (Medici Series, Pinturicchio Boy), c. 1950 Wood, glass, printed paper, and ink in wood and printed paper box construction 15 3/4 x 12 x 4 inches (40 x 30.5 x 10.2 cm) © 2025 The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Owen Conway Courtesy Gagosian
Gagosian gallery is bringing Joseph Cornell’s New York studio right into the heart of Paris. It’s being meticulously recreated by celebrated American filmmaker Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel) with curator Jasper Sharp. It’s the first time in more than 40 years that the work of Joseph Cornell is shown in Paris, a city which held a big place in the artist’s mind although he never visited.
More than 300 objects will be shown in the Gagosian space. From the modest family home on Utopia Parkway, in Queens, New York, which he shared with his mother and brother, Cornell “wandered its streets (of Paris) through postcards, guidebooks, and conversations with his friend Marcel Duchamp, and dedicated dozens of artworks to its poets, palaces, and historical protagonists,” explains the gallery.
Cornell had no training in art. Even though he came from a well to do family until the death of his father, he did not even graduate from the very WASP-y prep school Phillips Academy. He spent his days working in the basement of his modest wood-frame house in the working class neighborhood of Flushing. That’s where he assembled his poetic boxed assemblage of found objects, sort of mini storefront windows. Cornell created boxes in series, depending on his interests of the moment: birds, pink palaces, hotels, observatories, etc. Cornell also made experimental films with the same method as for his boxes. His first film was made by splicing together film stock that he had found. Even though he was traumatized by Dali’s criticism of his first film after its screening in 1936, Cornell continued to experiment until his death in 1972.
Joseph Cornell Pharmacy, 1943 Glass-paned wood cabinet, marbled paper, mirror, glass shelves, and twenty glass bottles containing various paper cuttings (crêpe, tissue, printed engravings, and maps), colored sand, pigment, colored aluminum foil, feathers, paper butterfly wing, dried leaf, glass marble, fibers, driftwood, wood marbles, glass rods, beads, seashells, crystals, stone, wood shavings, sawdust, sulfate, copper, wire, fruit pits, paint, water, and cork 15 1/4 x 12 x 3 1/8 inches (38.7 x 30.5 x 7.9 cm) © 2025 The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Dominique Uldry Courtesy Gagosian
Among the boxes which will be shown at Gagosian are Pharmacy which once owned by Teeny and Marcel Duchamp; a box from his Medici family series, one of his most important series, titled Pinturicchio Boy, showing multiple reproductions of Bernardino Pinturicchio’s Portrait of a Boy (c. 1500) behind amber-tinted glass, juxtaposing them with guidebook maps of Italian street and wooden toys. A Dressing Room for Gille pays homage to Jean-Antoine Watteau’s Gilles, in the Louvre museum collection. Also, a number of unfinished boxes by the artist provide a rare glimpse into Joseph Cornell’s process.
Joseph Cornell’s studio in the basement of his family home in Queens, New York, 1971. Photo: © Harry Roseman 1971
The exhibition can be viewed from outside. Wes Anderson and Jasper Sharp have transformed the gallery space into a life-sized Cornell box. It is lightly lit from within, evoking Joseph Cornell working late at night in his basement. Walking past the gallery, you’ll be irresistibly drawn into the fantastical world of Joseph Cornell.
~Jean-Sebastien Stehli
Wes Anderson
The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell’s Studio Reimagined by Wes Anderson. Gagosian rue de Castiglione, Paris. Until March 14. gagosian.com
