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. He was largely self-taught in his artistic efforts, and improvised his own original style incorporating cast-off and discarded artifacts. He lived most of his life in relative physical isolation, cared for his parents and his disabled brother at home, but remained aware of and in contact with other contemporary artists.
"Cornell's editing has not been tampered with. It is sometimes minimal (the editing), sometimes extensive, always sensitive. I did not change it, as when I did the entire re-edit of Cornell's Legend for Fountains. JACK'S DREAM, for instance, is a puppet an ...
Watch Now"I have not changed the editing structure. I have made the films printable. They are the first known fully collaged films, i.e., films made from found footage, and were done sometime in the '40s. Cornell combines Vaudeville jugglers, animal acts, circus pe ...
Watch NowJoseph Cornell's ode to the memory of his friend Joyce Hunter is a meditative series of scenes recorded at Flushing Cemetery in Queens, where Cornell arranged for Hunter to be buried. ...
Watch NowJoseph Cornell film with input from Rudolph Burckhardt. Also the title to one of Cornell's collages. ...
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Short film of a statue of an angel by an ornamental pond on a summer's day. ...
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A short, avant-garde movie, starring twelve-year-old ballet student Gwen Thomas, Nymphlight is a lovely blend of fact and fiction, using Bryant Park at the New York Public Library as a stage set for the fantasy inclusion of a certain nymph. A meditation on ...
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A shorter version of Joseph Cornell's Nymphlight, an experimental film shot in New York City's Bryant Park, featuring scenes of birds, fountains, people, etc. Edited to the length of Debussy's prelude of the same name. ...
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Slightly different version of Cornell's Mulberry Street. Scenes of Mulberry Street on New York City's Lower East Side, as seen from the point of view of a bust of Mozart sitting in a store window. ...
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Short film with sound by Rudy Burckhardt, assembled from the footage shot by Joseph Cornell for his own silent "Mulberry Street. ...
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Joseph Cornell shot footage on Mulberry Street with Rudolph Burckhardt and made this silent film. Burckhardt would make his own sound version, "What Mozart Saw on Mulberry Street," and Cornell would also make Children out of the same material. ...
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A collaboration between Joseph Cornell and Rudy Burckhardt, Aviary is an impression of Union Square. The location held a particular fascination for Cornell who wanted to establish a foundation for artists and art therapy there. In the film, he treats the p ...
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Centuries of June, perhaps more than any Cornell film, is a naked attempt to capture the soul of a place and the mood of a disappearing moment. ...
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A film composed of the out-takes from Brakhage's The Wonder Ring (1955), which Cornell had commissioned. There has been a long-standing misconception that the film "Gnir Rednow" is simply "The Wonder Ring" mirrored or projected in reverse. However, Mark To ...
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Footage shot for Cornell by Rudy Burckhardt in December 1955 of a woman buying chestnuts from a street vendor and watching people and birds in a city square. ...
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Smoke, sparks and steam dance together in Cornell's found-footage collage. Backwards title cards (or an alien language, if you like) punctuate this mishmash of the industrial and the ancient. ...
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In Vaudeville Deluxe, Cornell assembles footage of performers, like a man who balances in his mouth a frame that supports a seated woman. (Release date is approximately 1940s. ...
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A lucid dream turned nightmarish reality. A ship sinking into a world of fear. A short film that's mostly puppetry by one of America's most prolific twentieth century artists. ...
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A montage of elephants, children, Native Americans, logging, a barnstormer, a blimp, people on and in the water, and a man who sings like a bird. ...
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Director Joseph Cornell evokes the nostalgia of childhood by filming a children's party. ...
Watch NowCarousel - Animal Opera (c.1938), a visual symphony by artist and sculptor Joseph Cornell. ...
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One of Joseph Cornell's funniest films, Thimble Theater is structured like a vaudeville variety show about nature. ...
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A short made by Joseph Cornell in the late 1930s-- An ode to imagination, travel and literature. In true Cornellian fashion, the film borrows footage from, among other films, a Burton Holmes travelogue; Sightseeing tours of Dutch Marken and agrarian Asia t ...
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Cornell employs clips from 1931's jungle melodrama East of Borneo – more specifically, clips of its lead actress, Rose Hobart – to disquieting effect. Through Cornell's collage editing, Hobart becomes a singular object of desire and dread, trapped in a ...
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This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas' 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were ...
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This is a 1991 documentary film about the legendary artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, who made those magnificent and strange collage boxes. He was also one of our great experimental filmmakers and once apparently made Salvador Dali extremely jealous at ...
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