Joseph Cornell's Dreams (Paperback)

by Joseph Cornell (Author), Catherine Corman (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Joseph Cornell is well known for the oneiric quality of his art and films. Many have tried, often in vain, to put into words the strange power of his boxes--toy-like constructions whose playfulness and humor are anchored in a profound melancholy and loneliness. "Slot machines of visions," said Octavio Paz. Cornell himself is said to have enjoyed children's responses to his work; perhaps because nothing prepares one better for viewing a Cornell box than having an unbiased mind. Catherine Corman has combed through the voluminous diaries that Cornell kept throughout his life, now in the care of the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, in search of the artist's own dreams. What she found are brief flashes of images, and short, enigmatic narratives of illumination--the verbal equivalent of Cornell boxes. In 1993, Mary Ann Caws edited a large portion of Cornell's diaries for publication by Thames & Hudson, an invaluable sourcebook for Cornell studies. This new, shorter volume is a poetic addition to that literature, equally indispensible to those interested in Cornell as it contains previously unpublished writings, but also because it is as intriguing and mysterious to the uninitiated as the magical boxes themselves. They are not derived from waking life, but appear as if by chance. Cornell spends the day eating pastries and riding a bicycle. Falling asleep on the couch is like pulling the lever of the slot machines of visions. Images of naiads, lambs, and the ocean appear. -Catherine Corman

Edited and Introduction by Catherine Corman.

Paperback, 6 x 8 in./ 192 pgs

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Exact Change (June 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878972413
• ISBN-13: 978-1878972415
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #34,394 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dream Weaver, October 29, 2007

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In general I feel about dream journals rather the way that Edmund Wilson did about Agatha Christie, for what is more boring than reading the dreams of another? Even one's own dreams are notable only for their evanescence and mind-boggling vapidity--and they're long, like life. Therefore I turned to this volume with trepidation, but as it happens it's become one of my favorite little books.

It's not as though the boxkunstler Joseph Cornell decided to pen a dream journal. Instead it fell to editor Catherine Corman to come up with the sharp idea of mining Cornell's voluminous diaries, and finding the parts where he describes his dreams--and perhaps the most telling ones, for this is a "selected" book on two counts. Corman has a winning, sincere way of expressing her thoughts on Cornell; she is not as ambitious as Deborah Solomon, who wrote the much-praised biography UTOPIA PARKWAY, or "How I Proved That Cornell Might Have Been Heterosexually Inclined," and yet Corman has a few gaucheries of her own, like that guide to the themes of Cornell's dreams that serves as an afterword, filled with such crushingly banal wisdom as "Water inspires images of sinking and floating." Well really, what else is there? But even this catalogue has its own virtues, for Corman is unexpectedly poetic and terse, and something of Cornell's own eccentricity seems to have rubbed off on her like wet gilt. The book itself is lovely as only the people at Exact Change know how, though I might have skipped the idea to print every word of the text in the indigo Linda Darnell wore playing the Virgin Mary in THE SONG OF BERNADETTE. What's nice on a star sometimes proves hard to read on slick white paper.

Cornell's assistants used to speak of witnessing him waking from a nap and rising from his day bed, eyes still closed, hands reaching out like the zombies of the living dead, towards his works in progress, new inspiration from his dreams focussing his unconscious energies. The diary entries seem sometimes rushed as though he were hurrying to write it all down before he forgot--nouns and adjectives speed-jotted into abbreviations ("presum." for "presumable," "y'day" for "yesterday," "bks" for "books"). One doesn't often get a glimpse of Cornell at top speed, for his projects always seem so considered, meditative. It's rather thrilling to see him up and down on a roller coaster ride.