Rare Film at the High: The Cinema of Joseph Cornell
If you’re a fan of Cornell’s nostalgic shadow-box assemblages, don’t miss your chance to see his rare films at the High’s Film Love screening.
By Andy Ditzler, Film Love Founder and Curator
One of the twentieth century’s best-known artists, Joseph Cornell created surreal shadow-box sculptures and collages of extraordinary appeal and complexity. Lesser known is that Cornell was equally influential as a filmmaker. His body of films constitutes a cinema entirely its own — mysterious and playful in equal measure, like his other art.
The High Museum of Art, in collaboration with Film Love, will present Cornell’s rarely screened work mostly in 16mm prints, his preferred medium. The screening on January 17 will kick off a series of retrospective screenings. For more information, visit the screening event page.
Cornell as a Filmmaker
Cornell’s mid-1930s film collages, constructed from film reels he purchased cheaply in New York City’s flea markets, were audacious experiments. Cornell re-cut his found treasures into surprising new combinations of imagery that reconstituted early cinema’s magical trickery for a modern era. Because Cornell’s talent as a scavenger of old films was equal to his artistic ability, many of these films double as tours through the still-astounding novelty films of cinema’s first decades.
Cornell’s most ambitious work in this mode, Rose Hobart (1936), distills the 1931 B-movie East of Borneo down to a twenty-minute portrait of its lead actress, re-ordering the events to dreamlike effect. Its premiere was auspicious: no less an artist than Salvador Dalí was so jealous of Cornell’s idea that he attacked the projector in a rage. He may have been justified, for Rose Hobart is today an acknowledged early masterpiece of the now ubiquitous “found footage” film subgenre.
By the 1950s, Cornell was making films from his own footage, but in a characteristically unique way. Instead of operating the camera himself, he recruited two notable filmmakers, Stan Brakhage and Rudolph Burckhardt, to shoot footage in his presence as they explored the streets and parks of New York.
These films are filled with poignant attempts to capture ephemeral emotions and fleeting moments of beauty and insight — a cinematic achievement on par with the artist’s much more famous shadow boxes. To add further context to his films, visit one such shadow box, titled Cassiopeia, on display in the High’s Skyway galleries.
About the Screening
This event presents both phases of Cornell’s filmmaking. Curator Andy Ditzler will introduce the films, and a discussion will follow.
- Cotillion, The Midnight Party, The Children’s Party (Lawrence Jordan and Joseph Cornell, 1940s/1968), 16mm, 25 mins.
- Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell, 1936), 16mm converted to digital, 20 mins.
- The Aviary (Joseph Cornell and Rudolph Burckhardt, ca. 1954), 16mm, 5 mins.
- Nymphlight (Joseph Cornell and Rudolph Burckhardt, ca. 1957), 16mm, 7 mins.
- A Fable for Fountains (Joseph Cornell and Rudolph Burckhardt, ca. 1954), 16mm, 6 mins.
- Angel (Joseph Cornell and Rudolph Burckhardt, ca. 1957), 16mm, 3 mins.
- Centuries of June (Joseph Cornell and Stan Brakhage, 1955), 16mm, 10 mins.
The Cinema of Joseph Cornell is a Film Love event. The Film Love series provides access to great but rarely screened films, particularly important works unavailable on consumer video. Through public screenings and events, Film Love preserves the communal viewing experience, provides space for the discussion of film as art, explores diverse forms of projection and viewing, and illuminates connections between the moving image and other art forms. Film Love is curated by Andy Ditzler.
