I haven’t had as much time as I would have liked to go through our Cornell exhibition, which opens tomorrow, designed by Carmody Groarke. I remember the 1981 exhibition at the Whitechapel which was a revelation, introducing an artist with an intelligent eye for the imaginatively suggestive assembly of disparate objects and paper artefacts into boxes. I gather he didn’t want to be regarded as a surrealist, but, looking at the exhibition, it seems pretty obvious that his aesthetic was surrealist in terms of the unlikely and witty juxtaposition of different elements of collage, quite apart from the fact that he was a friend of Duchamp and, at the end of the exhibition, did two works which are homages to Magritte.
Looking forward to seeing this. When our kids were small we bought them a children’s book about Cornell called ‘Secrets In A Box’. It is perfect art for kids to explore – especially as many of them get very into collecting and classifying things (Pokemon spring to mind). Seems appropriate that the exhibition is happening close by to the Linnean Society!
Joan