Saturday, April 3, 2010

Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Online Collections



The Smithsonian Archives of American Art has a whopping 6,000 collections, and now nearly 80 collections are fully scanned in their entirety: letters, sketches, diary entries, photographs, etc. The collection includes the ephemera of Jackson Pollack, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, the Downtown Gallery (NY, NY), and Joseph Cornell, amongst many others. The site is beautifully accessible, without any registration or login steps; it's open, flowing, and immediately captivating: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/.

In class, I presented some work of Joseph Cornell in terms of his belief in "white magic" as an anecdote to surrealism, as it related to the work of Flusser. At City Lights bookstore, this spring, in San Francisco I found a book on "Joseph Cornell's Dreams," which illuminates shards of dream material that perhaps influenced his practice, and of course they seem surreal: "December 26-27, 1959: lone image of cyclist in the sky lingering from dream of 2 days before xmas rode in from left + sense view as of high wire act...Dorothea boy with flowered leg." Cornell's reflections are poetic, with attention to cadence and language alongside visual and imaginative prowess. I don't think he thought of himself as a poet, though, and his box art rarely included text. The archives reveal that he was a prolific writer, though, privately. I imagine writing was intertwined with his artistic practice.

The Smithsonian Archive scanned 4 boxes worth of his journals, also, dating from 1941-1973: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/cornjose/series3.htm. Many of his writings focused on his dreams, alongside his practice. His handwriting is esoterically indecipherable, but the collection includes insights on "the beauty of the commonplace...deep desire to reach young people through art work...distance between boxes and life...wanderlusting...summer constellations...and the and the ad infinitum of dreaming." I also enjoy references to friends of his I admire such as Mina Loy and Susan Sontag.

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