Lynda Rosco Hartigan's book on Joseph Cornell, titled
Navigating the Imagination, brings up a handwritten note at the beginning of one of Cornell's scrapbooks. Taken from the
Christian Science Journal, it reads "Nothing is ours to keep for ourselves. Money, talent, time, whatever it may be that we possess, is only ours to use. This is the great law written everywhere. No one owns anything for himself alone, and no one can live to himself alone."
The 1st essay of the book, "When Does and Artist Become an Artist?" opens with a discussion about Cornell's upbringing in and around New York City. He was particularly inspired by the sights of Sixth Avenue (a "world of flowers") and also the experience of riding the elevated train lines. The Roaring 20s became "Cornell's large glass, reflecting things, people, environments, and activities that opened his observational mind's eye."
As a way of documenting his readings and experiences, Cornell kept scrapbooks, full of clipping and scribbled quotes. The strange juxtapositions contained in these notebooks which "(have) the look and feel of a schoolboy's project," would set the stage for a moment in 1925, when Cornell would finally sit down and "make something." He was inspired not just by nostalgic and contemporary recollections of the city, but also by old styles of dying and creation, as well as the materials he worked with as a textile salesman.
While the work of Cornell was and is often compared to that of his contemporaries in the Dada and Surrealist movement, and while Cornell drew some inspiration from his relationships with them, Cornell's work is in a world unto itself. Instead of exploring the seedy underbelly of consciousness or the absurdity of life's conditions, the theme seems more fantastic and positive in nature. Hartigan writes "by the 1930s, he (Cornell) easily qualified as a descendant of the tradition of sincere, adventuresome amateurs, particularly in America, who have been inspired to pursue private scientific research, primarily through reading." His emphasis on cataloguing, collecting, and self-taught methods of assembly allowed Cornell to work in a way comfortable to him and to feel out his reflections through the use of highly personal dioramas. According to Hartigan, Cornell identified less with Surrealism's Freudian underpinnings and was more interested in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy who emphasized spirituality and "healthier possibilities."
We can see similarities in the blogging world of today, which, in principle, embodies the same do-it-yourself mentality that we see in Cornell's work. Hartigan believes that without people that work on effectively embodying both "child and adult, artist and scientist, performer and inventor" our culture would "not be the intricate and rich fabric that (it) is."
This is counter to the opinions of Theodor Adorno of the Frankfurt School, who's various essays contained in the book
The Culture Industry (still) provide a rallying call for those railing against the complete sublimation of culture under capitalism. The essays, produced around the middle of last century, see the co-opting of leisure activities, be it stamp collecting, radio making, or listening to music, by corporate structures as capitalism's attempt to annihilate any attempt to establish a life outside of itself. In other words, by Adorno's time, capitalism had already taken over all means of production but had left the leisure activities of people well enough alone. Adorno saw the rise of popular music, art, and culture as the final nail in the coffin of resistance.
However, looking back at the last 50 years, it's hard to argue that nothing of importance or interest has been created, even under the financial support of Adorno's loathed Culture Industry. For example, while many people deride the often dumb story-telling that goes on in Hollywood, it would take a fairly stoic soul to argue that LA hasn't produced a single good movie, ever. We'd have to take everything by Kubric, Scott, the Coens, Anderson, and myriad others and flush it down the toilet, as most of their films were partly shaped and inspired by capitalism. In other words, while we can still be critical of the results of certain types of capitalism or, if you so desire, of the entire project, brilliant artists have created works that celebrate not just the coherent whole and resulting "opportunity of transcendence" celebrated by Adorno, but also look at other facets of existence and human experience.
Cornell's objects and inspirations don't just involve the use of extraneous objects and inner mental processes, but also take into account the environment of New York City (one of the world's more capitalist cities) and the objects of industrial production. That doesn't mean that Cornell isn't able to meld and position these various objects into dioramas that provide elegance, beauty, and new worlds for our own minds to explore.
Yesterday, in a similar vain, I posted on the work of
Margaret Bursa as an example of Architectural Fantasy. Today, I'm also going to repost more work recently put on
BLDG BLOG. These pieces are by
Thomas Hillier. Manaugh quotes the impetus for Hillier's work:
"The Emperor’s Castle originates from a mythical and ancient tale hidden within a woodblock landscape scene created by Japanese Ukiyo-e printmaker, Ando Hiroshige. This tale charts the story of two star-crossed lovers, the weaving Princess and the Cowherd, who have been separated by the Princess’s father, the Emperor. These characters have been replaced by architectonic metaphors creating an urban theatre within the grounds of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo."Check out the
flickr set and read Geoff's
post to get the just of the narrative and view more of the work.
What distinguishes this work from that of Cornell, however, is that more emphasis is placed on providing a narrative that "justifies" the work. In other words, one could argue that Hillier is generally working in a vain similar to Cornell, navigating his imagination, but at the same time stating and using a story narrative to define the scope and thrust of the work.
What I like about the narrative approach is that it opens up a possibility of providing an overarching, open ended approach to design that can nonetheless work with other measures of architectural discipline. After all, couldn't we argue that architecture through code, architecture through gesture, or architecture through phenomenology all present themselves as different tales?
I'm imagining a camp of old architects sitting around a fire and telling different tales about their buildings, the people that live in them now, and the society that flows through them. At the end of the night, campers don't argue that one story is "wrong" or "right." However, deep in their slumber, certain fables seem to have greater resonance in the world of dreams.
By Kevin Clement
