Cornell’s art is no simple extension of American Romanticism but a mutant form necessitated by surrealism’s cultivation of urges and fantasies from the unconscious. There is tension in Cornell’s art between native transcendentalism with its nature mysticism and the newer delvings into unconscious sources of sex and violence. Perhaps it is this tension that keeps Cornell’s art so vital while many products of Surrealism appear stagy and jejune. Cornell indeed broke with traditional American Romanticism. There is little sense in his writings or art of the grand picturesque sweeps of earlier painters of “The Hudson River School”, such as Thomas Cole or Richard Church. There is no panoramic viewing of topographical wonders, only more or less intense moments of “seeing the world in a grain of sand” as transmuted into a constructivist idiom. Nature is never simply transcribed, nor made to complement, for instance, such turbulent and foreboding mystery as Albert Pinkham Ryder’s. Given the stimuli of this distinctive American inheritance all around him, from Nyack to Long Island, it is a wonder that, with his acute attunement to nature, Cornell could step away from it. No doubt the most daring reaches of Surrealism disturbed him, yet with his French inheritance, despite lack of travel, Cornell succeeded in feeling European. It was the violent excesses of Surrealism he disliked, not its new freedom to play with all manner of fantasy—a freeing source of delight to be measured by his remaining inhibitions. That eroticism must be tempered with spirituality was the caution enjoined by Cornell’s interpretation of Christian Science belief. Cornell was not a Freudian (except in scrutinizing dreams), or even a Jungian, a psychology of myth and archetype more akin to his temperament. (A tantalizing brief mention in Cornell’s journal of the child analyst Melanie Klein, who wrote about art as “reparation” to the mother for the infants’s attack on her breast, make us wonder how much he knew of her theories (p. 334).) Clearly he was tentative about the exciting but risky territory opened by psychoanalysis. Cornell settled for a much more homey nature-worship, without delving into the new science of motivations for what it could tell him about the origin and meaning of his quest. His authentic language is heard in such a statement as: “Flicker in the morning seen thru opera glasses* feeling especially occasionally with a maximum of spiritual satisfaction with occurrences of the common round. Reveling in the details of the backyard become a kind of theatre with the appearance of the flicker. Budding scraggly quince tree flicker in turned ground searching with beak” (p. 142). Here the American Romantic sensibility is served by a syntactically broken, freely-associated statement which retains freshness and spontaneity. By cultivating verbal free play, Cornell often attained the mood-altering states he craved, summed up for instance: “working all morning—taking a rest in the chair in the back yard—all of a sudden an overwhelming sense of harmony and complete happiness, a spontaneous lifting that seemed like a healing dispensing with specific work for the time being in this blissful state’ (p. 159).
Such privileged moments, however, could not permanently resolve Cornell’s obsessive dilemma. journal entries such as “soft rose & blue sunset setting off branches almost bare—ineffable grace—thru cellar window” (p. 286) or “cold 4:30 sunset subsided—feeling of spring freshness in holiday week—transforming moment—this ‘lift’ again” (p. 286) lie adjacent to requests to a friend for photographs of “young nudes or anything good in original prints”, or remarks on “Nude models—neighborhood girl on bus miserable recurrent stale dreams before awakening relief finally thru at 7 ...” (p. 286). Could these contrary mystical and erotic states of mind ever be reconciled or blended into something Cornell could fully accept? It does not seem so, with evidence lacking of effort being made. Mrs.Eddy’s teachings had little to offer males such as Cornell suffering shame because of unwanted obsessions. In the absence of any statement of the problem, let alone attempted solutions through personal analysis, it must be concluded that “cosmic consciousness” allowed only transitory escape from overwhelming erotic urges. As with his mother’s less welcome demands and crotchets, Cornell simply avoided the implications of this clash of motives in his journal. The contradiction manifesting in his art is made unmistakable by the journal; had he looked for patterns of self-revelation, as the troubled self tried to communicate amongst its compartments, he might have seen it. Judging by the evidence we have, such a self- analytical phase (or attainment of metacognitive awareness, in Mary Main’s terminology) never opened. Cornell remained mesmerized by the spectacle of his changing inner and outer worlds, not attending to recurring patterns of conflict and relief. Had Cornell entered analysis, his art would certainly have been different, engaging more with the interpersonal, sometimes tragic, events from which his troubles had arisen. Nonetheless, the boxes are often poignant by-products of unresolved avoidant defensiveness and dismissive habits of attachment. Knowing their origins in conflict enriches this high achievement of American modernism.
The Arts
Next to Christian science, Cornell’s most powerful resource for managing depressive moods was the arts. Judging from the journal, the arts almost rival nature for their claim on his attention. Cornell was an avid reader, but it is not surprising that his feeling for literature was perhaps less intense than for the plastic arts and music. Each could be of compelling interest: we will first consider the plastic arts, then literature and music. Apart from admiring the elegant simplicity of sculpture by Brancusi and Giacometti, Cornell had little to say about it, his mentor Marcel Duchamp not being strictly a sculptor. His preference in painting ran to the austere, almost static masterpieces of Vermeer, Chardin, Delacroix, Giotto, Redon, Juan Gris and Morandi. These artists’ work invite much the same quiet contemplation as is required of viewers of Cornell’s own boxes. With certain exceptions, their moods are reserved and reflective, calling attention to the deft management of form. Cornell felt special kinship with Morandi, writing, “Musing upon Morandi—dust covering his beloved used bottles, metal utensils, etc. ...” (p. 368). At times he could cite with approval purely geometric artists, such as Mondrian became, but Cornell preferred Morandi’s exquisitely observed objects in their always fascinating arrangements. Never as bizarre as the Symbolist Odilon Redon, nor as down-to-earth as the master of formal organization Jean-Baptiste Chardin, it is hard to say just which historical figure took precedence. Closer to his own milieu, the example of Edward Hopper’s lonely figures fixed in silent remote spaces appealed to Cornell, but Cornell never attempted such chilly dramas as are found in Hopper’s paintings. (Indeed Cornell’s mother had been a classmate of Hopper, and as a child his sister Elizabeth had briefly studied with him, (pp. 333-4).) The journal establishes such influences but, apart from Duchamp, Cornell’s specific debts to these masters are hard to discern.
He is surprisingly diffident about Surrealism. The laconic “met Dali” is unaccompanied by any critique of his merits or excesses (p. 126). (In fact, Dali felt jealous of Cornell’s prowess in making the film Rose Hobart, but there was no response to his jibes.) Giorgio de Chirico is admired but Max Ernst, whose La Femme 100 Tetes had started Cornell on his career in 1931, is not mentioned in the journal selections, nor is Rene Magritte, the uncannily inventive Belgian Surrealist. Perhaps these artists’ pictures were just too fantastic, or disturbing, to be of use to Cornell. He may have recoiled from the perverse sexuality of Surrealism. A lasting debt to Andre Breton, however, is undeniable: “Breton—surrealism ‘saving my life’” (p. 331).