{"id":368851,"date":"2025-12-24T12:46:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T12:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/368851\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T12:46:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T12:46:14","slug":"wes-anderson-brings-joseph-cornells-studio-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/368851\/","title":{"rendered":"Wes Anderson Brings Joseph Cornell\u2019s Studio to Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

News<\/a><\/p>\n

The whimsical filmmaker recreated the Queens artist’s home studio at Gagosian Gallery in Paris, the city Cornell longed for but never visited.<\/p>\n


\n \"Rhea
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"Wes
\n The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell\u2019s Studio Re-Created by Wes Anderson (photo by Thomas Lannes; all images \u00a9 2025 The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation\/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; courtesy Gagosian unless noted)<\/p>\n

Even without any formal art background, Joseph Cornell was an expert collector and curator of found materials and curiosities. His influential shadow boxes, lovingly composed from mementos, curios, images clipped from their literature, and ordinary or ephemeral objects that he came across, became dimensional worlds of wonder that laid the foundations for assemblage and installation art.<\/p>\n

The source material of those worlds, squirreled away in storage boxes or stacked on nearly every surface in Cornell’s basement studio at his home along Utopia Parkway in Queens, is reconvened in a new devotional exhibition that recreates the late artist’s workspace. Gagosian curator Jasper Sharp and filmmaker Wes Anderson co-developed the exhibition at the gallery’s storefront location in Paris, the city Cornell knew intimately and deeply longed for, but ultimately never visited. <\/p>\n

\"\"Installation view of another corner of Joseph Cornell’s restaged studio (photo by Thomas Lannes)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe location itself could not be more fitting: Paris was a place Cornell dreamed of his entire life,\u201d Sharp said of The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell\u2019s Studio Re-Created by Wes Anderson<\/a>, on view through March 14, in an essay<\/a> about the show.<\/p>\n

Sharp noted that during one of his first encounters with Marcel Duchamp, who would become a close friend of Cornell’s, the pair had a long conversation about the city, highlighting landmarks such as the Louvre Museum and the historic Place de l\u2019Op\u00e9ra. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnly at the end of the conversation did Cornell mention that he had never in fact visited the city, an admission that left Duchamp speechless,\u201d Sharp wrote.<\/p>\n

Works by Joseph Cornell, left to right: \u201cChambre Gothique ‘Moutarde Dijon’\u201d (1950) (photo courtesy Michael Rosenfeld Gallery and Gagosian), \u201cUntitled (Medici Series, Pinturicchio Boy)\u201d (c. 1950) (photo by Owen Conway), \u201cPharmacy\u201d (1943) (photo by Dominique Uldry)<\/p>\n

Though many of Cornell’s shadow boxes and collages live in institutional collections, the artist’s sister gifted his collected source materials, letters and journals, library, and other personal effects to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1978, six years after he died. Now, through Anderson’s fastidious eye and exhibition designer C\u00e9cile Degos’s expertise, The House on Utopia Parkway has reunited some of Cornell’s most noteworthy shadow boxes with his meticulously restaged studio filled with over 300 original objects he collected over his lifetime. <\/p>\n

Works including \u201cPharmacy\u201d (1943), \u201cA Dressing Room for Gille\u201d (1939), and \u201cFlemish Princess\u201d (c. 1950) physically command visitors’ attention as they sit below eye level on scrappy wooden tables up front. In the background, dozens upon dozens of cardboard boxes labeled in Cornell’s painted lettering are crammed into a ceiling-high bookshelf. At another corner of the studio below shelves of collected curios, inspirational ephemera are haphazardly strewn across a table equipped with a typewriter, wood glue, ink jars, and a painted wooden parrot, among other needful tools. <\/p>\n

\"\"An exterior view of The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell’s Studio Re-Created by Wes Anderson (photo by Thomas Lannes)<\/p>\n

Cornell devoted many boxes to his loved ones, several artists he was friends with, and women he was deeply enthralled with. In an ultimate act of appreciation for the artist’s practice, The House on Utopia Parkway itself becomes a shadow box, viewed only through the windows of Gagosian’s softly lit storefront. <\/p>\n

The exhibition is free to visit at Gagosian’s rue de Castiglione location in the city’s 1st arrondissement. <\/p>\n

\"\"Joseph Cornell, 1972 (\u00a9 Duane Michals; courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York) \"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Left: Joseph Cornell\u2019s studio in the basement of his family home in Queens, New York, 1971 (\u00a9 Harry Roseman 1971) Right: An exterior view of The House on Utopia Parkway shows Joseph Cornell’s completed work alongside his source materials. (photo by Thomas Lannes)<\/p>\n

\"\"Joseph Cornell\u2019s family home at 37\u201308 Utopia Parkway in Queens, New York, 1969 (\u00a9 1991 Hans Namuth Estate, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"News The whimsical filmmaker recreated the Queens artist’s home studio at Gagosian Gallery in Paris, the city Cornell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-368851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}