Week 7: HOLD (ESTEEM)

Joseph Cornell, untitled, 1935

The new word(s):  HOLD (ESTEEM).

Good class last night, even with two missing. Hope to see everyone together next week!

I liked very much that you came forward in the discussion (sometimes by my stepping back)--I'd like you to do that more at the beginning of the evenings, too--when we look at work on the screen. For Zara and Isabella--tale a look at the collages of Kurt Schwitters--some of the "printer's bin" works from 1919-20, and then the later collages from during and just after WWII, when he was a refugee in England. The shape of Schwitters' life--the number of approaches he employed (the Merzbau, the collages, the object assemblages, and also the more traditional paintings and drawings that seem to have gone on in the background--often during summers in Norway) all treated and re-treated over the course of an historically fraught lifetime (two world wars, loss and displacement)--all give us a lot to consider as to how an artist exists within his (or her)  own time...

Joseph Cornell (an earlier work, above) also lived a mysterious--and much more private life. But the way he developed a personal set of references and symbols--ones he returned to time and again--offer an interesting parallel. We'll look at more of both next time...