Joseph Cornell, “The Hotel Eden” (1945)
Juan Gris, “The Table,” (1914)
Rooms and Boxes
“There is a disturbance.”
—Gertrude Stein, “Rooms,”
Tender Buttons
“Juan Gris is not anything but
more than anything. He made
that thing. He made a thing
to be measured.”
—Gertrude Stein, “The Life
and Death of Juan Gris"
_________________
Joseph Cornell’s “boxes”—are like Gertrude Stein’s “rooms.” They both involve a critical cubist arrangement—like Juan Gris’ “The Table.” (1914). They work with existing materials and forms—creating something new from their juxtapositions.
Cornell and Stein were both in many ways—surrealist montage/collage artists. There were no Hollywood special effects—sound, music, dialog, Technicolor, Cinemascope or CGI Blue Screen digital imagery. They both simply used their own visual imagination and objects from their lives—as with “Tender Buttons” and “Rose Hobart.”
Please find following some notes from “Rooms” in Stein’s “Tender Buttons”—I’ve found them to be somewhat relevant to Cornell’s composition method. The edition I’m using is from the Sun & Moon Classic Press (Gertrude Stein Plaza, LA)—along with the Juan Gris collage “The Table” (1914) from the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the cover.
I’m not sure that these zen-like flashes of Stein’s insight—were going through Cornell’s mind when he was working in his basement studio on his readymade surreal boxes. But Stein’s early poem “Boxes” along with “Rooms” in her “Tender Buttons” (1914)—both were written during her involvement with the cubist Juan Gris in Paris.
Stein collected art in Paris—she was interested in Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso. But she was especially fond of Gris—who did the lithographs for her “A Book Concluding With As A Wife Has A Cow A Love Story”—even though he was dying. It was published by Kahnweiler’s Galerie Simon at the end of 1926.
The similarities between Stein’s cubist-surreal compositions—and Cornell’s readymade boxes are interesting. A writer interested in cubist art—and a cubist artist interested in writerly composition.
For me both Stein and Cornell were composing “inquiring spaces.” Or rather “inquiring spaces” were creating them—in the sense that it was resulting in a “surprise.”
_________________
Act so that there is no use of center…
A wide action is not a width…
A preparation is given to the ones preparing...
There is no rental…
It was spread there—any change was in the ends of the center…
The shadow is not shining in the way that there is not a black line…
There is a disturbance…
There is a use, they are double…
The author of all that is in there behind the door and that is entering in the morning…
Explaining darkness & expecting relating is all of a piece…
I was the shape that made no audience bigger…
A little lingering lion and a Chinese chair, all the handsome cheese which is stone…
It is difficult to do it one way, there is no place of similar trouble. None. The arrangement is established…
The end of which is that there’s a suggestion, a suggestion that there can be a different whiteness to a wall. This was thought…
A page to a corner means the shame is no greater than the table is longer…
Something that is an erection is that which stands & feeds the silences of a tin which is expanding...
An enclosure blends with the same just is to say there is a blending…
A fact is that when the place was replaced all was left that was stored and all was retained that would not satisfy more than another…
The question is this, is it possible to suggest more to replace that thing…
This question & this perfect denial does make the time change all the time…
The sister was not a mister…
Was this a surprise. It was…
(Was there a surprise? To me it’s like Stein saying: “The sister was not a mister.” An arrangement of objects in the various frames of a Cornell box seems to happen quite spontaneously—and is “automatically” correct.)
The conclusion came when there was no arrangement. All the time that there was a question there was a decision.
(For me there’s a growth of a whole dividing time so that “when formerly there was a mistake there was no mistake now.” For example, before when objects were separated—“there was a waiting.” Then there was a phase of separation that was between “intending and depicting.” It was a time when there was no mixture—the same as if there had been no change.)
Replacing a casual acquaintance with an ordinary daughter does not make a son.
(So that I see each Stein “room” & Cornell “box”—as a kind of brief zen-haiku. A surprise, a startling arrangement that suggests more than just silence. It’s a lesson of consequence. “There is a quiet, there certainly is.” Frequently it’s nothing astonishing. “No eye-glass is rotten, no window is useless.” And yet if there’s no air or life in the box, then there’s only dimness, every bit of it.)
All along the tendency to deplore the absence of more…
So sullen and slow, so much resignation…
(Composing boxes & rooms—as “pleasant state of stupefaction”?)
A box “containing a curtain”…
A package and a filter and even a funnel, all this together makes a scene…
The whole special suddenness commences, there is no delusion…
Why is there a choice of gamboling?
Lying is a conundrum, lying so makes the springs restless, lying so is a reduction, not lying so is arrangeable…
Releasing the oldest auction that is the pleasing some still renewing…
Giving it away, not giving it away, is there any difference. Giving it away. Not giving it away…
The time which showed that was when there was no eclipse…
Why is there a difference between one window and another? Why is there a difference…
A success, a success is alright when there are rooms & no vacancies…
A line in life, a single line and a stairway…
Why is anything vacant, whey is it when it is and why is it whe it isn’t and there is no doubt, there is no doubt that the singularity shows…
The change is mercenary… This is a monster and awkward quite awkward. No change is not needed. That does show design…
Excellent, more excellence is borrowing and slanting very slanting is light and secret and a recitation and emigration…
Certainly shoals are shallow and nonsense more nonsense is sullen…
Dance a clean dream and an extravagance turns up…
Show the plan and make no more mistakes than yesterday.
Surprise, the only surprise has no occasion…
Rooms and Boxes
“There is a disturbance.”
—Gertrude Stein, “Rooms,”
Tender Buttons
“Juan Gris is not anything but
more than anything. He made
that thing. He made a thing
to be measured.”
—Gertrude Stein, “The Life
and Death of Juan Gris"
_________________
Joseph Cornell’s “boxes”—are like Gertrude Stein’s “rooms.” They both involve a critical cubist arrangement—like Juan Gris’ “The Table.” (1914). They work with existing materials and forms—creating something new from their juxtapositions.
Cornell and Stein were both in many ways—surrealist montage/collage artists. There were no Hollywood special effects—sound, music, dialog, Technicolor, Cinemascope or CGI Blue Screen digital imagery. They both simply used their own visual imagination and objects from their lives—as with “Tender Buttons” and “Rose Hobart.”
Please find following some notes from “Rooms” in Stein’s “Tender Buttons”—I’ve found them to be somewhat relevant to Cornell’s composition method. The edition I’m using is from the Sun & Moon Classic Press (Gertrude Stein Plaza, LA)—along with the Juan Gris collage “The Table” (1914) from the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the cover.
I’m not sure that these zen-like flashes of Stein’s insight—were going through Cornell’s mind when he was working in his basement studio on his readymade surreal boxes. But Stein’s early poem “Boxes” along with “Rooms” in her “Tender Buttons” (1914)—both were written during her involvement with the cubist Juan Gris in Paris.
Stein collected art in Paris—she was interested in Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso. But she was especially fond of Gris—who did the lithographs for her “A Book Concluding With As A Wife Has A Cow A Love Story”—even though he was dying. It was published by Kahnweiler’s Galerie Simon at the end of 1926.
The similarities between Stein’s cubist-surreal compositions—and Cornell’s readymade boxes are interesting. A writer interested in cubist art—and a cubist artist interested in writerly composition.
For me both Stein and Cornell were composing “inquiring spaces.” Or rather “inquiring spaces” were creating them—in the sense that it was resulting in a “surprise.”
_________________
Act so that there is no use of center…
A wide action is not a width…
A preparation is given to the ones preparing...
There is no rental…
It was spread there—any change was in the ends of the center…
The shadow is not shining in the way that there is not a black line…
There is a disturbance…
There is a use, they are double…
The author of all that is in there behind the door and that is entering in the morning…
Explaining darkness & expecting relating is all of a piece…
I was the shape that made no audience bigger…
A little lingering lion and a Chinese chair, all the handsome cheese which is stone…
It is difficult to do it one way, there is no place of similar trouble. None. The arrangement is established…
The end of which is that there’s a suggestion, a suggestion that there can be a different whiteness to a wall. This was thought…
A page to a corner means the shame is no greater than the table is longer…
Something that is an erection is that which stands & feeds the silences of a tin which is expanding...
An enclosure blends with the same just is to say there is a blending…
A fact is that when the place was replaced all was left that was stored and all was retained that would not satisfy more than another…
The question is this, is it possible to suggest more to replace that thing…
This question & this perfect denial does make the time change all the time…
The sister was not a mister…
Was this a surprise. It was…
(Was there a surprise? To me it’s like Stein saying: “The sister was not a mister.” An arrangement of objects in the various frames of a Cornell box seems to happen quite spontaneously—and is “automatically” correct.)
The conclusion came when there was no arrangement. All the time that there was a question there was a decision.
(For me there’s a growth of a whole dividing time so that “when formerly there was a mistake there was no mistake now.” For example, before when objects were separated—“there was a waiting.” Then there was a phase of separation that was between “intending and depicting.” It was a time when there was no mixture—the same as if there had been no change.)
Replacing a casual acquaintance with an ordinary daughter does not make a son.
(So that I see each Stein “room” & Cornell “box”—as a kind of brief zen-haiku. A surprise, a startling arrangement that suggests more than just silence. It’s a lesson of consequence. “There is a quiet, there certainly is.” Frequently it’s nothing astonishing. “No eye-glass is rotten, no window is useless.” And yet if there’s no air or life in the box, then there’s only dimness, every bit of it.)
All along the tendency to deplore the absence of more…
So sullen and slow, so much resignation…
(Composing boxes & rooms—as “pleasant state of stupefaction”?)
A box “containing a curtain”…
A package and a filter and even a funnel, all this together makes a scene…
The whole special suddenness commences, there is no delusion…
Why is there a choice of gamboling?
Lying is a conundrum, lying so makes the springs restless, lying so is a reduction, not lying so is arrangeable…
Releasing the oldest auction that is the pleasing some still renewing…
Giving it away, not giving it away, is there any difference. Giving it away. Not giving it away…
The time which showed that was when there was no eclipse…
Why is there a difference between one window and another? Why is there a difference…
A success, a success is alright when there are rooms & no vacancies…
A line in life, a single line and a stairway…
Why is anything vacant, whey is it when it is and why is it whe it isn’t and there is no doubt, there is no doubt that the singularity shows…
The change is mercenary… This is a monster and awkward quite awkward. No change is not needed. That does show design…
Excellent, more excellence is borrowing and slanting very slanting is light and secret and a recitation and emigration…
Certainly shoals are shallow and nonsense more nonsense is sullen…
Dance a clean dream and an extravagance turns up…
Show the plan and make no more mistakes than yesterday.
Surprise, the only surprise has no occasion…
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