Joseph Cornell Hotel du Nord 1972,

Joseph Cornell

Hotel du Nord (Little Durer), 1972

Silkscreen in five colors with varnish and stencil additions printed on Buff Arches Paper

Pencil signed and annotated Artists Proof on the front, aside from the regular edition of 125
This is an uncommon, signed and annotated Artist's Proof (AP), aside from the regular edition of 125, of Joseph Cornell's elusive silkscreen "Hotel du Nord", featuring varnish and stencil additions. This graphic work is not often found on the market anymore as so many other editions already in the permanent collections of major museums. 'Hotel du Nord' was created in 1972 - the last year of the artist's life, after Cornell's iconic sculpture "Hotel du Nord (Little Durer)", a chef d'oeuvre of assemblage which incorporates a reproduction of the famous self-portrait by Albrecht Durer at age 13, who was one of the most significant artists of the Northern Renaissance. In "Hotel du Nord", the incorporation of portraiture is multi-layered, representing Cornell's respect for the great artists who have preceded him as well as his interest in the formal qualities found in the pictures themselves. The fact that Cornell would choose his 1950s masterpiece "Hotel du Nord" as the subject of this stunning silkscreen, published by Brooke Alexander in 1972 - the year of his death - speaks to the importance of the work in the artist's entire oeuvre and explains why true fans and collectors of Cornell's work love this print. Thus, "Hotel du Nord (Little Durer)" is not only a homage to the great Renaissance artist Durer, but, as one of his last pieces, it can also be seen as a tribute to Joseph Cornell's own life's work. Using found materials from New York City thrift stores, Joseph Cornell created dozens of fantastical worlds in glass-covered boxes. A self-taught artist who dropped out of Phillips Exeter Academy, he rarely left his home in Flushing, Queens, where he lived with his mother and cared for his brother with cerebral palsy. Despite his rather reclusive life, Cornell was extremely well read and equally well versed in the contemporary New York art scene and he would often create exquisite boxes with precious objects and send them to celebrities like Lauren Bacall whom he adored from afar. Many of his boxes, such as the famous Medici Slot Machine boxes, are interactive and are meant to be handled. (Indeed, his last exhibition in 1972 was for children.) Drawing on the complexity and whimsy of Surrealism, though devoid of its more decadent and sinister references, Cornell would layer materials in his assemblages to speak to a profound artistic sophistication championed by fellow artists for their beauty and nostalgia. Joseph Cornell (b. 1903 – d. 1972) was a major American artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of the art of assemblage, whose magical and Surrealistic boxes have inspired successive generations of artists and are considered the precursors to installation and pop art.
This very image was used for the first edition of the definitive biography of Joseph Cornell by Deborah Solomon called "Utopia Parkway." Below is the publisher's blurb:
"...No artist ever led a stranger life than Joseph Cornell, the self-taught American genius prized for his disquieting shadow boxes, who stands at the intersection of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop art. Legends about Cornell abound--as the shy hermit, the devoted family caretaker, the artistic innocent--but never before Utopia Parkway has he been presented for what he was: a brilliant, relentlessly serious artist whose stature has now reached monumental proportions. Cornell was haunted by dreams and visions, yet the site of his imaginings couldn't have been more ordinary: a small house he shared with his mother and invalid brother in Queens, New York. In its cluttered basement, he spent his nights arranging photographs, cut-outs and other humble disjecta into some of the most romantic works to exist in three dimensions. Cornell was no recluse, however: admired by successive generations of vanguard artists, he formed friendships with figures as diverse as Duchamp, de Kooning, and Warhol and had romantically charged encounters with Susan Sontag and Yoko Ono--not to mention unrequited crushes on countless shop girls and waitresses. All this he recorded compulsively in a diary that, along with his shadow boxes, forms one of the oddest and most affecting records ever made of a life. It is from such documents, and from a decade of sustained attention to Cornell, that Deborah Solomon has fashioned the definitive biography of one of America's most powerful and unusual modern artists..."

Measurements:
Frame:
22.25 x 18.5 x 1 inch
Print:
15.5 x 11.75 inches