Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell Book

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OK. Now that I've read Dime-Store Alchemy, I'll write something.

The goodreads forum has helped me reconnect with my literary life. I've sorted through half my library and collected several dozen to donate (not enough!), but all the inspiration around here made me succumb to a latent book-buying "sickness" and I placed a few on-line orders. "Asylum Dance" had been an elusive find, so when it turned up, I placed an order and added a few more titles to get "free" shipping. When the package arrived, D-S A was a disappointment because it seemed so teeny. I paid list price and expected something bigger, with more illustrations.

Back in 1981 a friend who worked with me in the art department at NBC sent me a poster from a Cornell exhibit at the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, organized under the auspices of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. I was bowled over. Imagine a 28 x 40 black background with the simple headline: "Joseph Cornell" reversed out in white. Below that floats a scrumptious 18 x 24 color reproduction of one of Cornell's finest aviary boxes. I've treasured it ever since. I've liked surrealism since high school but with Cornell's boxes I found a vulnerability and romanticism in his work I'd not found with any other artist. I was won over completely.

No bones about it, like Cornell, I'm a collector. My house is a Cornell box of memorabilia: sculpture, architectural fragments, statues, travel photos, postcards , movie posters, film reels, glass, copper, jewelry, plants, maps... all sorts of ephemera, bits and pieces of my life.

Although I loved Cornell most people didn't know about him and I felt like an outsider. Norman Rockwell is not my thing. I came across a couple books about Cornell in the early 1990's and was thrilled to learn more about the man. My favorite is still Hauptman's captivating study, "Stargazing at the Cinema". a difficult book to match.

Simic's book is completely different, not an in-depth biographical, art historical study, but a different kind of scholarship. Simic achieves the near impossible. He writes the way Cornell made his boxes. I could read a passage and close my eyes and imagine Cornell's work. It's a little pocket book to turn to at any time for a meditative boost. So the $19.95 was well worth it. Dime-Store Alchemy is a 5 x 7, eighty-two page, hardbound, navy blue linen jewel, fabricated with a silver foil-stamped title and a matte coated, four-color reproduction of the Medici Slot Machine, 1942, which is tipped into a de-bossed window, an homage to Cornell in every sense of the word.

Bless computers and the internet. Anyone can have pictures of dozens of Cornell boxes at their fingertips. I don't know what it is about Nyack but it has produced two geniuses. Edward Hopper was born there, too.