CORNELL, Joseph.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Collection of artefacts, from the estate of his great nephew. An extraordinary trove of trinkets and first draft diary entries from the "dossiers" of Joseph Cornell, the first artist to devote his entire career to the art of assemblage. Mostly dating from the 1960s, the contents shed light on Cornell's obsession with Marilyn Monroe and the development of the shadow boxes he dedicated to the star.The contents include numerous first-draft diary entries and notes, mostly tucked into a copy of Maurice Zolotow's biography of Marilyn Monroe (1961), several figurines, hospital menus from Cornell's 1972 convalescence, and significant ephemera he squirrelled away to repurpose in future artworks. These items include curls of patterned paper, metal piston rings used to animate his shadow boxes, a green feather, and a faded angel figurine. Of particular note is Cornell's own copy of Maurice Zoltow's Marilyn Monroe: An Uncensored Biography (first Bantam edition, 1961). It is almost entirely disbound by Cornell's close-reading. Tucked between its pages are seven leaves of his handwritten notes from August 1962. They record his extreme reaction to the news of Monroe's death and her televised funeral (the "poignancy almost unbearable"), the "infinitely wonderful" LIFE magazine tribute to her, and a rare frustrated self-reflection: "You start to put down a simple emotion but never get the - something - a real honest to goodness feeling for a human being, not a national hero or M[arilyn] M[onr

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