For example, the manner in which Cornell, like an inspired hunter/explorer, tracked down the various objects and experiences that found their way into his artworks has much in common with the surrealist objet trouvé and objective chance.
However, his work and methods do betray significant surrealist traits (which Cornell acknowledged). There are also those within the surrealist movement, as well as some academics, who would take issue with Cornell being considered a surrealist, particularly because of his adherence to Christian science, which is clearly at odds with the tenets of surrealism. It must be noted that Cornell was at pains to deny that he was a surrealist, despite surrealism’s obvious influence on his work and his friendships and exchanges with several notable surrealists, including Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Lee Miller et al., and his inclusion in various surrealist group exhibitions, reviews and journals. None are more interesting than Joseph Cornell. There are many others who also travel alone, having little or no affiliation with a surrealist group and whose activities are strictly solitary. There are many surrealists that we could discuss to illustrate the notion of the ‘lone’ or ‘solo’ voyage’. Indeed, the surrealist adventure is a tale of voyaging, of exploration and discovery. This movement between interior and exterior worlds, brilliantly documented in Breton’s notion of the ‘communicating vessels’ (1990b) is a form of travel. take up elsewhere, what is central to each is the dialectical notion of acknowledging and seeking to reconcile the ‘old antinomies’ (1990a, p.123) that represent the interaction and interpenetration of the interior and exterior realities/worlds. These two watchwords are one for us’” (1990a, p.241).
‘The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted, / Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find’ (Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass).įrom the very beginning, surrealism has always sought to ‘reinvent the world’, enshrined in André Breton’s famous dictum: ‘“Transform the world”, Marx said “change life”, Rimbaud said.
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