Friday 4 April 2014
>>Art for Sale<< Coming soon!
Thursday 3 April 2014
Le Piano by Joseph Cornell
Today I was overwhelmed. My strange journey in and around the arts has culminated in concentric circles taking me into a fast tunnel like a wormhole into a new life. I've been studying English, the theme for focus is "Art and Research". The assignment was to pick a piece of art, and describe it - for which I got an "A" this time. I feel as though I am developing very fast in my abilities to articulate what I see and interpret them for you. Hopefully as I switch attention into the Art-Horde, my skills to translate art and it's value will continue to appreciate. For now, here is my essay on one of Joseph Cornell's pieces. "Le Piano". I believe it is currently held in a museum in Japan. +Yoshihisa Kawamura +jane muhammad of the DIC corporation, the owner of the Kawamura Memorial museum which houses the Cornell works of art.
“Le Piano”
I'm looking at a photograph of a home-junk cabinet-box, so innocuous I overlooked that it held secrets of a haunted past locked within. It stands merely a foot tall upon a lip-base of wood, capped with a bookend on top, silhouetting the grand form of a pedestal. It is a rectangular box upended on one end, constructed of what appears to be found wood, solid on all sides except one window-face. The lap-framed window is joined at the corners pointing through a tight bevel seam. I am compelled to look through the glass, and I've made note that it's maker has inscribed the words "Le Piano" across the top lip of the pedestal, and there is an aged decoupage of music script underlining the cabinet-box, on the lip-base. I wonder if it's maker was indeed creating a metaphor for a grand piano out of this curious presentation? I look into the cabinet-box, at two glass shelves, and the cabinet is also lined with a cleaner music decoupage. Inside it is fresh, perfectly preserved, I imagine it to be perfectly crisp and smelling of wood and paper, in contrast to the outside which is almost acidified. Except below the bottom lead-blue glass shelf, there is a hue painted so deep I cannot make out the lower third. It hides like a deep ocean something unknown to me. Then, tempting me with trinkets I cannot touch, there are laid out in perfect balance to each other, three odd little boxes on the glass shelves; one on the middle, two on the top. I am smitten by secrets of childhood, and want to hear the music from the past. “Le Piano” is an eerie time machine that channels memories as if nostalging over a silent musical movie.
The bookends stacked top and bottom of this box are codified, like a vault with a sequence lock. Starting with “Le Piano” en Francais, and ending with an intricate musical score, both in languages foreign to me like a library classification. The lips top and bottom are like the spines of old books laminated with annotated paper. What lies in between is the library of objects one has to make the time to study to find any meaning. But the hint is there in the classified bookends, they are aged and oxidized, accumulating a wealth of memory between them. The secret knowledge and worth is categorized into the little deposit boxes pretending to be trinkets inside. It is memories that are sealed like precious gems behind a door of that jewelry box. I am curious to know what is being kept safe, and am drawn in like a thief.
The door is sealed against trespass with the likes of some superstitious blessing, codified like a spell from some Turkish or Hebrew stenciling. Looking at the geometric pattern penciled onto the cabinet facing, is like looking at the envelope of it’s sender. The bevel joined corners remind me of the wrapping of an envelope. It is perhaps no coincidence the frame is enveloped in aged paper bearing this pattern like wonderful interrupted circles that crisply define the perforated edges of a stamp. Have you ever looked at an aged postage stamp, with it’s feint postmark pattern and tried to decipher something of it’s origin? What culture was this cipher pattern from. Was the artist's father Jewish? I had to Google the artist Joseph Cornell, I had to find out if there was a connection there. His parents were Dutch, there could be a connection but no-matter. The lead pencil work outlines a geometric pattern, with a mere suggestion of the star of David, entwined with circles. The pattern is interrupted by age and cracking at the bevel seam, as though this was a cherished old envelope, previously opened but faithfully refolded at the seams like a memento from a sweetheart. The time spent carefully aligning and circumscribing the arcs of the circles imbue the sealed door with respect and patronage. The muted pencil lines now faded under a veil of oxidizing stain, impart a sense of history; A hint? Purposefully waiting to be revealed! I'm activated into thinking about family secrets. How I've often wished there were no secrets and I could be free from the past. This pattern is like code, hoping to be solved. I get a deep sense of enjoyment that maybe I'm the only one listening to his speaking without saying anything. I'm the only one witnessing his cathartic cryptic "Frame" presenting an unknown and haunting history.
There is a window through the envelope, looking at a romantic music score that sets a backdrop for this scene, a potential story of tragedy, love or nostalgia. Behind the window all is pure and white, not like the baked window frame. We get to see the secret note mournfully kept crisp in Snow White’s glass coffin. It is not often you are privy to read someone else’s lover’s letter, I feel a great sense of respect that the artist has opened his bleeding heart from something that he pined for many years ago. We are let in to that cherished memory, and with respect I am thankful he has shared this piece of himself, and am reminded of such moments of my own. Could I be as brave to share my own? I think perhaps not, that will be a private conversation between myself and the silent music box. It can rest assured that I will keep it’s confidentiality, that I have developed a deep feeling of understanding and will not share this as common gossip amongst other dancers. The music sheet sings with a pitter-patter of ballet pique turns chained together across the glassy stage set infront the romantic score. Before of the backdrop of music, there are the two glassy stages, two shelves. Upon two of the crisp white matchboxes, are the chaine footprints of the romantic corps de ballet. The lines of the music score that decorate the white boxes, run across the stage. The notes spell out like a string of pearls the complex pointe work of the ballerinas. The shelved stages containing act one, and act two, of perhaps a tragic love story, set in a scene of woe and virginal white.
Alice in wonderland, wants to prise open the cabinet, trespass and poke around with the boxes. They are perfectly decoupaged matchboxes; angular, white music notes. Except one, the salt of old leather seeps through the edges of the top-most box. You know piano keys, right? You know the flat key, or the sharp key; the one that always sounded off? This is that box, the tanned leather box. As a kid, I was always fascinated by the mechanics and geometry of boxes. I loved the fact you could poke a matchbox, and it would slide with a smooth motion, and make a yawning, ghostly whisper. I would hide spiders inside them, or grasshoppers. The leather box with the stain of wetness, makes me wonder what sinister thing was inside that flat note. No wonder sharp, flat notes always sounded off to me. Yet without them, there is no chord. And here we have three perfectly placed notes, the boxes on the shelves, spelling out a chord. If I were big enough when I was a kid, I would have looked down at my splayed hand across the keys hitting each note, but I could not reach with the width of my tiny hand. The matchboxes are rotationally organized in a way that mirrors my splayed fingers on the keys. Yet I cannot grasp them through this glass door. I am still frustrated Alice through the looking glass. The only thing I was ever good enough for with the marvelous mechanical creation of the organ, was stabbing and plonking at the keys. Here I am wondering if this marvelous little diorama, that so reminded me my father's organ, was indeed not only the intent of its maker, but also his own frustration? Ghosts from the past haunt us with their unrequited frustrations, while we suffer regrets of decisions we never had the courage to make in the past.
My father’s music haunts me from my childhood, memories I had locked away like this sealed box are coming back. My brother and I used to run around the house, and the sombre notes from his organ would penetrate all the walls and plumbing and rumble through the steel radiators like a deep whale song. My memories are resonating from the depths of the cabinet's blue ocean. Those organ foot pedals would lay on the base notes, and he would weave music by treddling a deep dark magic. My brother and I used to nervously giggle as picture frames sinisterly hummed by themselves as the vibration gave them new life. I could never understand or even hope to understand the majesty of that organ. My father was the only one who could unlock its potential. And here I am again, looking through the sealed door of that most curiouso cabinet. A grand pedestal in its own right. A Victorian museum sealed to keep the poltergeist of the past within, what other horrors could I unravel?
Studying the photograph with better light on another day, and comparing with other pictures, I can now make out the child statue in the depths of the ocean of tragic memory. The Victorians mortified their memories in stone also. Alfred, husband of Queen Victoria commissioned sculptors to fashion copies of their newborn babies limbs into porcelain. The curios of cupid limbs remain locked in cabinets to this day, a rather choking and deathly memento that pangs of sadness despite it’s sinister appearance. My sense of realization is so overwhelming to me I want to cry the salty tears of the ocean. Deep in the ocean of memory is the smiling child perhaps that he was, that I also remembered being. It was so hard to see I couldn't make it out at first. But now I see it, like a little porcelain angel, all that was innocent and hidden deep, almost overlooked, until I struggled to see within. Our tendancy to forget our childhoold, is made more poignant that Cornell kept it in a box. Except that it is anchored like stone to the bottom of memories abyss. What choked me with sadness is realizing I had memories buried deep, to forget rather than to forgive. There was a deep sense of remorse that I had not reconciled, and simply let memories live on like Cornell’s in his shrine.
I realize this cabinet is like a window into Joseph Cornell’s life, and his home. And in the depths of "le piano" tucked deep into the corner, I had to search more to see the mechanical instrument. I'm guessing it's one of those tiny wind up music boxes that I only ever had the pleasure of tinkering with when I was five, with my grandma. As a child, like the statue Cornell used to sit by the piano and listen to his mother’s playing too. That’s where he’s sitting now forever next to his mother’s music. I'm searching further back in time to the loving memories of grandma’s nurture, where she told me to be careful as I fingered the sharp knubs cast into the brass music drum. The needles pluck the music unwinding from a delicate comb. Sleeping beauty is waking up from her pricked finger. I have not seen a mechanical toy like this since those days with grandma. It's a memory that swims to the surface about this quaint little toy. I wonder if it should play now, the wooden box might amplify the hidden music... I think it does, and "Le Piano" is also amplifying muffled memories of the past. It’s funny how this seeming random box of junk, has brought me full circle to home. To a place where I cannot go back, with junk on the shelves, and nurture that is gone. To feel like I have regressed with all the emotions of a child and trespassed into his space. Is it even possible to trespass into art? Whatever. My sentiment is grateful that he shared his vulnerability, and that I am reminded of my own. Cornell's past or my own, I only wish I had the turnkey to hear the music and refresh my memories of childhood once more now, and share the echo of his music box.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)