Description
Joseph Cornell first viewed Cubist painter Juan Gris’s The Man on the Café in October 1953. This visual encounter prompted Cornell to create more than a dozen hand-constructed shadow boxes as homages to Gris, every featuring a variation on a motif that echoes formal elements in Gris’s painting. This unique book explores Cornell’s deep fascination with Gris, uncovering inside of Cornell’s work a couple of allusions to Gris’s a very powerful influence and investigating cross-currents such as the artists’ shared interests in French culture and the ballet. Birds of a Feather yields a new point of view on Cornell’s famed boxes even as also shedding light on Gris’s painting, setting up points of connection between two key figures of the avant-garde who lived a generation apart.