Untitled (Bébé Marie)

Joseph Cornell, 1940s · Gallery 522 · Floor 5

Alright, so this one’s a box. About two feet tall. And there’s a little girl in it. So look at her eyes first. Big glass eyes looking right at you through all those twigs. Now picture a house in Queens. One-car garage. On a street called Utopia Parkway. Seriously, that’s the actual name. Inside is Joseph Cornell. Lives with his mom and his disabled brother Robert. It’s about 1941. He’s just left his textile job, and he’s moving the whole art operation off the kitchen table. Down into the basement. So… go down there with him. There’s a little window near ground level. Wooden shelves. Shoeboxes and old cookie tins, painted white. Labels brushed on in dark blue. Over the years, they say things like “Watch parts.” “Marbles.” “Owls.” “Angel hair.” Open them up. You got thimbles, corks, little bells. Feathers. Driftwood. Birds’ nests. He calls it his spare parts department. Old books and postcards piled around it. You can practically smell the room. There’s a story about how the painter Matta comes by to stay, and Cornell welcomes him by opening the fridge, and it’s packed with cake and ice cream. One friend said they all thought of him as a monk. He never left the country. But… he goes into Manhattan. Bookshops, junk shops, dime stores. Comes home with all sorts of stuff. And starts putting them together. Little worlds behind glass. You can look all day. You just can’t get in. Twenty-some years later, Andy Warhol and a couple of the Pop guys come out to see this basement. The boxes are wrapped in newspaper. Then everybody has tea on the porch with his mom. Anyway, come back to this one. Bébé Marie. Early forties. An old doll. Straw hat with flowers on it. Faded dress. And he’s put her in this little forest of twigs, flecked with silver paint. Same kind of stuff that’s sitting on those shelves. Looks like she wandered into the woods in January. Still wearing her flowers. Yeah, it’s creepy. Apparently, the doll was his cousin Ethel’s, and after he died, his family and his estate’s lawyers actually fought over who owned her. And here’s the funny part. Cornell didn’t like what he called the “black magic” of the Surrealists. He wanted to make white magic. Ya know, the nice kind.

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