Parallel Biography (Joseph Cornell)

Joseph Cornell, an artist, was known for his poetic assemblages (personal landscapes) often in enclosed boxes. He lived his entire adult life in a small frame house on Utopia Parkway, Flushing Queens, New York and Except for three years of high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts he never left the New York area. He once said,”Somewhere in the city of New York there are four or five still unknown objects that belong together. Once together they will make a work of art”.

Cornell’s cloistered private live was contrasted with the extraordinary cultural life he pursued entirely in his mind derived from extensive reading and widely diverse interests. Thus, the title of the piece, a parallel between his physical life and that of his intellectual life.