"The first and greatest American Surrealist,
Joseph Cornell is best known for his
boxes. The best of his mysterious assemblages of dime-store tchochkes and paper ephemera in little hand-made cabinets perfectly realize the elusive sublime at the heart of Surrealism, while avoiding the juvenile theatrics of his European colleagues.
However, Cornell was also one of the most original and accomplished filmmakers to emerge from the Surrealist movement, and one of the most peculiar. Just as the ascetic and introverted Cornell himself held Surrealism at arms length, borrowing only those elements that suited his interests and temperament, his films superficially resemble those made by other Surrealists, they are in truth sui generis. Only a handful of his contemporaries understood the genius of films like his
Rose Hobart — an unfortunate situation exacerbated by Cornell's own obstinate resistance to public screenings. No one made films even remotely similar to Cornell's for almost thirty years, and even now the perfect opacity of his montage remains unrivalled."
Jack's Dream ::
Cotillion / The Midnight Party ::
By Night with Torch and Spear ::
Centuries of June ::
more
posted by puny human
on Jul 2, 2011 -
16 comments
Style Guide for the Sorority Girl Cornell sorority members have been playing fashion police. A set of "style guidelines," roughly 6 pages long, was recently leaked onto the web. It insisted members consistently get manicured, pedicured, cut, colored and waxed and boasted austere fashion and beauty rules.
[more inside]
posted by Ruthless Bunny
on Feb 12, 2010 -
269 comments
"
I can see the audience tonight, so I can see also from the size of it that there must many of you here who are not thoroughly familiar with physics, and also a number that are not too versed in mathematics- and I don't doubt that there are some who know neither physics nor mathematics very well.
That puts a considerable challenge on a speaker who is going to speak on the relation of physics and mathematics- a challenge which I, however, will not accept: I published the title of the talk in clear and precise language, and didn't make it sound like it was something it wasn't- it's the relation of physics and mathematics - and if you find that in some spots it assumes some minor knowledge of physics or mathematics, I cannot help it. It was named."
The
Feynman Messenger series at Cornell has been made available online for the first time thanks to Bill Gates.
posted by hindmost
on Jul 15, 2009 -
125 comments
"To make off with hubby's fortune, yea, I think I heard of that happenin' once or twice around L.A. And… you want me to do what exactly?" He found the paper bag he'd brought his supper home in and got busy pretending to scribble notes on it, because straight-chick uniform, makeup supposed to look like no makeup or whatever, here came that old well-known hard-on Shasta was always good for sooner or later. Does it ever end, he wondered. Of course it does. It did. Thomas Pynchon's next novel, the 416-page
Inherent Vice, is
described by Penguin Press as "part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon — private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog." While we wait for its August 4 publication, we can read
an essay on the dystopian musical he co-wrote at Cornell or watch
a clip of that movie they made of Gravity's Rainbow.
[more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Feb 6, 2009 -
76 comments
Joseph Cornell was enamored with ballerinas and starlets, the subject of many of his celebrated boxes.
"He handed them, personally, to his most loved ballerinas. And they were almost uniformly sent back. He was rejected, laughed at, and, in one unfortunate case, tackled." Anecdotes about Cornell and his muses, via
robot wisdom.
[more]
posted by madamjujujive
on May 24, 2006 -
52 comments
Sustainable oil? Over the past few years there's been a growing theory that oil is not created from the decaying remains of ancient biological life but is in fact a product of the Earth's geological processes and that the current estimated oil reserves may be off by a factor of 100. This theory was made popular by
Thomas Gold at Cornell way back in 1992 and has led to much more recent
research (warning: heavy scientific conent) which supports the theory.
posted by PenDevil
on Jul 15, 2004 -
31 comments
