Cornell Show revisited

In a rare fit of pique (actually, they're getting less and less rare), CultureGrrl answers a question I had about the fascinating Joseph Cornell ("Untitled (Ship with Nude)" at left) exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum (but never mentioned in my plugs for it): where was the show's catalogue? Only a secondary publication, Imagine Joseph Cornell, was available in the gift shop. I assumed that, given the impact of the show, the catalogue might have sold out. It turns out it has yet to be produced. CultureGrrl gets the following lame explanation from Donna Desrochers, public relations manager at PEM:

First of all, glad you could make it to the Peabody Essex Museum to see the Cornell show. Like the exhibition, the book is a major, complex undertaking. The book's level of ambition merited that it take more time than originally planned. As a result, it's even more comprehensive. The hardcover and the softcover editions of the book will be available for the opening of the exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Oct. 6.

Well, I guess I'm glad SOMEBODY's getting the catalogue! But really - can you imagine? And this wasn't even the show's first stop (it opened at the Smithsonian)! You can order the book from SFMOMA (you just won't get it till late October).

Poetic Theater

"Untitled (Soap Bubble Set),” by Joseph Cornell

I've already pimped for the Joseph Cornell show in my "What to See" column, but I can't resist giving this best-of-year show one more plug - to theatre lovers in particular. It's hard to explain, but in the shadowy, vaguely lunar installation at the Peabody/Essex Museum, Cornell's strange assemblages and collages often strike one as evocative, miniature stage sets (he called them "poetic theaters" for good reason). Beautiful in and of themselves, they're also clearly obsessed with the perception, memory, and delivery of beauty - a classic concern of the stage - and far more than most surrealist works, seem impregnated with an almost Beckett-like sense of the passage (and stasis) of time. Rarely have the worlds of visual art and theatre overlapped so hauntingly. ["Untitled (Tamara Toumanova)," at right.]