Joseph Cornell
I’ve just been reading a recent New Yorker article on this artist, whose centenary it is (approximately). Cornell has been one of my great favourites, along with Robert Rauschenberg and Marcel Duchamp. The mystery of his boxes, the strange intimacy they evoke even as they deny access, is a deeply uncanny experience. If I was an artist, I’d want to be capable of producing work like Cornell’s. I’d rather not be like the artist himself, however, as he was evidently quite a weirdo. The Art Institute of Chicago had an exhibit of Cornell when Meera and I were there July 2002, and it was a real highlight for me.