Acclaimed filmmaker Wes Anderson will recreate American artist Joseph Cornell's New York studio at Gagosian Gallery in Paris this Christmas, marking the first time Anderson has publicly acknowledged Cornell's influence on his work. The installation, set to open next month at the gallery's storefront space on Rue de Castiglione, will coincide with both Christmas and Cornell's birthday on December 24.
The exhibition will feature approximately 12 of Cornell's most recognizable works, including his signature shadow boxes that he hand-built from wood and filled with assemblages. Hundreds, if not thousands, of found objects will also be displayed, though visitors will not be permitted to enter the gallery space. "It's essentially a window display," explains curator Jasper Sharp, who has collaborated with Anderson for several years and most recently sourced original artworks for the director's latest film "The Phoenician Scheme."
The Christmas timing holds special significance for Cornell, as Sharp notes: "We're doing it at Christmas, which was Cornell's favorite time of year. His birthday was on Christmas Eve. Leo Castelli, Peggy Guggenheim, all his dealers gave him shows at Christmas time because they thought that his boxes made small, inexpensive Christmas presents."
Among the major works on display will be "Pharmacy" (1943), which was once owned by Teeny and Marcel Duchamp and is modeled after an antique apothecary cabinet. Other key pieces include "Untitled (Pinturicchio Boy)" (around 1950) from Cornell's celebrated Medici series, and "A Dressing Room for Gille" (1939), which pays homage to Jean-Antoine Watteau's "Gilles" (1721) in the Louvre's collection, just a short walk from the gallery. "Blériot II" (around 1956) honors Louis Blériot, the French inventor who made the first engine-powered flight across the English Channel.
Sharp and Anderson have spent weeks studying firsthand accounts of the studio's atmosphere and examining photographs to recreate the space authentically. "The rest of it, we're reverse engineering," Sharp explains. "We're basically doing what Cornell did, going to flea markets and buying what he bought." They are recreating elements like Cornell's wall of whitewashed shoe boxes where he stored seashells, driftwood, and other collected items. Sign painters who work on Anderson's films have studied Cornell's handwriting and will write on the ends of all the boxes, while movie experts are helping to age materials.
"It's not an archaeological excavation or one-to-one model of Cornell's studio, we're primarily recreating the spirit and atmosphere," Sharp clarifies. "But Wes also didn't want it to look like a Wes Anderson show. He hasn't done his version of Cornell's studio." The exhibition coincides with a show of Anderson's archives opening at the Design Museum in London on November 20.
Cornell, who had no formal artistic training and worked various blue-collar jobs to support his family after his father's early death, was 37 when he became a full-time artist. He built his studio in the basement of the home he shared with his mother and brother in the Queens neighborhood of Flushing, setting up a workbench, several tables, cabinets, and shelves for his collected objects. Cornell also worked throughout the house, using the garage and kitchen table, even baking items in the oven to age them and create craquelure effects.
Very few people were allowed into Cornell's basement studio, but those who visited were notable figures including Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, Yayoi Kusama (who Sharp says was Cornell's girlfriend for a time), Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg as a young art handler, Susan Sontag, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Billy Wilder, and Tony Curtis. Cornell, a reclusive Christian Scientist, experimental filmmaker, and self-declared magician, rarely traveled beyond Manhattan.
Despite never visiting Paris, Cornell knew the city intimately through guidebooks and postcards. Sharp recounts a conversation between Cornell and Marcel Duchamp, with whom Cornell had a longstanding friendship: "They wandered around Paris for about 30 or 40 minutes and at the end of the conversation, Cornell said, 'I'd love to go to Paris one day.' Duchamp was just astonished that this person had a photographic memory for a city that he'd never seen."
This precision and attention to detail drew Anderson to Cornell's work and reflects Anderson's own filmmaking approach. Sharp notes how this same meticulous attention was evident in "The Phoenician Scheme," where he sourced works including a Renoir from the art-collecting Nahmad dynasty and masterpieces from the Hamburger Kunsthalle. In one scene where Mia Threapleton's character Liesl is awakened by Benicio del Toro's arms dealer character Zsa-Zsa Korda, every detail was carefully considered: "Mia is wearing a vintage nightgown, she's sleeping on a mattress that's been stuffed with horsehair, then there's an original Renoir painting behind her."
As Sharp and Anderson prepare for the Gagosian show, they are conducting a test build of Cornell's studio in a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris. Despite rigorous preparation, Sharp acknowledges that chance remains an element in the installation: "A lot of things will be in flux until about an hour before the door opens, that's just the nature of the beast."
