Joseph Cornell Stargazing in the Cinema

"Hauptman's book moves fluently from film to art to biography. She demonstrates how Cornell's art is a mythology of America, using the glass screen of the boxes to replicate the cinema screen: the worlds he creates behind glass are as seductive and unreachable as the fictions of film. Few artists have brought such a passion to the endlessly deferred romance of stardom as Cornell. His Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall is about erotic power and social impotence. It is as sombre as his friend Marcel Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even, with Cornell as the eternal bachelor, unable ever to reach his would-be bride Bacall.Hauptman, Jodi is the author of 'Joseph Cornell Stargazing in the Cinema' with ISBN 9780300078381 and ISBN 0300078382.