About This Artwork

Joseph Cornell
American, 1903–1972

Untitled (Homage to Blériot), 1956

Box construction
18 1/2 x 11 1/4 x 4 3/4 in.
Signed on back, lower right, on piece of newsprint: Joseph Cornell
Lindy and Edwin Bergman Joseph Cornell Collection, 1982.1853

Art © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, The Art of Assemblage, 1961-62, traveled to Dallas and San Francisco, no. 56 (ill.), as Blériot.

London, Tate Gallery, Paintings and Sculpture of a Decade: 54-64, 1964, no. 71 (ill.), as Blériot.

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Fifty Years of Modern Art, 1916-1966, 1966, no. 128 (ill.), as Blériot.

New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Joseph Cornell, 1967, no cat. nos., pp. 24, 44 (ill.), as Homage to Blériot.

Kassel, Galerie an der Schönen Aussicht, Museum Fridericianum, and Orangerie im Auepark, 4.documenta, 1968, vol. 2, no. 9, as Homage to Blériot.

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Painting and Sculpture 1940-1970, 1969-70, no. 44, as Blériot.

Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cornell in Chicago, 1973-74, no cat. nos., n. pag.

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Two Hundred Years of American Sculpture, 1976, no. 47, p. 166 and fig. 243, as Homage to Blériot.

Cleveland, Ohio, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Spirit of Surrealism, 1979, no. 105 (ill.), as Homage to Blériot.

San Francisco, SFMOMA, Joseph Cornell: Navigating Imagination, 2006-08, travelled to Washington D.C., no. 143.

Publication History

Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh, Collage: Personalities, Concepts, Techniques, New York, 1962, fig. 170, as Blériot.

Fairfield Porter, “Joseph Cornell,” Art and Literature 8 (Spring 1966), p. 124 (ill.), as Blériot.

Fred Licht, Sculpture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, New York, 1967, fig. 265, as Blériot.

Arch. Digest 1973, p. 20 (photos of Bergman home).

Henri Coulanges, Connaissance des arts 262 (Dec. 1973), p. 127 (ill.).

Dore Ashton, A Joseph Cornell Album, 1974, p. 53 (ill.), as Homage to Blériot.

Hilton Kramer, “A Joseph Cornell Album by Dore Ashton,” New York Times Book Review, Dec. 29, 1974, p. 2 (ill.), photo of Cornell looking at box in 1970.

Rosalind Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture, New York, 1977, dust jacket cover (ill.).

Diane Waldman, Joseph Cornell, 1977, pl. 34 and p. 26, as Homage to Blériot.

Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1980. Joseph Cornell, 1980-82, exh. cat., p. 10, fig. 2, photo of Cornell in his workshop with Blériot box on storage shelf, before 1961.

Edmund Burke Feldman, Varieties of Visual Experience, 3d ed., New York, 1987, p. 348 (ill.), as Blériot.

Ownership History

Eleanor Ward, New York, by 1961; Stable Gallery, New York; sold to Lindy and Edwin Bergman, Chicago, 1966; given to the Art Institute, 1982.