Soap Bubble Set

Arts of the Americas

1940 (reworked 1953)

Joseph Cornell
American, 1903–1972

Joseph Cornell’s box constructions present highly personal reflections on art, nature, history, and memory through the unexpected juxtaposition of found objects and printed material. Here he included glasses, pipes, and round disks to recollect the youthful activity of blowing soap bubbles. Their placement in front of a diagram of the Copernican planetary system, however, suggests a more universal significance. Cornell produced other Soap Bubble Set boxes, and he later recalled about them that “Shadow boxes become poetic theatres or settings wherein are metamorphosed the elements of a childhood pastime. The fragile shimmering globules become the shimmering but more enduring planets—a connotation of moon and tides.”

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Joseph Cornell
Title: Soap Bubble Set
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Original 1940
Medium: Wood, glass, paper, metal, and shell
Inscriptions: Label on verso, upper left: "SOAP BUBBLE SET"/Joseph Cornell./Joseph Cornell/Remodeled from original/version of 1940 in 1953.
Dimensions: 34.3 × 48.3 × 7.6 cm (13 1/2 × 19 × 3 in.)
Credit Line: Simeon B. Williams Fund
Reference Number: 1953.199
Copyright: © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Art Institute of Chicago, Poetics of Scale: Small-Sized Works from the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, exh. checklist (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2003), n.p., cat. 9 (ill.).
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of CHicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 130.

Chicago, Alan Frumkin Gallery, Spring 1953.
Art Institute of Chicago, Two Centuries of American Art, 1750-1950, Oct. 1, 1959–Jan. 10, 1960, no cat.
Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Cornell, Jan 30–Mar 28, 1982, cat. S–22.
Berlin, Martin–Gropius–Bau, American Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture, 1913–1993, May 8–Jul 25, 1993; London, Royal Academy of Arts, Sep 16–Dec 12, 1993, cat. 67.
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Cosmos: From Romanticism to the Avant–Garde, Jun 17–Oct 17, 1999; Spain, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Nov 23, 1999–Feb 20, 2000,(Montreal only), cat. 75.
Art Institute of Chicago, Poetics of Scale, Small-Sized Works from the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, June 5–Aug. 24, 2003, cat. 9.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Modern Series: Shatter Rupture Break, Feb 15–May 3, 2015, no cat.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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