About this artwork
For approximately thirty years, Joseph Cornell worked in relative obscurity in the basement of his home in Queens, New York, creating a multitude of wondrous miniature worlds within his boxed constructions. Poetic mélanges of found objects and materials, his deeply personal and elusive work (which also includes many collages on paper) combines the enthusiasms of his childhood—butterflies, marbles, seashells, sky charts, stamps—with adult fascinations such as ballerinas, empty cages, and movie stars. Cornell’s boxes often prompt a dizzying series of associations; in Untitled (Butterfly Habitat), these include Christmas decorations, collector’s cabinets for specimens, microscopes, natural history displays, sailor’s boxes, and windows. Some of these references are contradictory, reinforcing the work’s ambiguity. Ideas linked to flight, voyages, and the exotic are countered by the rigid and symmetrical organization of the display. The butterflies are not, however, pinned as they would be on a specimen board. Each pane of paint-spattered glass encloses a small compartment with white wood walls in which a cutout of a paper butterfly is suspended with string, allowing for some movement as the box is handled.
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Status
- On View, Gallery 397
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Department
- Modern Art
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Artist
- Joseph Cornell
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Title
- Untitled (Butterfly Habitat)
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1935–1945
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Medium
- Box construction with painted glass
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Inscriptions
- Signed and dated on back, lower center, on paper label: Joseph Cornell (typed) / Joseph Cornell (in artist’s hand) / ca. 1940 (typed)
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Dimensions
- 30.5 × 23.2 × 8 cm (12 × 9 1/8 × 3 1/8 in.)
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Credit Line
- Lindy and Edwin Bergman Joseph Cornell Collection
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Reference Number
- 1982.1845
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Copyright
- © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York
Extended information about this artwork
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