This box is an example of Cornell‘s ability to convey ideas and associations by minimal means. A construction of thin pieces of wood is delicately balanced from the center of the metal spring coil, on which it bounces freely. The arrangement hints at the wings and propeller of a biplane, thus relating to the title, which in earlier exhibitions was listed simply as Bleriot. Louis Bleriot (1872-1936) was a pioneering French aviator, the first to fly across the English Channel in 1909. The strongly marked wood grain, stained pale blue, of the inner wall of the box evokes both the waves of the sea, over which early planes flew low, as well as perhaps clouds in the sky. Cornell papered the back of the box with a French newspaper, L’Economiste francais (June 15, 1893). Given the subject of this box, the choice of paper backing—always an integral part of a box’s construction for the artist—seems not entirely fortuitous. Another, closely related box, referred to as Bleriot # 2, has been dated around 1956 (estate of Joseph Cornell; New York 1980–82, no. 115, ill.). It differs from this one primarily in the relationship of the components within the box.
— Entry, Dawn Ades, Surrealist Art: The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1997, p. 84.
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.
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.
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.
Eleanor Ward, New York, by 1961; Stable Gallery, New York; sold to Lindy and Edwin Bergman, Chicago, 1966; given to the Art Institute, 1982.
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