Utopia Parkway: The Life and Times of Joseph Cornell
Deborah Solomon
I thoroughly enjoyed Utopia Parkway, Wall Street Journal art critic Deborah Solomon's journey into the life and work of Joseph Cornell, the artist best known for his glass-fronted boxes containing eliptical arrays of found objects, from rubber balls to cut-out pictures from movie magazines and astronomical maps. Film stars and galactic ones shared both an unattainable quality and an aching allure in Cornell's vision, which Solomon clearly but gently teases out, scrupulously avoiding the impulse to sledgehammer readers with her conclusions.
Cornell, who, throughout his adulthood, lived with his mother and wheelchair-bound younger brother in the Bronx, commuted into the heart of the New York art world from the 1930s through the 1970s, crossing paths—and sharing styles—with everyone from Duchamps to de Kooning. He was obsessed with beautiful women, but died a virgin. He craved acceptance but often refused to sell or exhibit his work. His work defied characterization in its era—a sort of cross between collage and sculpture.
Rather than trying to prove points to the reader, Solomon offers an invitation to share in speculations about her elusive subject (This is the first biography of Cornell, who died in 1972). Uptopia Parkway leaves its reader feeling respected, not lectured to; Solomon comes off as a wise, insightful friend, not a self-congratulatory expert or lecturer. Early in the book, after an anecdote in which Cornell presents his grandfather with a load of bananas, Solomon notes, with characteristic casual humility:
"It's a curious detail, this surfeit of bananas. One might say that Cornell was beset by worries about manhood; or, alternately, that sometimes a banana is just a banana."
It is Solomon's constant awareness of alternate possibilities that renders her prose so comfortable and engaging. Unlike many biographers, she doesn't feel to be aiming for the intellectual domination of her subject. She conjures up Cornell with nuance and grace and—for all her impeccable research—never pretends to truly know her subject. She treats him almost as a poem, reading the rhymes and assonances, offering keen interpretations, but always recognizing that a human soul is much more than the sum of his analyzed parts.
