The American artist and sculptor Joseph Cornell (1903-72) was predominantly a collector of memorabilia, antique prints, photographs, musical scores, theatrical memorabilia, and French literature, who in 1936 established a characteristic style of his poetic assemblage with these collections. After losing his father at the tender age of 14, he moved with his mother and three siblings to Queens in New York City. His signature works were the boxes that he shaped into wood (such as “Medici Slot Machine”), glass, and countless objects and photos. Joseph collected his raw materials from New York City secondhand and antique stores, which helped bring a prosaic and delightful feel to his art.
Cornell’s miniature wooden boxes, carefully filled with assorted items, were largely encased in glass, giving them a three-dimensional look. Carefully selected, these objects had no inherent value on their own, but when grouped together they imparted a deeper connotation. Its incongruous and unique juxtapositions were elegiac, evoking links to ‘surreal’ traits, such as mystery, fantasy, the subconscious, dreams, etc. Joseph’s choice of subjects was limitless, such as Hollywood stars, astrology, birds, ballet, opera, travel, Renaissance Medicis, artists, poetry (Emily Dickinson), and the cosmos. His materials were also newspaper clippings, butterfly wings, marbles and scraps of wallpaper, souvenirs and memorabilia, sky maps, old advertisements, broken glassware, music boxes, pens, metal springs, maps, seashells, mirrors and plastic ice cubes. . “Medici Slot Machine” is one of the first boxes Cornell designed in his basement workshop.
“Medici Slot Machine” is an exhibition of dream machines, based on a young ‘Renaissance’ prince, Piero de Medici from Florence. Combine the puzzling world of the prince with a contemporary vending machine. He added many painstaking portraits to the sides that look like clips from a movie, some of which are of the same young man in the portrait. Joseph also inserted a grid of wires over the images, which looks like the outside of the window panes. Near the base is a glass shelf, below which are small window-shaped openings with toys in them, while the middle point shows a compass. The original painting is in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland.
Started in the early 1940s, this box juxtaposed the ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Rococo’ portraits of children with selected collage elements of boardwalk games and slot machines. The “Medici Slot Machines” had moving parts, like the marble, that slid back and forth in the base compartment. Cornell previewed his “Medici slot machine” to entice the viewer to play it. So far, instead of being a game, this inscribable box projects a psychosomatic complexity. Cornell’s choice of objects had an undeniable personal touch, and his works evoked a nostalgic trance in his viewer.
A loner in real life, “Medici Slot Machine” creator Joseph Cornell used his art to flee his family, a barren suburban life, and his own emotional demons. By putting a precise order in his art, he was compensating for the chaos in his personal life. Cornell continued to live in the Queens house until his death in 1972. Throughout his prolific career, Cornell deftly placed the rudiments of his private history in every nook and corner of his boxes. Today, even some 37 years after his demise, Cornell is the accepted master of the art of assembly.