A Convergence Of Birds

THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE without the tremendous knowledge and generosity of Jennifer Vorbach at C&M Arts, John Mason and Margaret Richardson at PaceWildenstein, Mary Anne Orszag at the Des Moines Art Center, and Geraldine Aramanda at the Menil Collection, all of whom bent over backward to make sure we were provided with what we needed (and didn’t even know we needed). Their assistance was always prompt, thorough, and downright charitable. It is absolutely no exaggeration to say that this book would not have been possible without them…. Robert Lehrman has been the epitome of giving—as a collector and enthusiast nonpareil, and as a friend—and for this I am extremely grateful. Similarly, Lindy Bergman, the wonderful Lindy Bergman, deserves to have her name sung very loudly from some high place…. Thanks are also due to Russell Banks for his early encouragement and help, to James Seawright, for introducing me to the art of Joseph Cornell and for reminding me of the urgency of needing to know how things work, to the Greensfelders and Segals for giving me beautiful places to work and make phone calls, to DG, KE, MS, SC, KJ, JJ, MJV, JK, and RF for insisting on intangibles, and to the good people at D.A.P.—particularly Sharon Gallagher, Avery Lozada, and Craig Willis, who are nothing less than heroes (and virtuosos) of contemporary publishing…. I could never give enough thanks to all of the writers who contributed to this book. Their faith in the project was as extraordinary as the stories and poems they wrote for it. I hope that they are pleased with the results…. And I can only hope that this book would have pleased Joseph Cornell. His art has dramatically changed my life, given me a sense of purpose and directed joy, and shown me that certain feelings can be given certain embodiments. Thank you is not enough, so I hope to give more…. And finally, I thank my parents and my brothers, who continue to teach me that laughter is not secular, and that imagination is life.

Joseph Cornell

UNTITLED {HOTEL DE LA MER}

c. 1950-53

19 x 12 x 4.5 in.

Glass-paned, stained wood box with drawer, chromolithographic cutout, mirrors, postage stamp, plastic ball, and steel rod and string.

RESPONSE AND CALL

LETTERS WERE WRITTEN. Stamps were licked, envelopes addressed, mailboxes fed like starving animals. “CHILDREN’S PREVIEW of the exhibition JOSEPH CORNELL—COLLAGES AND BOXES.” It was to be his first museum show dedicated to children, and the last show of his life.

Hundreds went that spring, 1972. Many were entranced by Cornell’s works (which were displayed only a few feet off of the ground), and many by the chocolate cake that was passed about on plastic platters. Some cried, some fell asleep on the parquet, and some left with “party favors”—complimentary posters, signed by Cornell.

Fifteen years later, a young woman received one of these posters in the mail. It was from an ex-lover she hadn’t thought about since college. Just above Cornell’s signature he had written: I love this. You will love this. When the young woman died in a car accident the following summer, the poster was rolled up and forgotten about.

1992: The young woman’s brother asked a friend (who would, years later, become a friend of mine) if he would help him sift through a roomful of boxes in an Upstate storage facility. It was time to save what was worth saving and part with the rest. He couldn’t do it alone. When they came upon the poster, both were surprised: the friend because of the rare artifact of his favorite artist’s life, the brother because above the two pieces of handwriting (Cornell’s signature and the love note), was a third—in shaky blue ink: This belonged to Beatrice. He didn’t know if it had been written by his father, or mother, or by his sister herself. And because he was alone—his parents having passed away the previous winter, within a month of each other—there was no way to find out.

By the time I saw the poster—on an August 1995 visit to my friend’s studio—there was another text: this one, like the first two, of known origin. The brother had written: A gift of a gift of a gift. “He needed to get rid of it,” my friend told me. “It was that kind of gift.” My friend had attached the poster to a large canvas, hoping to make good use of it in a painting he was working on for an upcoming show. In the brief conversation that ensued, I learned the history of the poster, and learned, for the first time, about Cornell, who was “not quite a Surrealist,” and had “exhausted his medium, as all geniuses do.”

That afternoon, following something between a whim and a premonition, I went to the New York Public Library and found the catalogue for MoMA’s 1980 Cornell retrospective. On the withdraw card was a roster of names: those belonging to the eleven people who had already taken the book out that year. I remember Elena Salter, and I remember Donald Franks. I remember a Henry, a Theresa, a Jennifer and a James. Each name was written in a different script, each with a different pen, held by a different hand. I signed my name into the registry—as if the catalogue were a hotel, as if I expected to meet the eleven others in some metaphysical lobby—and took it home. My life began to change.

By the end of the summer, I was pursuing obscure references, tracking down essays about essays about essays. When the new school year began, I spent afternoons in the university art library, sifting through the precious few books that had Cornell images. I hunted for more images, more stories, and spent weekends in Manhattan’s rare art book stores, flipping through the pages of limited edition gallery catalogues that I would never be able to afford. Of course I read Deborah Solomon’s biography (dedicated to her husband, Kent Sepkowitz) when it came out in 1997, and even gave a copy of it to a girl I was then interested in. I love this, I wrote on the title page, and, You will love this. (What was the this? The biography? Cornell? The love of Cornell? Of gifts? Of inscriptions? The love of the beginning of love?) It wasn’t until two years and hundreds of hours of research later—a quarter of a century after those first letters were sent out—that the seeds of the simple idea were planted: I must do something with my love—for Cornell, for my love of Cornell, for gifts, inscriptions and the beginning of love.

I began to write letters.

Dear Mr. Foer:

Your letter, which covers a whole page, contains only one line about what you want: “… a story or poem that uses Joseph Cornell’s bird boxes as the source of imaginative inspiration… (but) which need not make any explicit reference to either Cornell or the art itself…” Since I don’t know what this means, since you mention no fee (is there one or not?), since the whole issue seems to be a question of getting contributions, for nothing, from various well-known people to suit your own ends (vague as they are), and since for some reason you seem to think I’d be “as excited about this project as [you] are,” how can I say yes, even with the very best of wills?

This was one of the first responses I received. My father read it to me over the phone—I had given my permanent address in D.C., rather than my college address in New Jersey, thinking I could skirt at least the most obvious challenge to my legitimacy. I shook with excitement as he began the reading, and disgrace by the time he had finished. “What a jerk,” he sighed, and I sighed: “Yeah.” Although I wasn’t sure just whom we were talking about.

The letter was troubling. Needlessly nasty, perhaps, but no less accurate for its tone. Sadly, I was inclined to agree with its author: my project was naive, ill-defined and blatantly unnecessary.

Naive in that I was completely unfamiliar with the publishing world and what it takes to put together a book. I had no agent, no prospective publisher, no notion of fees or photo permissions.

Ill-defined in that I knew I wanted to assemble a book of writing inspired by Cornell’s bird boxes, but little else. Would the book be literature, art, or some combination of the two? Should the pieces be of approximately the same length? How many images would be reproduced, and how would such a book be designed?

Unnecessary in that there have been several excellent books about Cornell. Granted, none like the kind I had in mind, but nonexistence is not sufficient grounds for creating something. Without knowing exactly what distinguished the book I was envisioning from those already published—save for the obvious: that mine would be fiction and poetry from a variety of sources—I couldn’t well answer what should have been my original question: Why?

And yes, who the hell was I—unpublished college student, self-educated in art history, uneducated in book publishing—to ask for things from people I didn’t know, with nothing to offer in exchange? The jerk was me.

And yet, when I somewhat reluctantly called in for messages the next day, my father said, “I have some good news.” And there were two more pieces of good news the day after that, and two the following day. By the end of the week, seven writers had agreed—quite enthusiastically—to be part of the still-forming project, and within half a year, I had a nearly completed manuscript. Were those eager writers jerks?

No. They were believers. But not in me and my maladroit proposal. It wasn’t my supplication they were responding to, it was Cornell’s—not even Cornell’s, but that of his boxes. The boxes called the writers in from great distances; they demanded the attention of those who had no attention to spare. “I’m going to be in Tunisia for the next few months,” one author responded, “but I’d like to give this my best shot.” Another wrote his story on note cards as he traveled through the Spanish countryside by train. Another while she was preparing for an Italian sabbatical.

The boxes moved questions of logistics to the backdrop. No one—save for that early respondent—asked about fees or agents or publishers. They didn’t ask about these things because they weren’t responding to me. Their responses predated my call. I was just lucky enough to intercept them.

Many of Cornell’s most brilliant boxes were not intended for the museums in which they now reside. They were gifts, tokens of affection—I love this. You will love this. He had them delivered to his favorite movie stars and authors. He handed them, personally, to his most loved ballerinas. And they were almost uniformly sent back. He was rejected, laughed at, and, in one unfortunate case, tackled.

But the boxes themselves—not his hopelessly romantic supplication—survived. More than survived, they came to be considered among the most seminal works of twentieth-century art. Their call beckoned, and continues to beckon, curators, museum-goers, and so many artists and writers. Their call, not Cornell’s. They became gifts of gifts of gifts of gifts—a cascade of gifts without fixed givers or receivers.

So what is it about Cornell’s boxes that made him a world-famous artist, and allowed my inept proposal to take flight? The answer, of course, is inexhaustible—it changes with each viewing. I hope that a few of the many answers are in this book, which is neither an homage nor a festschrift, but an assemblage of letters. Other answers are with you. When you read these pages, when you look at the images, imagine the letter that you would write. How would it begin? Who would be the characters? What images would come to the fore? What feelings? What colors and shapes? And as the imaginative cloud begins to open itself over your head, ask yourself: To whom would you address such a letter? What would you use as the return address?

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Jackson Heights, New York

September 2000

Joseph Cornell

DESERTED PERCH

1949

box construction

Barry Lopez

MY NAME IS JULIO SANGREMANO. I was at the federal prison at Estamos, California, when the incident of the birds occurred, serving three-to-five for computer service theft, first offense. This story has been told many times, mostly by people who were not there that day, or by people who have issues about corruption in the prison system or class politics being behind the war on drugs, and so on. The well-known Mr. William Hanover of the Aryan Brotherhood, he was there, and also the person we called Judy Hendrix; but they sold their stories, so there you’re talking about what people want to buy.

I didn’t leave that day, though I was one of Emory’s men. Why I stayed behind is another story, but partly it is because I could not leave the refuge of my hatred, the anger I feel toward people who flick men like me away, a crumb off the table. Sometimes I am angry at people everywhere for their stupidity, for their buying into the American way, going after so many products, selfish goals, and made-up desires. Whatever it was, I stayed behind in my cell and watched the others go. The only obligation I really felt was to the Indian, Emory Bear Hands. Wishako Taahne Tliskocho, that was his name, but everyone called him Emory, and he didn’t mind. When I asked him once, he said that when he was born his fists came out looking like bears. He was in for theft, stealing salmon. Guys who knew the history of what had happened to the Indians thought that was good. They said it with a knowing touch of irony. Emory, he didn’t see himself that way.

I was put in his cell block in 1997 when I went in, a bit of luck, but I want to say I was one of the ones who convinced him to hold the classes, to begin teaching about the animals. Emory told us people running the country didn’t like wild animals. They believed they were always in the way and wanted them killed or put away in zoos, like they put the Indians away on reservations. If animals went on living in the countryside, Emory said, and had a right not to be disturbed, then that meant the land wouldn’t be available to the mining companies and the timber companies. What they wanted, he said, was to get the logs and the ore out and then get the land going again as different kinds of parks, with lots of deer and Canada geese and lots of recreation, sport hunting, and boating.

I’d never heard anything like this, and in the beginning I didn’t listen. Wild animals had nothing to do with my life. Animals were dying all over the place, sure, and for no good reason, but people were also dying the same. I was going with the people. Two things, though, started working on my mind. One time, Emory was speaking to a little group of five or six of us, explaining how animals forgive people. He said this was an amazing thing to him, that no matter how much killing and cruelty animals endured—all the songbirds kids shot, all their homes plowed up for spring planting, being run over by cars—they forgave us. In the early history of people, he said, everyone made mistakes with the animals. They took their fur for clothing, ate their flesh, used their skins to make shelters, used their bones for tools, but back then they didn’t know to say any prayers of gratitude. Now people do—some of them. He said the animals even taught people how to talk, that they gave people language. I didn’t follow that part of the story, but I was familiar with people making mistakes—animals getting killed in oil spills, say And if you looked at it the way Emory did, also their land being taken away by development companies. It caught my interest that Emory believed animals still forgave people. That takes some kind of generosity. I’d wonder, when would such a thing ever end? Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you?