Virtual Cornell Box

Duchamp Cornell Box

For our final animation, Hyun and I created a Marcel Duchamp themed Cornell Box.

Joseph Cornell often used a boxed assemblage of found objects to express his ideas. His work takes from Surrealist techniques, juxtaposing everyday objects — sometimes irrationally — and creating a nostalgic atmosphere.

Inspired by Cornell’s influence, we decided to fill our box with the artworks from Surrealist era. We chose Marcel Duchamp’s pieces because they have both commonality and contradiction. Duchamp leveraged chance to remove the artist’s subjectivity, and Cornell represents himself and his obsession through chance operation.

We thought it would be interesting to place Duchamp’s notorious “readymades” and artworks within Cornell’s framework. It was fun to combine Duchamp’s indifference and objectively isolated realm with Cornell’s concept of consolidating items that belong together.

View Hyun’s post here.