Book of the day > Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust. Royal Academy of Arts.  “From a basement in New York, Joseph Cornell channeled his limitless imagination into some of the most original art of the 20th century. Designed to accompany the Royal Academy’s landmark exhibition, this book allows the reader to step into the beguiling world of this fascinating artist.

Bringing together Joseph Cornell’s most remarkable work including boxes, assemblages and collages and films, Wanderlust is a long overdue celebration of an incomparable artist, a man the New York Times called “a poet of light; an architect of memory-fractured rooms and a connoisseur of stars, celestial and otherwise.

A connoisseur of an astonishing array of subjects, Cornell’s captivation with bygone imagery encompassed astronomical charts and geographical maps, Italian and Spanish Old Master paintings, historical ballet, early film, literature, poetry, and ornithology.

Despite hardly venturing beyond New York State, the notion of travel was central to his art. His imaginary voyages began as he searched Manhattan’s antique bookshops and dime stores, collecting a vast archive of paper ephemera and small objects to make his signature glass-fronted ‘shadow boxes’.

This book is a landmark publication examining this remarkable work. It brings together some of Cornell’s most compelling assemblages and box constructions (including Medici slot machines, soap-bubble sets, and animal habitats). The contributors raise questions about Cornell’s artistic processes while drawing parallels with historical modes of inquiry such as connoisseurship, exploration, and classification.”