The first major work to examine Joseph Cornell's relationship to American modernism Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) is best known for his exquisite and alluring box constructions, in which he transformed found objects-such as celestial charts, glass ice cubes, and feathers-into enchanted worlds that blur the boundaries between fantasy and the commonplace. Situating Cornell within the broader artistic, cultural, and political debates of midcentury America, this innovative and interdisciplinary account reveals enchantment's relevance to the history of American modernism. In this beautifully illustrated book, Marci Kwon explores Cornell's attempts to convey enchantment-an ephemeral experience that exceeds rational explanation-in material form. Examining his box constructions, graphic design projects, and cinematic experiments, she shows how he turned to formal strategies drawn from movements like Transcendentalism and Romanticism to figure the immaterial. Kwon provides new perspectives on Cornell's artistic and graphic design career, bringing vividly to life a wide circle of acquaintances that included artists, poets, writers, and filmmakers such as Mina Loy, Lincoln Kirstein, Frank O'Hara, and Stan Brakhage. Cornell's participation in these varied milieus elucidates enchantment's centrality to midcentury conversations about art's potential for power and moral authority, and reveals how enchantment and modernity came to be understood as opposing forces. Leading contemporary artists such as Betye Saar and Carolee Schneemann turned to Cornell's enchantment as a resource for their own anti-racist, feminist projects. Spanning four decades of the artist's career, Enchantments sheds critical light on Cornell's engagement with many key episodes in American modernism, from Abstract Expressionism, 1930s "folk art," and the emergence of New York School poetry and experimental cinema to the transatlantic migration of Symbolism, Surrealism, and ballet.

This rich, colorful retrospective celebrates the offbeat, inspired, and highly original artistic career of San Francisco-born painter Joan Brown. This exhibition catalog accompanies a retrospective exhibition of prolific San Francisco-born painter Joan Brown (1938-1990), the first significant survey of her work in more than twenty years. Joan Brown charts the turns and devotions of a vision that was once dismissed by critics as unserious but was in fact rooted firmly in research and impassioned curiosity that remains uniquely compelling today. Deeply embedded in the Bay Area art scene, Brown drew inspiration from many sources to create a charmingly offbeat body of work that merges autobiography, fantasy, and whimsy with weightier metaphysical and spiritual imagery and themes. Featuring texts by curators Janet Bishop and Nancy Lim as well as essays by Solomon Adler, Marci Kwon, and Helen Molesworth, this lavishly illustrated book establishes Brown's relationship to the self and family, to art history, and to her wider artistic community, while examining the unique materiality of her paintings and exploring her singular vision. In addition, select Brown works will be paired with commentaries by contemporary artists ranging from friends and peers, such as Ron Nagle, to younger artists inspired by her work, such as Woody De Othello. Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Exhibition dates: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, November 19, 2022-March 12, 2023 Carnegie Museum of Art, May-September 2023