Fairfield Porter on Joseph Cornell
The view out the window is the stars, the constellations, which as abstractions of the stars are constructions of the human spirit. The starfish is dry and mathematical, a particular realization of the eternal concept five. The bits of driftwood, usually fragments of something artificial, imply nature indirectly, as does the caked and scrubbed paint of his interiors. The view may be a photograph of a work of art, or a mirror. He implies nature though its effects, the effect of time, another human abstraction, or of number, with a suggestion of vast distance and quantity. So far is the distance (astronomical), so great is the number of grains of sand (impractical to count), so many the combinations of these numbers as the box is shaken, so many the combinations of patterns as they catch on the rayed incisions of the background and spring and piston slide around in them, that it is as though he were telling us that this small space contains infinity and eternity.
from ART IN AMERICA 1945–1970, edited by Jed Perl, Library of America
