[.ca] Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell (ISBN 0878466843)

From Amazon.com:
Joseph Cornell (1903-72) lived in Queens with a domineering mother and severely handicapped brother while creating unique, haunting art: boxes filled with lovingly assembled objects and printed images. But this sympathetic biography demonstrates that he was more than an eccentric recluse, chronicling his friendships with other artists and his immersion in the avant-garde movements of his time. Art critic Deborah Solomon spikes her astute judgments with humor--noting her subject's fondness for epistolary relationships that spared him the unease of physical contact, she comments, "Cornell would have been great on the Internet."

why the psychobable?:
like all the other reviewers i have an immense interest in cornell. however i found deborah solomon's constant psychological asides both banal and ultimately dulling. every page has some fatuous and often risible so-called apercu. i wanted a biography, not some fanciful and very dated exercise in psychoanalysis. shame cos there is a lot of enjoyable fact offered. cornell's own selected diary and letters published under the title The Theatre of the Mind, is the only authority on his thinking as far as i am concerned. this biographical arrogance of reducing an artist's life to a sequence of supposedly transparent motivations is so passe surely.

What a wonderful biography.:
I knew very little about Cornell before beginning this book, although I have always admired his art...this book was informative and very enjoyable. The author attempted to fill in the gaps where there were few definitive answers about his life, but always remained true to the spirit of Cornell. Definitely recommended.

It's art, not therapy!:
Solomon is a very good writer and her ability to capture images and moods is continually shattered by her excessive (and striclty amateur attempts at) psychoanalysis. For me personally, it was a constant irritant that ruined what would otherwise be a wonderful and fascinating biography.

Immensely grateful but waiting for the next:
As an antidote to my seams-bursting curiosity about Cornell, this book deserves a rating off the measly 5 star scale and into the realm of splendiferous constellations. To you Deborah Solomon I am sincerely grateful. But upon rereading Utopia Parkway seems rather thin, and at times, unfortunately, nearly patronizing. I don't doubt her respect for Cornell, but occasionally she treats him as too much of a curiosity, as if he was an eccentric she's putting into a box. Perhaps she simply had trouble understanding him. And of course she committed the unpardonable sin, and anti-Cornellian faux pas, within her pages of referring to pigeons as ugly grey scavengers. They are, as every reader of this book should know, winged urban enchanters.

Cornell:
This is definitely one of my favorite books of all time. There are plenty of reviews already that pick apart details and issues, so I'll keep this short. The book states that Cornell was a man of many obsessions and who got a certain delight out of a certain celebrity voyeurism, this book is perfect for people who hold that sort of voyeuristic thirst for Cornell himself or can relate and understand to the hermetic lifestyle he chose for himself.