Between 1953 and 1966, New York assemblage artist Joseph Cornell created more than twenty works in homage to Juan Gris, specifically inspired by the Cubist’s collage masterpiece, The Man at the Café (1914). Cornell’s Gris boxes have as their centerpiece the image of a bird, the great white-crested cockatoo, whose delightful and erudite connections to the Cubist’s oeuvre and to Cornell’s own hobbies, love of music, and distinctive approach to modern art are comprehensively documented here for the first time.
