Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell

A portrait of American artist Joseph Cornell considers his unusual personality and reclusive lifestyle while examining his relationships with such contemporaries as Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, and Susan Sontag.

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."