This is a stretch, but of interest I hope. Pipes crop up as a subject in fine art from time to time.
I just finished a biography of the shadow box and assemblage artist Joseph Cornell. A really sad,
constricted life with possessive mom, and taking care of his handicapped brother, longing for
female company but never really having an adult relationship. But he managed, living in a working
class neighborhood in Queens, to have a remarkable arts career peaking in a retrospective at the
Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. Some of his shadow box assemblages, a number of them, had
as singular symbolic objects/items clay pipes, sometimes intact, sometimes broken. I don't think
Joseph ever smoked, for thrift and because of mama. But he included the pipes as a symbol of
masculinity. His career stretched from the 1930's until 1971 when he died. I discovered his work at
the Chicago Art Institute which has the largest single collection of his boxes.
I just finished a biography of the shadow box and assemblage artist Joseph Cornell. A really sad,
constricted life with possessive mom, and taking care of his handicapped brother, longing for
female company but never really having an adult relationship. But he managed, living in a working
class neighborhood in Queens, to have a remarkable arts career peaking in a retrospective at the
Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. Some of his shadow box assemblages, a number of them, had
as singular symbolic objects/items clay pipes, sometimes intact, sometimes broken. I don't think
Joseph ever smoked, for thrift and because of mama. But he included the pipes as a symbol of
masculinity. His career stretched from the 1930's until 1971 when he died. I discovered his work at
the Chicago Art Institute which has the largest single collection of his boxes.
