Gagosian Paris unveiled The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell’s Studio Re-Created by Wes Anderson, transforming its rue de Castiglione space into a meticulously staged environment that brings a singular New York studio into the heart of the French capital.
Joseph Cornell, 1972 Photo: © Duane Michals Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York
Conceived by curator Jasper Sharp in collaboration with filmmaker Wes Anderson, the exhibition marks the first solo presentation of Joseph Cornell’s work in Paris in more than forty years. Cornell, a self-taught artist who famously worked outside traditional artistic disciplines, created an idiosyncratic body of work rooted in collecting, arranging, and reimagining found objects. Although he never visited Paris, the city loomed large in his imagination, shaped by books, postcards, and conversations with figures such as Marcel Duchamp. From the basement of his family home on Utopia Parkway in Queens, Cornell assembled boxes and collages that merged nostalgia, literature, science, and cinema, influencing generations of artists across disciplines.
That intimate working world is reassembled in Paris through more than three hundred objects drawn from Cornell’s personal collection. Shelves of ephemera, curiosities, and archival fragments surround key works, including poetic box constructions that function as miniature theatres of memory. Highlights include Pharmacy (1943), inspired by an apothecary cabinet, alongside emblematic pieces from the Medici series and tributes to figures from art history and early aviation, revealing Cornell’s expansive and deeply personal cultural map.
Anderson’s involvement goes beyond homage. With a sensibility attuned to symmetry, narrative detail, and material texture, the filmmaker, along with long-time collaborators and set designer Cécile Degos translated Cornell’s studio into a life-sized, three-dimensional “box.” Visible from the street and subtly illuminated, the installation turns the gallery itself into an object of contemplation, echoing the nocturnal hours Cornell spent immersed in his practice.
Together, the exhibition reads as both a historical reconstruction and a contemporary interpretation: a meditation on solitude, imagination, and the act of creation. By situating Cornell’s quiet, inward-looking universe within Paris, a city he knew only through images and ideas, The House on Utopia Parkway offers a rare encounter between two distinct creative minds, inviting viewers to step inside the mental architecture of one of the twentieth century’s most singular artists. – Anna Barr
Joseph Cornell’s family home in Queens, New York
Joseph Cornell’s studio in the basement of his family home in Queens, New York, 1971. Photo: © Harry Roseman.
9 rue de Castiglione, Paris
Joseph Cornell, Pharmacy, 1943
Joseph Cornell Untitled (Medici Series, Pinturicchio Boy), c. 1950
Joseph Cornell Flemish Princess, c. 1950
Joseph Cornell A Dressing Room for Gille, 1939
