Joseph Cornell Cover View Magazine Americana Fantastica January 1943 Surrealism

Description

Published in January 1943 and edited by poet and surrealist impresario Charles Henri Ford, this issue of View—titled “Americana Fantastica”—stands as one of the most visually striking numbers of the legendary New York avant-garde magazine. The cover was designed by Joseph Cornell, whose dreamlike assemblages and box constructions would later make him one of the most celebrated figures in American Surrealism. Inside the issue appears Cornell’s work “Medici Slot Machine,” along with a remarkable array of visual experiments, typography, poetry, and surrealist imagery.

During the 1940s, View functioned as the central publishing organ of the New York Surrealist circle, bringing together artists, writers, and émigré European surrealists who had fled wartime Europe. Contributors and subjects associated with the magazine included André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Pavel Tchelitchew, and a young generation of American experimental artists. This issue also includes an early photographic contributions by Helen Levitt, the pioneering New York street photographer whose candid images of children and everyday life would later place her among the most important documentary photographers of the twentieth century. Issues like this one blur the boundaries between magazine, art object, and exhibition catalog—combining collage, typography, poetry, and photography into something closer to a portable avant-garde gallery.

A beautiful and historically important Surrealist magazine featuring a Joseph Cornell cover and artwork, from the golden era of New York avant-garde publishing…and seldom seen in this condition.