1939

Portrait of Julien Levy, Daguerreotype-Object

American, 1903 - 1972

Cornell found an important champion in the art dealer Julien Levy, whose Manhattan gallery was a premier venue for the display of modern art, especially photography, throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Levy included Cornell in the landmark 1932 Surréalisme exhibition—the first showing of both the artist’s work and Surrealist art in general in New York—as well as in numerous group and solo exhibitions in subsequent years. Through Levy, Cornell also gained access to daguerreotypes and albumen silver prints, which the artist would collect and incorporate into his works.These early photographs were produced using techniques already obsolete by the 1930s, which invested them with a particular aesthetic aura.