Cornell's name for the work remembers a Viennese actor and dancer who appeared in several Hollywood films of the thirties and forties as well as in a wide variety of dance and avant garde theatrical performances. She was later a painter.
Cornell suspends Tilly in time: she embodies both the spectacle of performance and the attentive spectator at work, held or animated by a fragile collection of threads. She sits amidst, or aloft, the sublime spectacle of alps. Miniaturised and poised, Tilly has a body that is still and yet in action. She is seated in a space whose contours describe a simulated theatre; inside and outside, her location mid-air makes her half-audience, half-curtain (raiser).
You can find more information about Joseph Cornell here, here, and here, and we will kick off the unit with a film by Cornell, Rose Hobart. You can view it here.
You can find more information about Tilly Losch here.
1 comment:
So good to see the enigmatic Cornell portrayal of Tilly Losch on your blog. Many odd ball characters were enthralled by “ the demon of the Danube” Tilly. This fascination of her many images, photographs and film roles included ( for quite different sensual reasons) her two ill suited husbands, the artist poet, Edward James and the lecherous aristocrat Porchey Carnarvon. No other admirers ( apart from Cornell ) captured the “ inner child” that eternally remained one of Tilly’s own important life preserving imaginings of herself and which ooze from her paintings and feature as a thread in her diaries. Visitors to your site may be interested in my new book that includes some detailed coverage on Tilly Losch’s life and the people she knew from cradle to grave. " Catherine and Tilly: Porchey Carnarvon's Two Duped Wives. The Tragic Tales of the Sixth Countesses of Carnarvon" Kind Regards, William Cross, FSA Scot.
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