JOSEPH CORNELL — Paris Exhibition Invitation, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981

Original French-language invitation admitting two people to the inauguration of Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 14 October 1981. The exhibition ran 15 October to 6 December 1981 and was organised by the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, New York — a concentrated version of curator Kynaston McShine’s expansive MoMA retrospective, the finale of the museum’s fiftieth-anniversary programme, which assembled approximately 200 constructions and 75 collages. The Paris showing was one stop on a European itinerary that included London, Düsseldorf and Florence before continuing to Chicago.

Cornell knew France intimately without ever visiting it. From his basement workshop on Utopia Parkway in Queens, he constructed an imaginary continent from Baedeker guides, old photographs, cinema, ballet, hotel advertisements and second-hand ephemera. His work had first appeared in Paris in André Breton and Paul Éluard’s 1938 Exposition internationale du surréalisme; this 1981 invitation marks the moment that private, paper-built Europe arrived in the city itself.

Issued in the name of the Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac. Austere black typography on cream card stock, cut by a red-and-blue tricolóur stripe at the upper-left corner. 14 × 10.5 cm. Verso unprinted.

Condition: Good vintage condition, with gentle age toning, faint handling marks, a light diagonal crease at the upper-right corner and minor edge wear.