Habitat Group for a Shooting Gallery 1943

Editor: Here we have Joseph Cornell’s *Habitat Group for a Shooting Gallery,* from 1943, a mixed-media assemblage in a box. It has such a whimsical, yet melancholy feel to it. The antique bird images are really evocative. How do you interpret this work? Curator: For me, this piece reverberates with cultural memory and hidden narratives. The birds themselves, fragmented and numbered like specimens, evoke a sense of loss, a displaced paradise perhaps. Consider the 'shooting gallery' in the title – it implies a game, but also violence, a threat to these fragile creatures. Cornell was deeply affected by personal anxieties and global events, specifically war. Editor: That's interesting, I was focused on the colourful birds, not their fragility. The numbered tags...are those significant? Curator: Yes, the tags and printed ephemera layered within the box—hints of Parisian commerce and exotic locales—are like clues scattered across time. They represent the romantic allure of travel, but also the cold precision of categorization, of control. The collage background feels very distant and artificial. Do you notice the way he creates a world within a world? Editor: Absolutely, a stage set almost, for something bittersweet. So, it's a commentary on longing and maybe the precarity of beauty? Curator: Precisely. It makes me think about lost paradises or fleeting moments. Consider that even our fascination, our human impulse to possess or to categorize can actually harm what we admire. What’s your sense now, looking again? Editor: I see it! Before I saw a cute box, but now the layered textures make it seem deeper. More like a commentary on both human intervention and cultural displacement of nature itself. Cornell really loaded this box with meaning!