#surrealist history

[suzannnemillerhistoryandresearch]

Suzanne Miller manuscript (rough draft) and The Perils of Zenobia (one-act play)

The upload seen here contains the results of five years' worth of effort in active research and transcription. It is being shared within previously-existing "fair use" precedents for thesis-level work being shared for reasons of scholarship and academic outreach/researcher communication. The documents here will be removed in time, but must be shared now for reasons of searching out other experts as to Joseph Cornell, Steve Allen, Primal therapy, Stella Adler, the city of Toledo and any number of other connections existing within this remarkable artist's life. More importantly, this is a discovery on par with those of Emily Dickinson and Vivian Maier. Suzanne was an artist who hoped to be read and understood. It is my honor - though an honor of great nervousness - to share these intense, revealing, helpful, genius-level, hilarious, unique and strongly-communicated examples of the life's work of a gifted observer, Suzanne Miller of Toledo, Ohio.

I welcome any communication from other scholars or those interested: abigailzerocartoonist@gmail.com

[risotto38]

huh

[the-cricket-chirps]

Dora Maar

Assia

1934

[disease]

LA RÉVOLUTION SURRÉALISTE COVER OF THE FIRST ISSUE [DEC 1924]

[sagradofemenin0]

Cosmic Energy by Remedios Varo ( 1908 – 1963 )

[wallacepolsom]

Wallace Polsom, Slippage VIII (2023), paper collage, 26.6 x 31.6 cm.

[lionofchaeronea]

The Giantess, Leonora Carrington, 1950

[marty--party]

A for … ABSTRACT

uh i don’t get it … it’s just a bunch of lines and colors?

[moda365]

Salvador Dali "Spring Explosive" 1965

[oakt733]

me and who

[roses--and--rue]

Rheumatic Pain I, 1948, Remedios Varo.

[suzannnemillerhistoryandresearch]

Undated letter to Mary Gordon by Suzanne Miller

This following document is being shared in the interest of scholarship and fair use. It refutes many of the myths, biographical misunderstandings and oft-repeated inaccuracies that persist about Joseph Cornell, and his brother Robert Cornell - notably, Robert's abilities at thriving in life while being differently-abled. It also gives excellent introduction to Suzanne Miller's close friendship with Joseph Cornell, the level to which they were close and Cornell's response to an unspeakable tragedy that befell his life and impacted his world view. It is shared here firstly in the hopes that scholars will not rest on easy resources and instead learn about the lives of the Cornells and Suzanne Miller, particularly in the documents to be found in Toledo and at the Smithsonian.

UNDATED LETTER TO MARY GORDON 1991 or later? Dear Mary Gordon:

I've just been reading your book of essays about a month after reading your novel FINAL PAYMENTS which I found in our small but always surprising library in Carmel. I admire your fine novel because among other attributes it helped me understand a special kind of devotion. I was happy to find in the essays again that special kind of devotion which carefully listens to its own responses to literature and painting. When I came to your essay on Warhol I understood how you could be "obsessed" by the implications of his art and his life, his pathological detatchment, which for me represents a capitulation of the imagination and Warhol is the death knell, or maybe he ushers in the AGE OF VULGARITY. I thought with your next sentence, how fitting of you to start up a comparison with Joseph Cornell to see if you could pull off Warhol's fright wig and finally shake him off.

Instead I found myself disturbed by your speculations about Cornell enough to warrant this letter in the hope that you continue to think about these things that do matter and that I know might help you. I knew Joseph from about 1956 to his death in 1972 on an almost daily basis. We made a film together called A FABLE FOR FOUNTAINS. He knew a lot of of people all the while he was called the hermit of Utopia Parkway. It was first that the media couldn't get at him so he was quite the antithesis of Warhol who wanted to be seen everywhere as much as possible. I know the story of the young girl who was killed from Joseph's own telling of it to me and I will share it with you. I lived through it with him and know how much it grieved him. She was one of a number of student who came to his basement studio to learn certain techniques of construction. She was under the thrall of a junkie boyfriend who coerced her into one day stealing two of Cornell's boxes. These boxes were all over the house and Joseph was never a suspicious person and she was naieve about the art world. One day she walked into a Madison Avenue gallery, she was probably about 16 years old, with two of them under her arms. The gallery owner knew they had to be stolen but couldn't reach Joseph so he had her arrested. When Joseph was finally contacted he refused to press charges when she was released her boyfriend was waiting for her and he stabbed her to death on the street. He probably was that young man on the cover of your book. Nothing so dark and evil had ever touched Joseph's life and never had any part in his imajination nor was he ever able to fit it in afterward. He felt in some inexplicable way responsible and it changed his final years.

Two other things I might mention: all his fingernails were unusually long simply because he used them as tools in the construction of his boxes, his hands were the most precise and sensitive of all his tools. Also his brother Robert was far from being retarded, he suffered from birth of cerebral palsy and Joseph, who was devoted to him, considered him the more intelligent and potentially greater artist. I have a drawing by Robert of a little mouse king fantasy which is charming.

I offer these corrections in the spirit of respect for your own insights into Joseph which lead you to understand that contrary to the dismal emptiness of Warhol and his gang, his older contemporary, Joseph Cornell, was a man to whom things mattered passionately and who remained totally outside the cynicism of his times. Moreover, had he known you, I'm sure he would have paid you homage in a collage or construction. I'm looking forward to your other novels

[collectionstilllife]

Gertrude Abercrombie (American, 1909–1977) • Leaves and Shell • 1953

[the-cricket-chirps]

Joyce Mansour (Egyptian-French, Bowden, U.K. 1928–1986 Paris)

Untitled (Objet méchant) (Nasty Object)

1965–69

[azalealulu]

Claude Cahun collection of self-portraits, 1927-1929

[fashionlandscapeblog]

Jean Cocteau on the set of Le Testament d'Orfée, 1960. He used his one-time lover's profile for his drawings of Greek heroes.

Source