Untitled (For Tamara Toumanova)

Like Hommage à Tamara Toumanova, this box (also known as Feathered Swan) was made for the ballerina Tamara Toumanova. Cornell saw Toumanova perform Swan Lake in 1941, and he subsequently often associated her with this role. The swan here evidently suggests her presence, floating as it does above feathers that more vividly evoke the dancer’s costume than the bird itself. Cornell did on occasion incorporate actual fragments of the dancer’s costume in his tributes to Toumanova. On the back of one of these, Swan Lake for Tamam Toumanova (1946, Houston, Menil Foundation), Cornell wrote, “An actual wisp or two of a white feather from a head piece worn by Toumanova in Swan Lake mingles with the larger ones bordering the box” (Christine Hennessey, “ Joseph Cornell : A Balletomane,” Archives of American Art Journal 23, 3 [1983], p. 11 and fig. 2). The white paper cutout swan covered with white feathers, like the swan in Cygnecre pusculaire, recalls Cornell’s miniature paper cutouts of scenes from Hans Christian Andersen.

— Entry, Dawn Ades, Surrealist Art: The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1997, p. 42.