TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell, 1936-1967)

Joseph Cornell was an American artist known in particular for the creation of boxes, curiosity cabinets and dream boxes inspired in part by Dada and Surrealist practices, with which he had certain affinities. Cornell exhibited his work regularly in New York City art galleries from the 1930s until his death in 1972. He also made a large number of collage films, as well as films shot or completed by other filmmakers according to his precise instructions.^[5] Cornell was a solitary and private artist, and a fair number of his collage films were discovered only after his death; in most cases, they have been shown in public only very rarely. These public presentations include the screening of Cornell’s first foray into the art of found footage, Rose Hobart (also known as A Collage of Rose Hobart), at the Julien Levy gallery in December 1936. This work is often seen as the first experimental found footage film.

Rose Hobart is a re-assembly of a 16 mm print of the film East of Borneo (George Melford, 1931). A little more than twenty minutes in length, it is a tribute to the film’s actress and, more generally, to the icons of silent cinema (even if Melford’s source film is a talking film). Flouting all narrative continuity and editing logic, for the most part the film brings together those scenes in which the actress appears, deliberately excluding the other protagonists, thereby giving rise to false matches, abrupt jumps and dissonant connections. Although it is not possible to know whether this was the case for the first screening in 1936, it is generally believed that the film was projected at silent speed (18 frames per second) and, even though it appears that Cornell conceived the idea later, through a blue filter (like the tinting carried out in the silent era). Preserved and restored by Anthology Film Archives in 1967, the print nevertheless has a rose-coloured hue (something which did not displease Cornell). Following latter-day instructions by the filmmaker, a few songs from the Nestor Amaral record Holiday in Brazil (1954) now accompany the film.