Wes Anderson Recreates Joseph Cornell's Studio for Gagosian Paris Show

Wes Anderson has reconstructed the studio of American artist Joseph Cornell for an exhibition at Gagosian's Paris space. The show, titled "The House of Utopia Parkway," opens December 16 at 9 rue de Castiglione and marks Cornell's first Paris retrospective. Curated by Jasper Sharp, the exhibition includes a life-size recreation of Cornell's basement studio in Flushing, New York, displayed in the gallery's window visible from the street. Anderson and Sharp spent weeks examining black-and-white photos and gathering firsthand accounts to evoke the studio's atmosphere, including a wall of plastered shoeboxes holding Cornell's shell collection. Anderson involved his usual film set craftsmen to mimic Cornell's handwriting and age objects, aiming not for an exact copy but to honor the essence of the artist's domestic, anti-academic creative space. The reconstruction is being built in a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris. The exhibition also features several shadow boxes, including "Pharmacy" (1943), once owned by Teeny and Marcel Duchamp; "Untitled (Pinturicchio Boy)"; and "A Dressing Room for Gille" (1939), inspired by a Watteau painting at the Louvre. The boxes will be viewable only from outside the gallery. Anderson, who has never explicitly acknowledged Cornell's influence, is also the subject of a Design Museum London show starting November 20. Sharp previously selected artworks for Anderson's film "The Phoenician Scheme."