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MAN RAY/ 2011
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Prints on paper: Portraits 3 | | Medium: | Giclée on Japanese matte paper | | Size (inches): | 16.5 x 11.7 (paper size) | | Size (mm): | 420 x 297 (paper size) | | Edition size: | 25 | | Catalog #: | PP_0241 | | Description: | From an edition of 25. Signed, titled, date, copyright, edition in pencil on the reverse / Aside from the numbered edition of 5 artist's proofs and 2 printer's proofs.
"I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence."
- Man Ray
Man Ray -
Man Ray (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976), born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. Best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter above all. He was also a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He is noted for his photograms, which he renamed "rayographs" after himself.[1]
While appreciation for Man Ray's work beyond his fashion and portrait photography was slow in coming during his lifetime, especially in his native United States, his reputation has grown steadily in the decades since.
In 1999, ARTnews magazine named him one of the 25 most influential artists of the 20th century, citing his groundbreaking photography as well as "his explorations of film, painting, sculpture, collage, assemblage, and prototypes of what would eventually be called performance art and conceptual art" and saying "Man Ray offered artists in all media an example of a creative intelligence that, in its 'pursuit of pleasure and liberty,'"—Man Ray's stated guiding principles—"unlocked every door it came to and walked freely where it would."[2]
Life and career:
New York
Living in New York City, influenced by what he saw at the 1913 Armory Show and in galleries showing contemporary works from Europe, Man Ray's early paintings display facets of cubism. Upon befriending Marcel Duchamp who was interested in showing movement in static paintings, his works begin to depict movement of the figures, for example in the repetitive positions of the skirts of the dancer in The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Shadows[7] (1916).[8]
In 1915, Man Ray had his first solo show of paintings and drawings. His first proto-Dada object, an assemblage titled Self-Portrait, was exhibited the following year. He produced his first significant photographs in 1918.
Abandoning conventional painting, Man Ray involved himself with Dada, a radical anti-art movement, started making objects, and developed unique mechanical and photographic methods of making images. For the 1918 version of Rope Dancer he combined a spray-gun technique with a pen drawing. Again, like Duchamp, he made "readymades"—objects selected by the artist, sometimes modified and presented as art. His Gift readymade (1921) is a flatiron with metal tacks attached to the bottom, and Enigma of Isidore Ducasse[9] is an unseen object (a sewing machine) wrapped in cloth and tied with cord. Another work from this period, Aerograph (1919), was done with airbrush on glass.[8]
In 1920 Ray helped Duchamp make his first machine and one of the earliest examples of kinetic art, the Rotary Glass Plates composed of glass plates turned by a motor. That same year Man Ray, Katherine Dreier and Duchamp founded the Société Anonyme, an itinerant collection which in effect was the first museum of modern art in the U.S.
Ray teamed up with Duchamp to publish the one issue of New York Dada in 1920. Man Ray expressed that "dada's experimentation was no match for the wild and chaotic streets of New York, and he wrote that "Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival."[10] Man Ray moved to Paris in 1921.
Man Ray met his first wife, the Belgian poet Adon Lacroix, in 1913 in New York. They married in 1914, separated in 1919, and were formally divorced in 1937.[11]
Paris
In July 1921, Man Ray went to live and work in Paris, France, and soon settled in the Montparnasse quarter favored by many artists. Shortly after arriving in Paris, he met and fell in love with Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin), an artists' model and celebrated character in Paris bohemian circles. Kiki was Man Ray's companion for most of the 1920s. She became the subject of some of his most famous photographic images and starred in his experimental films. In 1929 he began a love affair with the Surrealist photographer Lee Miller.
For the next 20 years in Montparnasse, Man Ray made his mark on the art of photography. Significant members of the art world, such as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Bridget Bate Tichenor,[12] and Antonin Artaud posed for his camera.
With Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso, Man Ray was represented in the first Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925. Works from this period include a metronome with an eye, originally titled Object to Be Destroyed. Another important work from this part of Man Ray's life is the Violon d'Ingres,[13] a stunning photograph of Kiki de Montparnasse,[14] styled after the painter/musician, Ingres. This work is a popular example of how Man Ray could juxtapose disparate elements in his photography in order to generate meaning.[15]
In 1934, surrealist artist Méret Oppenheim, known for her fur-covered teacup, posed nude for Man Ray in what became a well-known series of photographs depicting her standing next to a printing press.
Together with Lee Miller, who was his photography assistant and lover, Man Ray reinvented the photographic technique of solarization. He also created a technique using photograms he called rayographs, which he described as "pure dadaism".
Man Ray directed a number of influential avant-garde short films, known as Cinéma Pur, such as Le Retour à la Raison (2 mins, 1923); Emak-Bakia (16 mins, 1926); L'Étoile de Mer (15 mins, 1928); and Les Mystères du Château de Dé (27 mins, 1929). Man Ray also assisted Marcel Duchamp with the cinematography of his film Anemic Cinema (1926), and personally manned the camera on Fernand Léger's Ballet Mécanique (1924). Man Ray also appeared in René Clair's film Entr'acte (1924), in a brief scene playing chess with Duchamp.
Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia were friends as well as collaborators, connected by their experimental, entertaining, and innovative art.[16][17]
Quotations by Man Ray:
"It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them." (Julien Levy exhibition catalog, April 1945.)
"There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love. There are simply different ways of doing it." (1948 essay, "To Be Continued, Unnoticed".)
"To create is divine, to reproduce is human." ("Originals Graphic Multiples", circa 1968; published in Objets de Mon Affection, 1983.)
"I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence." (Undated interview, circa 1970s; published in Man Ray: Photographer, 1981.)
"I have been accused of being a joker. But the most successful art to me involves humor." (Undated interview, circa 1970s; published in Man Ray: Photographer, 1981.)
"An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an originals motivated by necessity. It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human."
"Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information."
"I do not photograph nature. I photograph my visions."[10]
References:
1. ^ Monday, Apr. 18, 1932 (1932-04-18). "Rayograms by Man Ray". Time.com. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
2. ^ A. D. Coleman; "Willful Provocateur"; ARTnews, May 1999.
7. ^ "The Collection | Man Ray. The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows. 1916". MoMA. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
8. ^ a b http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
9. ^ "IMAGINE - The Israel Museum's searchable collections database". Imj.org.il. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
10. ^ a b "Man Ray - Prophet of the Avant-Garde | American Masters". PBS. 2005-09-17. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
11. ^ Lacroix's first marriage had been to Adolf Wolff, an immigrant anarchist sculptor and poet, born in Brussels, Belgium.
12. ^ "Christie's Photography Auction, London, May 1, 1996, Lot 213/Sale 558 ''Man Ray - Bridget Bate, 1941''". Christies.com. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
13. ^ Getty collection Retrieved November 6, 2009
14. ^ Man Ray (1963), Self Portrait, Little, Brown and Company, p. 158
15. ^ Penrose, Roland. Man Ray. 1. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975. Pg 92
16. ^ Chris Bors (January 9, 2008), Winter Museum Preview: Top 5 London, ARTINFO, retrieved 2008-04-23
17. ^ Neil Baldwin, Man Ray American Artist Retrieved July 17, 2010
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Ray
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