Man Ray

Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 â€" November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known for his photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Man Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.

Life and career

Background and early life

During his career as an artist, Man Ray allowed few details of his early life or family background to be known to the public. He even refused to acknowledge that he ever had a name other than Man Ray.

Man Ray was born as Emmanuel Radnitzky in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. in 1890. He was the eldest child of Russian Jewish immigrants. He had a brother and two sisters, the youngest born in 1897 shortly after they settled in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. In early 1912, the Radnitzky family changed their surname to Ray. Man Ray's brother chose the surname in reaction to the ethnic discrimination and anti-Semitism prevalent at the time. Emmanuel, who was called "Manny" as a nickname, changed his first name to Man and gradually began to use Man Ray as his combined single name.

Man Ray's father worked in a garment factory and ran a small tailoring business out of the family home. He enlisted his children to assist him from an early age. Man Ray's mother enjoyed designing the family's clothes and inventing patchwork items from scraps of fabric. Man Ray wished to disassociate himself from his family background, but their tailoring left an enduring mark on his art. Mannequins, flat irons, sewing machines, needles, pins, threads, swatches of fabric, and other items related to tailoring appear in almost every medium of his work. Art historians have noted similarities between Ray's collage and painting techniques and styles used for tailoring.

Mason Klein, curator of a Man Ray exhibition at the Jewish Museum entitled Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention, suggests that the artist may have been "the first Jewish avant-garde artist."

First artistic endeavors

Man Ray displayed artistic and mechanical abilities during childhood. His education at Brooklyn's Boys' High School from 1904 to 1909 provided him with solid grounding in drafting and other basic art techniques. While he attended school, he educated himself with frequent visits to the local art museums, where he studied the works of the Old Masters. After his graduation, Ray was offered a scholarship to study architecture but chose to pursue a career as an artist. Man Ray's parents were disappointed by their son's decision to pursue art, but they agreed to rearrange the family's modest living quarters so that Ray's room could be his studio. The artist remained in the family home over the next four years. During this time, he worked steadily towards becoming a professional painter. Man Ray earned money as a commercial artist and was a technical illustrator at several Manhattan companies.

The surviving examples of his work from this period indicate that he attempted mostly paintings and drawings in 19th-century styles. He was already an avid admirer of contemporary avant-garde art, such as the European modernists he saw at Alfred Stieglitz's "291" gallery and works by the Ashcan School. However, with a few exceptions, he was not yet able to integrate these trends into his own work. The art classes he sporadically attendedâ€"including stints at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students Leagueâ€"were of little apparent benefit to him. When he enrolled in the Ferrer School in the autumn of 1912, he began a period of intense and rapid artistic development.

New York

While living in New York City, Man Ray was visually influenced by the 1913 Armory Show and galleries of European contemporary works. His early paintings display facets of cubism. After befriending Marcel Duchamp, who was interested in showing movement in static paintings, his works began to depict movement of the figures. An example is the repetitive positions of the dancer's skirts in The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows (1916).

In 1915, Man Ray had his first solo show of paintings and drawings after he had taken up residence at an art colony in Grantwood, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City. His first proto-Dada object, an assemblage titled Self-Portrait, was exhibited the following year. He produced his first significant photographs in 1918.

Man Ray abandoned conventional painting to involve himself with Dada, a radical anti-art movement. He 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. Like Duchamp, he did readymadesâ€"ordinary objects that are selected and modified. His Gift readymade (1921) is a flatiron with metal tacks attached to the bottom, and Enigma of Isidore Ducasse is an unseen object (a sewing machine) wrapped in cloth and tied with cord. Aerograph (1919), another work from this period, was done with airbrush on glass.

In 1920, Man Ray helped Duchamp make the Rotary Glass Plates, one of the earliest examples of kinetic art. It was composed of glass plates turned by a motor. That same year, Man Ray, Katherine Dreier, and Duchamp founded the Société Anonyme, an itinerant collection that was the first museum of modern art in the U.S.

Man Ray teamed up with Duchamp to publish one issue of New York Dada in 1920. For Man Ray, Dada's experimentation was no match for the wild and chaotic streets of New York. He wrote that "Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival."

In 1913, Man Ray met his first wife, the Belgian poet Adon Lacroix (Donna Lecoeur) (1887-1975), in New York. They married in 1914, separated in 1919, and formally divorced in 1937.

Paris

In July 1921, Man Ray went to live and work in Paris, France. He 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, Le Retour à la Raison and L'Étoile de mer. In 1929, he began a love affair with the Surrealist photographer Lee Miller.

For the next 20 years in Montparnasse, Man Ray was a distinguished photographer. Significant members of the art world, such as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Bridget Bate Tichenor, and Antonin Artaud, posed for his camera.

Man Ray was represented in the first Surrealist exhibition with Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso at the Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925. Important works from this time were a metronome with an eye, originally titled Object to Be Destroyed, and the Violon d'Ingres, a stunning photograph of Kiki de Montparnasse, styled after the painter/musician Ingres. Violon d'Ingres is a popular example of how Man Ray could juxtapose disparate elements in his photography to generate meaning.

In 1934, surrealist artist Méret Oppenheim, known for her fur-covered teacup, posed nude for Man Ray in a well-known series of photographs depicting her standing next to a printing press.

With Lee Miller, his photography assistant and lover, Man Ray reinvented the photographic technique of solarization. He also created a type of photogram he called "rayographs", which he described as "pure dadaism".

Man Ray directed a number of influential avant-garde short films, known as Cinéma Pur. He directed 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 Ray personally manned the camera on Fernand Léger's Ballet Mécanique (1924). In René Clair's film Entr'acte (1924), Man Ray appeared in a brief scene playing chess with Duchamp.

Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia were friends and collaborators. The three were connected by their experimental, entertaining, and innovative art.

Hollywood

Man Ray was forced to return from Paris to the United States due to the Second World War. He lived in Los Angeles, California from 1940 to 1951 where he focused his creative energy on painting. A few days after arriving in Los Angeles, Man Ray met Juliet Browner, a first-generation American of Romanian-Jewish lineage. She was a trained dancer, who studied dance with Martha Graham, and an experienced artists' model. The two married in 1946 in a double wedding with their friends Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. In 1948 Man Ray had a solo exhibition at the Copley GalleriesWilliam Copley (artist) in Beverley Hills, which brought together a wide array of work and featured his newly painted canvases of the Shakespearean Equations series.

Later life

Man Ray called Montparnasse home and returned there in 1951.

In 1963, he published his autobiography, Self-Portrait, which was republished in 1999 (ISBN 0-8212-2474-3).

He died in Paris on November 18, 1976 from a lung infection. He was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Ray's epitaph reads "unconcerned, but not indifferent". When Juliet Browner died in 1991, she was interred in the same tomb. Her epitaph reads "together again". Juliet organized a trust for his work and donated much of his work to museums. Her plans to restore the studio as a public museum proved too expensive, such was the structure's disrepair. Most of the contents were stored at the Pompidou Center.

Accolades

In 1999, ARTnews magazine named Man Ray one of the 25 most influential artists of the 20th century. The publication cited his groundbreaking photography, "his explorations of film, painting, sculpture, collage, assemblage and prototypes of what would eventually be called performance art and conceptual art." ARTnews further stated that "Man Ray offered artists in all media an example of a creative intelligence that, in its 'pursuit of pleasure and liberty', unlocked every door it came to and walked freely where it would." Seeking pleasure and liberty was one of Ray's guiding principles, along with others such as doing things that are socially prohibited.

In March 2013, Man Ray's photograph Noire et Blanche (1926) was featured in the U.S. Postal Service's Modern Art in America series of stamps.

Quotations

By Man Ray

• "It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them." â€" 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." â€" 1948 essay, "To Be Continued, Unnoticed".

• "To create is divine, to reproduce is human." â€" "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." â€" 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." â€" Undated interview, circa 1970s; published in Man Ray: Photographer, 1981.

• "An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an original is 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."

About Man Ray

• "MAN RAY, n.m. synon. de Joie jouer jouir." (Translation: "MAN RAY, masculine noun, synonymous with joy, to play, to enjoy.") â€" Marcel Duchamp, as the opening epigram for Man Ray's memoir Self-Portrait, 1963.

• "With him you could try anythingâ€"there was nothing you were told not to do, except spill the chemicals. With Man Ray, you were free to do what your imagination conjured, and that kind of encouragement was wonderful." â€" Artist and photographer, Naomi Savage, Man Ray's niece and protégée, in a 2000 newspaper interview.

• "Man Ray is a youthful alchemist forever in quest of the painter's philosopher's stone. May he never find it, as that would bring an end to his experimentations which are the very condition of living art expression." â€" Adolf Wolff, "Art Notes", International 8, no. 1 (January 1914), p. 21.

• "[Man Ray was] a kind of short man who looked a little like Mr. Peepers, spoke slowly with a slight Brooklynese accent, and talked so you could never tell when he was kidding." â€" Brother-in-law Joseph Browner on his first impression of the artist; quoted in the Fresno Bee, August 26, 1990.

Selected publications

• Man Ray and Tristan Tzara (1922). Champs délicieux: album de photographies. Paris: [Société générale d'imprimerie et d'édition].
• Man Ray (1926). Revolving doors, 1916-1917: 10 planches. Paris: Éditions Surrealistes.
• Man Ray (1934). Man Ray: photographs, 1920â€"1934, Paris. Hartford, CT: James Thrall Soby.
• Éluard, Paul, and Man Ray (1935). Facile. Paris: Éditions G.L.M.
• Man Ray and André Breton (1937). La photographie n'est pas l'art. Paris: Éditions G.L.M.
• Man Ray and Paul Éluard (1937). Les mains libres: dessins. Paris: Éditions Jeanne Bucher.
• Man Ray (1948). Alphabet for adults. Beverly Hills, CA: Copley Galleries.
• Man Ray (1963). Self portrait. London: Andre Deutsch.
• Man Ray and L. Fritz Gruber (1963). Portraits. Gütersloh, Germany: Sigbert Mohn Verlag.

References and sources

References

Sources

• Alexandrian, Sarane. Man Ray; J. P. O'Hara; ISBN 0-87955-603-X (1973).
• Allan, Kenneth R. “Metamorphosis in 391: A Cryptographic Collaboration by Francis Picabia, Man Ray, and Erik Satie” in Art History 34, No. 1 (February, 2011): 102-125.
• Baldwin, Neil. Man Ray: American Artist; Da Capo Press; ISBN 0-306-81014-X (1988, 2000).
• Coleman, A. D. "Willful Provocateur"; ARTnews, May 1999.
• Foresta, Merry, et al. Perpetual Motif: The Art of Man Ray. Washington: National Museum of American Art; New York: Abbeville Press, 1988.
• Grossman, Wendy A., Adina Kamien-Kazhdan, Edouard Sebline, and Andrew Strauss.Man Ray--Human Equations: A Journey From Mathematics to Shakespeare; Hatje Cantz; ISBN 978-3775739207 (2015).
• Heyd, Milly. "Man Ray/Emmanuel Radnitsky: Who is Behind the Enigma of Isidore Ducasse?"; in Complex Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art; ed. Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd; Rutgers University Press; ISBN 0-8135-2869-0 (2001).
• Klein, Mason. Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention; Yale University Press; ISBN 978-0300146837 (2009).
• Knowles, Kim, "A Cinematic Artist: The Films of Man Ray". Bern; Oxford: Peter Lang; ISBN 9783039118847 (2009).
• Mileaf, Janine. "Between You and Me: Man Ray's Object to be Destroyed," Art Journal 63, No. 1 (Spring 2004): 4-23.
• Naumann, Francis. Conversion to Modernism: The Early Work of Man Ray; Rutgers University Press; ISBN 0-8135-3148-9 (2003).

External links

• Works by Man Ray -- Official Licensing Archive. Searchable; over 1,000 photos
• Man Ray Trust
• Man Ray at the Museum of Modern Art
• Biography of Man Ray at J. Paul Getty Museum
• London Transport Posters by Man Ray
• Brief biography of Man Ray by the Biography Resource Center, Gale Group
• Man Ray Biography
• Collection of Man Ray short films
• Omnibus of Man Ray
• Man Ray at Find a Grave
• Man Ray at the Internet Movie Database
• Man Ray letters and album, 1922-1976. Research Library at the Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
• Man Ray exhibition at Museo del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia
• Man Ray in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler collection