Man Ray (bornEmmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American-born, French-naturalized visual artist who spent most of his career inParis. He was a significant contributor to theDada andSurrealist 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 a photography innovator as well as afashion and portrait photographer, and is noted for his work withphotograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.[1]
During his career, 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 even had a name other than Man Ray,[2] and his 1963 autobiographySelf-Portrait contains few dates.[3]
Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitzky inSouth Philadelphia on August 27, 1890.[4][5] He was the eldest child ofRussian Jewish immigrants[5] Melach "Max" Radnitzky, a tailor, and Manya "Minnie" Radnitzky (née Lourie or Luria).[6] He had a brother, Sam, and two sisters, Dorothy "Dora" and Essie (or Elsie),[6] the youngest born in 1897 shortly after they settled at 372 Debevoise St. inWilliamsburg, Brooklyn.[5] In early 1912, the Radnitzky family changed their surname to Ray; Sam chose this surname in reaction to the antisemitism prevalent at the time. Emmanuel, who was nicknamed "Manny", changed his first name to Man and gradually began to use Man Ray as his name.[2][7]
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 inventingpatchwork items from scraps of fabric.[2] Man Ray wished to distance himself from his family background, but 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 much of his work,[8] and art historians have noted similarities between Ray's collage and painting techniques and styles used for tailoring.[7]
Mason Klein, curator of the exhibitionAlias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention at theJewish Museum in New York, suggests that Man Ray may have been "the first Jewish avant-garde artist."[5]
Man Ray was the uncle of the photographerNaomi Savage, who learned some of his techniques and incorporated them into her own work.[9]
Man Ray displayed artistic and mechanical abilities during childhood. His education at Brooklyn'sBoys' High School from 1904 to 1909 provided him with solid grounding indrafting and other basic art techniques. While he attended school, he educated himself with frequent visits to local art museums. 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 his decision to pursue art, but they agreed to rearrange the family's modest living quarters so that Ray's room could be his studio.[2] 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 atechnical illustrator at several Manhattan companies.[2][7]
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 atAlfred Stieglitz's291 gallery and works by theAshcan School. However, he was not yet able to integrate these trends into much of his own work. The art classes he sporadically attended, including stints at theNational Academy of Design and theArt Students League, were of little apparent benefit to him. When he enrolled at theFerrer Centre in the autumn of 1912, he began a period of intense and rapid artistic development.[7] The Centre, established and run byanarchists in memory of the executed Catalan anarchist educationalistFrancisco Ferrer,[10] provided classes in drawing and lectures on art-criticism.[7] Anarchist writerEmma Goldman noted "a spirit of freedom in the art class which probably did not exist anywhere else in New York at that time" there.[7] Man Ray exhibited works in the Centre's 1912-13 group exhibition, with his paintingA Study in Nudes reproduced in a review of the show in the Centre's associated magazineThe Modern School.[7] This may have been his first published art work, and the magazine would go on to print his first published poem (Travail) in 1913. During this period he also contributed illustrations to radical publications, including providing the cover-art for two 1914 issues of Goldman's journalMother Earth.[7]
Man Ray, 1920,The Coat-Stand (Porte manteau), reproduced in New York dada (magazine), Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, April 1921[11]Man Ray,Lampshade, reproduced in391, n. 13, July 1920Man Ray,c. 1921–22,Dessin (Drawing), published on page 43 ofDer Sturm, Volume 13, Number 3, March 5, 1922
Man Ray's work at this time was influenced by the avant-garde practices of European contemporary artists he was introduced to at the 1913Armory Show. His early paintings display facets ofcubism. After befriendingMarcel 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 inThe Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows (1916).[12]
In 1915, Man Ray had his first solo show of paintings and drawings after taking up residence at an art colony inGrantwood, New Jersey.[13] His first proto-Dada object, an assemblage titledSelf-Portrait, was exhibited the following year. He produced his first significant photographs in 1918, after initially picking up the camera to document his own artwork.[14]
Man Ray abandoned conventional painting to involve himself with the radicalDada movement. He published two Dadaist periodicals, that each only had one issue,The Ridgefield Gazook (1915) andTNT (1919), the latter co-edited byAdolf Wolff andMitchell Dawson.[15][16] He started making objects and developed unique mechanical and photographic methods of making images. For the 1918 version ofRope Dancer, he combined a spray-gun technique with a pen drawing. Like Duchamp, he worked withreadymades—ordinary objects that are selected and modified. His readymadeThe Gift (1921) is aflatiron with metal tacks attached to the bottom, andEnigma of Isidore Ducasse[17] 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.[18]
Man Ray teamed up with Duchamp to publish one issue ofNew York Dada in 1920. For Man Ray, Dada's experimentation was no match for the environment of New York;[20] he wrote that "Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival."[20]
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.[21]
Man Ray, 1922, Untitled Rayograph, gelatin silver photogram, 23.5 x 17.8 cm
In July 1921, Man Ray went to live and work in Paris, settling in theMontparnasse quarter favored by many artists. His accidental rediscovery of the cameralessphotogram, which he called "rayographs", resulted in images hailed byTristan Tzara as "pure Dada creations".[22]
Shortly after arriving in Paris, he met and fell in love withAlice Prin (popularly known as "Kiki de Montparnasse"), an artists' model and celebrated character in Paris bohemian circles. Prin was Man Ray's companion for most of the 1920s, and became the subject of some of his most famous photographic images. She also starred in his experimental filmsLe Retour à la raison andL'Étoile de mer.
From late 1934 until August 1940, Man Ray was in a relationship with French art modelAdy Fidelin, who appeared in many of his photographs.[29][30] When Ray fled the Nazi occupation in France, Adrienne chose to stay behind to care for her family.[31] Unlike the artist's other significant muses, Fidelin had until 2022 largely been written out of his life story.[32]
His practice of photographing African objects in the Paris collections ofPaul Guillaume and Charles Ratton and others led to several iconic photographs, includingNoire et blanche. As Man Ray scholar Wendy A. Grossman has illustrated, "no one was more influential in translating the vogue for African art into a Modernist photographic aesthetic than Man Ray."[38]
TheSecond World War forced Man Ray to return to the United States. He lived in Los Angeles from 1940 to 1951, where he focused his creative energy on painting. One of his residences was theChateau des Fleurs, another wasVilla Elaine Apartments, both inHollywood.[45][46] A few days after arriving in Los Angeles, he metJuliet Browner, a first-generation American ofRomanian-Jewish lineage. She was a trained dancer who studied dance withMartha Graham,[47] and an experienced artists' model. They married in 1946 in a double wedding with their friendsMax Ernst andDorothea Tanning; Browner took the name "Juliet Man Ray". They were also close friends withBlack Dahlia suspectGeorge Hodel and his second wife Dorothy Harvey (also known as Dorero). George Hodel’s son Steve Hodel even proposes that the staging of the murder was an homage to Man Ray’s surrealist creations.[48] In 1948 Ray had a solo exhibition at theCopley Galleries inBeverly Hills, which brought together a wide array of work and featured his newly painted canvases of theShakespearean Equations series.[49]
Man Ray returned to Paris in 1951, and settled with Juliet into a studio at 2 bis rue Férou near theJardin du Luxembourg, where he continued his creative practice across mediums.[50] During the last quarter century of his life, he returned to a number of his iconic earlier works, recreating them in new form. He also directed the production of limited-edition replicas of several of his objects, working first with Marcel Zerbib and laterArturo Schwarz.[51]
In 1963, he published hisautobiography,Self-Portrait (republished in 1999).[14]
The grave of Juliet and Man Ray in Paris.
Ray continued to work on new paintings, photographs, collages and art objects[52] until his death from a lung infection, in Paris, on November 18, 1976. He was interred in theCimetière du Montparnasse in Paris,[53] his epitaph reads "Unconcerned, but not indifferent".
When Juliet died in 1991, she was interred in the same tomb. Her epitaph reads "Together again". The grave site has now fallen into disrepair and the memorial stone is removed or missing. Juliet organized a trust for Ray's 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 its contents were stored at theCentre Pompidou museum in Paris.[47]
Man Ray was responsible for several technical innovations in modern art, filmmaking, and photography. These included his use ofphotograms to produce surrealist images he called "rayographs", andsolarization (rediscovered with Lee Miller). His 1923 experimental filmLe Retour à la raison was the first 'cine-rayograph', a motion picture made without the use of a camera.[54] Ray's 1935Space Writing (Self-Portrait) was the firstlight painting, predating Picasso's 1949 light paintings, photographed byGjon Mili, by fourteen years.[55]
In 1974, Man Ray received theRoyal Photographic Society's Progress Medal and Honorary Fellowship "in recognition of any invention, research, publication or other contribution which has resulted in an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging in the widest sense."[56] 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 calledperformance art andconceptual 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."[57][58]
Man Ray'sLe Violon d'Ingres (1924), a famed photograph depicting a nude Alice Prin's back overlaid with a violin's f-holes, sold for $12.4 million on May 14, 2022, setting a new world record as the most expensive photograph ever to be sold at auction. The sale came after a drawn-out bidding period that lasted nearly ten minutes duringChristie's New York's auction dedicated to Surrealist art.[59]
On November 9, 2017, Man Ray'sNoire et Blanche (1926), formerly in the collection ofJacques Doucet, was purchased at Christie's Paris for €2,688,750 (US$3,120,658), becoming (at that time) the 14th most expensive photograph to ever sell at auction.[60][61][62] This was a record not only for Man Ray's work in the photographic medium but also for the sale at auction of any vintage photograph.[63]
Only two other works by Man Ray in any medium have commanded more at auction than the price captured by the 2017 sale ofNoire et blanche. His 1916 canvasPromenade sold for $5,877,000 on November 6, 2013, at the Sotheby's New York Impressionist & Modern Art Sale.[64] And on November 13, 2017, his assemblage titledCatherine Barometer (1920), sold for $3,252,500 atChristie's in New York.[65]
In 2012, AmericanDream pop bandCigarettes After Sex used Man Ray's 1930 photograph 'Anatomies' as the cover for theirEP 'I.'.[66] The photo featuresLee Miller's neck with her head thrown back. In 2015, they used another photo of Ray's; 'Rayograph', depicting a feather, for the cover of 'Affection', one of their singles.
^Milly Heyd; "Man Ray/Emmanuel Rudnitsky: Who is Behind the Enigma of Isidore Ducasse?"; inComplex Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art; ed. Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd; Rutgers University Press;ISBN0-8135-2869-0 (2001).
^Veysey, Laurence (1973)."The Ferrer Colony and Modern School". In: The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Counter-Cultures in America. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 77–177.ISBN978-0-06-014501-9.
^Wendy A. Grossman and Sala E. Patterson, "Adrienne "Ady" Fidelin" inDictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biographies, ed. Franklin W. Knight and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Oxford University Press, 2016.
^Établissement public du musée d'Orsay et du Musée de l'Orangerie-Valéry Giscard d'Estaing; Miriam and Ira D. Wallach art gallery; Mémorial ACTE, eds. (2019).Le modèle noir: de Géricault à Matisse [exposition, Paris, Musée d'Orsay, 26 mars-21 juillet 2019, Pointe-à-Pitre, Mémorial ACTE, 13 septembre-29 décembre 2019]. Paris: Musée d'Orsay Flammarion. pp. 306–311.ISBN978-2-35433-281-5.
^Andrew Strauss, "To Be Continued Unnoticed: Mathematics and Shakespeare in Hollywood," in Wendy A. Grossman, et al.,Man Ray—Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare, Hatje Cantz, 2015
^Wilson, Scott.Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 38837-38838). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
^"Progress Medal".Royal Photographic Society. 1974. Archived fromthe original on March 10, 2016. RetrievedDecember 2, 2017.
^Coleman, A. D. "Willful Provocateur";ARTnews, May 1999.
^Ray, Man (1998)."Plates"(Print book). In Weston Naef (ed.).Man Ray: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Christopher Hudson. p. 14.ISBN0-89236-511-0. RetrievedApril 24, 2012.
^Wendy A. Grossman, "Surrealism and the Marketing of Man Ray's Photographs in America: The Medium, the Message, and the Tastemakers," in Networking Surrealism in the U.S.A. Agents, Artists and the Market, ed. Julia Drost, et al (DFK Paris/arthistoricum.net, 2019), 238, n.3
Allan, Kenneth R. "Metamorphosis in391: A Cryptographic Collaboration by Francis Picabia, Man Ray, and Erik Satie" inArt History 34, No. 1 (February 2011): 102–125.
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, Edouard Sebline, and Andrew Strauss.Man Ray—Human Equations: A Journey From Mathematics to Shakespeare;Hatje Cantz;ISBN978-3775739207 (2015).
Heyd, Milly. "Man Ray/Emmanuel Radnitsky: Who is Behind the Enigma of Isidore Ducasse?"; inComplex Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art; ed. Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd; Rutgers University Press;ISBN0-8135-2869-0 (2001).
Klein, Mason.Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention; Yale University Press;ISBN978-0300146837 (2009).
Knowles, Kim,A Cinematic Artist: The Films of Man Ray. Bern; Oxford: Peter Lang;ISBN9783039118847 (2009).
Mileaf, Janine. "Between You and Me: Man Ray'sObject to be Destroyed,"Art Journal 63, No. 1 (Spring 2004): 4–23.
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