Man Ray (Aug 27, 1890 – Nov 18, 1976)

Man Ray, Paris studio, 1923
http://www.manraytrust.com/

 “To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the least harmful member of our society.”

“It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.”

“The tricks of today are the truths of tomorrow.”

“There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love. There are simply different ways of doing it.”

“The streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers.”

“l paint what cannot be photographed, and l photograph what l do not wish to paint.”

“I have been accused of being a joker. But the most successful art to me involves humor.”

“I do not photograph nature. I photograph my visions.”

“I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.”

“A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him.”

“All critics should be assassinated.”

“An original is a creation motivated by desire.

Any reproduction of an original is motivated by necessity.

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.”

Man Ray (Aug 27, 1890 – Nov 18, 1976)

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

“With him you could try anything—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.”
Artist and photographer, Naomi Savage, Man Ray’s niece and protégée, in a 2000 newspaper interview.

autoportrait

Rayograph: Untitled
1923–28
Medium:
Gelatin silver print

[Rayograph: Comb, Straight Razor Blade, Needle and Other Forms]
1922
Medium:
Gelatin silver print

Lee Miller’s eye

Man Ray – Tears (Les Larmes)
Image via harryneelam.com
http://www.widewalls.ch/artist/man-ray/

Portrait of Frida Kahlo by Man Ray

Man Ray – Aurelien, 1944

Lee Miller by Man Ray

 Mary Reynolds and Marcel Duchamp
photo by Man Ray

Man Ray in France Juan-les-pins, September 1937
Photographer: Eileen Agar | Tate

Man Ray & Marcel Duchamp play chess at Man Ray’s home
Photo: Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1968

James Joyce
Photo by Man Ray

Dancer Simone Prieuer, 1930

Le Violin Dingres, 1924

Noire et Blanches, 1926

“The Mona Lisa”, 1919

 The Meeting

Sculpture by itself II, wood, 1918

Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz

Fair Weather (Le Beau Temps), 1939

Man Ray described Fair Weather as the high point of his Surrealist production. Its vignettes derive from nightmares of barren trees growing in the artist’s yard, of mythical beasts fighting on his roof, and of an affair between his maid and carpenter. Other elements—such as the pool table and the mathematics book—refer to his earlier works. The mannequin in harlequin costume may be a kind of self-portrait.
courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Completed just before the outbreak of World War II, Fair Weather is also an anxious and ironic premonition of the impending international conflict. The bombarded stone wall and the puddle of blood are immediately legible as consequences of violence. When Man Ray departed Europe in 1940 to return to the United States, he left this painting behind. The next year he made a smaller version, fearing that the original might be destroyed.
information courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Rope Dancer accompanies herself with her shadows, 1916

Photo of Peggy Guggenheim by Man Ray

Photo of Man Ray by Lothar Wolleh

unconcerned but not indifferent

His epitaph, chosen by his widow, Juliet Browner Man Ray, because they were words he’d often said of himself.
MontparnasseCemetery 

It’s a Man Ray kind of sky,
Let me show you what I can do with it.
R. E. M., in “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” on Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)
(Wikiquote)

Emmanuel Radnitzky was born in Philadelphia and raised in Brooklyn New York by newly immigrated Russian-Jewish parents. His name slowly evolved to Man Ray, due in part to ethnic discrimination at that time. While in France, Ray was involved in the Dada art movement and the only American member of the Paris surrealist movement.

During his time in France, he produced unique art pieces which came to be known as “Rayogrammes,” pictures produced on photographic paper without the use of a camera; the subject is lain directly on the paper, light is exposed to it and then the paper is developed. The shadow of the subject is what creates the image, which stressed the influence of light and shadow rather than the importance of the image itself.

excerpted from:

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/surrealism/Man-Ray.html