Man Ray: When Objects Dream @ The Met, NYC

Man Ray: When Objects Dream 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

September 14, 2025 - February 1, 2026

Man Ray: When Objects Dream 

© The Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Man Ray: When Objects Dream at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the first major exhibition to examine the media-crossing, radical experimentation of American artist MAN RAY (1890-1976) through one of his most significant bodies of work, the rayograph. Man Ray coined the term rayograph to name his version of the 19th-century technique of making photographs without a camera. He created them by placing objects on or near a sheet of light-sensitive paper, which he then exposed to light and developed. These photograms—as they are also called—appear as reversed silhouettes, or negative versions, of their subjects. They often feature recognizable items that become wonderfully mysterious in the artist's hands. Their transformative nature led the Dada poet Tristan Tzara to describe rayographs as capturing the moments “when objects dream.” While Man Ray acknowledged the photographic origins of his new works, he did not think of them as strictly bound by medium. Taking Man Ray’s lead, this presentation will be the first—more than a century since he introduced the rayograph—to situate this signature accomplishment in relation to his larger artistic output. 

Drawing from the collections of The Met and more than 50 U.S. and international lenders, the presentation includes more than 60 rayographs, many of which were featured in important publications and exhibitions at the time of their making, and 100 paintings, objects, prints, drawings, films, and photographs to highlight the central role of the rayograph in Man Ray’s boundary-breaking practice. The exhibition marks a collaboration with the Lens Media Lab, Yale University, under the direction of Paul Messier, and with photography conservators and curators at various lending institutions, to study more than fifty rayographs.

“As one of the most fascinating and multi-faceted artists in the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century, Man Ray challenged traditional narratives of modernism through his daring experimentation with diverse artistic mediums,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “Anchored by Man Ray’s innovative and mesmerizing rayographs along with new research and discoveries, this exhibition invites visitors to explore his ground-breaking manipulation of objects, light, and media, which profoundly reframed his artistic practice and impacted countless other artists.”

In the winter of 1921, while working late in his Paris darkroom, Man Ray inadvertently produced a photogram by placing some of his glass equipment on top of an unexposed sheet of photographic paper he found among the prints in his developing tray. As he wrote in his 1963 autobiography, “Before my eyes an image began to form, not quite a simple silhouette of the objects as in a straight photograph, but distorted and refracted … In the morning I examined the results, pinning a couple of the Rayographs—as I decided to call them—on the wall. They looked startlingly new and mysterious.” This supposed accident, now the stuff of legend, has obscured the fact that rayographs might be seen as the culmination of Man Ray’s work up to 1921 as well as the frame through which he would redefine his work thereafter. They harnessed his interests in working between dimensions, media, and artistic traditions, fittingly at the moment between Dada and Surrealism, which writer Louis Aragon once called the mouvement flou (flou means “hazy, blurry, or out of focus” in French).

Unfolding in a series of spaces that intersect with a central, dramatic presentation of more than 60 rayographs, the exhibition will illuminate their connections with Man Ray’s work in other media, including assemblages, rarely seen paintings, and films. Thematic sections will highlight such concepts as dreams, the body, and games. Other groupings will focus on specific media, unexpected techniques, the artist’s studio, and watershed moments, such as the years 1923 and 1929, in the artist’s production.

On view will be iconic objects like Man Ray’s iron studded with tacks, known as Gift (1921), and his metronome, Object to be Destroyed (1923), that keeps time with the swinging eye of his companion, the photographer Lee Miller. Celebrated photographs, including his landmark Violon d’Ingres (1924), in which the torso of Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin) is depicted as a musical instrument, will also be featured. The exhibition will also bring together some of his boldest but most refined experimental works—compositions like ANPOR (1919), a painting made with an airbrush and pigment sprayed through and around objects in his studio. A section of the exhibition features several little-known paintings made at a moment when Man Ray had publicly sworn off the “sticky medium of paint” but had returned to the canvas armed with the lessons of making rayographs. Works such as Swedish Landscape (1926) show the artist applying pigment without a brush, working it in an almost sculptural way, building up and scraping down the surface. Three of Man Ray's films (all of which have been newly restored) will be screened in the exhibition.

Man Ray: When Objects Dream is curated by Stephanie D’Alessandro, Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Modern Art and Senior Research Coordinator in Modern and Contemporary Art at The Met, and Stephen C. Pinson, Curator in the Department of Photographs at The Met, with the assistance of Micayla Bransfield, Research Associate.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

The exhibition is made possible by the Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore Foundation. Major funding is provided by Linda Macklowe, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and Andrea Krantz and Harvey Sawikin. Additional support is provided by the Vanguard Council.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

The Met Fifth Avenue, Floor 1, Gallery 199

1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028

www.metmuseum.org

Exposition Man Ray @ Photo Elysée, Lausanne - "Man Ray : Libérer la photographie"

Man Ray : Libérer la photographie

Photo Elysée, Lausanne

29 mars - 4 août 2024

Vue de l'installation Man-Ray au Musée de l'Elysée

© Khashayar-Javanmardi - Photo-Elysée - Plateforme 10

Vue de l'installation Man-Ray au Musée de l'Elysée

© Khashayar-Javanmardi - Photo-Elysée - Plateforme 10

« Être totalement libéré de la peinture et de ses implications esthétiques », tel est le premier but avoué de Man Ray (États-Unis, 1890-1976) qui débute sa carrière en tant que peintre. La photographie constitue une des ouvertures importantes de l’art moderne. Elle suscite alors une remise en question des notions de représentation. C’est dans les années 1920 et 1930 que le médium photographique s‘impose dans les avant-gardes et que Man Ray se fait rapidement remarquer par sa virtuosité. Portraitiste de studio, photographe de mode, mais aussi artiste expérimental ayant exploré les potentiels de la photographie avec les personnalités de son entourage, Man Ray apparaît comme une figure aux facettes multiples. Considéré comme l’un des artistes majeurs du XXe siècle, proche de dada, puis du surréalisme, il photographie le cercle artistique présent à Paris dans l’entre-deux-guerres. 

Réalisée à partir d’une collection privée, l’exposition explore les sociabilités multiples de l’artiste, tout en présentant certaines de ces oeuvres les plus emblématiques. En plus de présenter un éblouissant who’s who de l’avant-garde parisienne, les oeuvres mettent également en évidence les innovations en matière de photographie que Man Ray a réalisées à Paris dans les années 1920 et 1930.

Il réalise ses premières photographies à New York dans les années 1910, mais c’est à Paris que sa carrière décolle. Avant même d’ouvrir son studio en 1922 à Montparnasse, Man Ray opère durant une année dans sa chambre d’hôtel. La réputation du photographe grandit. Rapidement, l’atelier de l’artiste foisonne. Aux photographies de mode se mêlent les portraits des figures artistiques de l’époque qui font rayonner Paris : Marcel Duchamp, rencontré à New York en 1915 et qui l’introduit à l’élite artistique parisienne, Robert Delaunay, Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, nombreux sont les peintres à poser pour le photographe. Parmi ses portraits, on trouve également les danseuses des Ballets russes ou les invités au bal du comte de Beaumont. Man Ray a su s’introduire, dès son arrivée à Paris en été 1921, au coeur de l’intelligentsia parisienne des Années folles. C’est ainsi qu’il rencontre Jean Cocteau, qui était lui-même très connecté, André Breton mais aussi Francis Picabia, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse et Max Ernst. Il rencontre également Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Igor Stravinsky, Ernest Hemingway, Arnold Schoenberg et James Joyce qu’il photographie pour la librairie anglo‑américaine Shakespeare and Company. Man Ray ne s’est pas contenté de faire poser des célébrités dans son atelier ou d’explorer le genre du nu féminin en travaillant avec celles qu’il considère comme ses muses, Lee Miller, Kiki de Montparnasse, Meret Oppenheim ou Adrienne Fidelin.

Man Ray a aussi expérimenté dans la chambre noire, transformant le médium photographique en un puissant outil d’expression artistique, allant même jusqu’à supprimer l’usage de l’appareil photographique lorsqu’il se met à créer en 1921‑1922 des photogrammes, qu’il nomme d’après son nom « rayographes ». Il explique alors que ce travail en chambre noire avec la lumière lui permet de se libérer de la peinture tant il est convaincu de la puissance visuelle de ses expérimentations. Dans les années 1920 également, il s’essaie à l’image en mouvement et réalise quatre films. Le rythme et la liberté que le cinéma lui offre complètent alors sa production photographique, voyant en outre une relation étroite entre le film et la poésie. C’est la raison pour laquelle il donne à son film Emak Bakia (1926) le titre supplémentaire de « cinépoème ». Sans jamais abandonner le portrait, il s’essaie à d’autres techniques dans les années 1930 : la solarisation, la surimpression et autres distorsions.

Dès ses débuts, la photographie va au-delà d’un simple processus de reproduction. Chez lui, les images ne sont pas prises de manière fugace, mais minutieusement réalisées en intérieur. Contrairement à Henri Cartier-Bresson qui opte pour le geste spontané et qui voit dans la rue un terrain de jeu privilégié, Man Ray compose et met en scène ses photographies. Le studio lui fournit un espace qui lui permet d’explorer son imaginaire. On retrouve dans l’oeuvre certains thèmes chers aux surréalistes : la féminité, la sexualité, l’étrangeté, la frontière entre le rêve et la réalité. Ses études de nus s’inscrivent dans ses recherches artistiques qu’il développe en collaboration étroite avec ses compagnes appartenant comme lui à la scène artistique parisienne. Kiki de Montparnasse – la femme aux ouïes de violon dans le dos – s’appelait Alice Prin et était une danseuse, chanteuse, actrice et peintre, qui posait pour des artistes comme Chaïm Soutine et Kees van Dongen. Lee Miller, une compatriote arrivée comme lui de New York, avait commencé une carrière de mannequin aux États-Unis mais voulait passer de l’autre côté de l’appareil. Âgée de 22 ans, elle rencontre le photographe à Paris en 1929 et participe aux activités des surréalistes. Plus qu’une muse, elle devient sa collaboratrice, s’initiant à ses côtés à la photographie. Ensemble, ils découvrent la technique de la solarisation. Une autre artiste, avec qui Man Ray entretient une relation professionnelle et romantique, est la Suissesse Meret Oppenheim, qui était alors proche du cercle des surréalistes avant de poursuivre une carrière d’artiste en toute indépendance.

Man Ray aimait la liberté que lui offraient ses créations photographiques, les portraits et la photographie de mode lui permettaient de gagner sa vie. C’est au sein de son studio qu’il se lance dans différentes expérimentations visuelles. Ses portraits, de facture relativement classique, témoignent, outre de son succès commercial, de sa grande sociabilité. Les artistes de Montparnasse, les surréalistes, les gens de la mode ou de la nuit, les mécènes, les Américains à Paris, tout le gratin artistique passent par son atelier, comme ce fut le cas au XIXe siècle chez Nadar. Près de cinquante ans après la mort de Man Ray, ses photographies continuent de fasciner. Son impact sur l’histoire du médium est indéniable et des photographes aussi importants que Berenice Abbott, Bill Brandt ou Lee Miller vont apprendre la photographie à son contact. Man Ray reste l’un des photographes les plus célèbres du XXe siècle. Il n’a cessé de créer, sans préjugés ni contraintes.

PHOTO ELYSEE

Musée cantonal pour la photographie

Place de la Gare 17 –1003 Lausanne

www.elysee.ch

Décadrage colonial @ Centre Pompidou, Paris - Exposition de Photographies

Décadrage colonial

Centre Pompidou, Paris

7 novembre 2022 – 27 février 2023

John Heartfield 

N°8 Social Kunst Fotomontage

Impression photomécanique, 26 x 19,5 cm

Collection Bibliothèque Kandinsky

« Ne visitez pas l’exposition coloniale ». En 1931, en réaction à l’ouverture de l’exposition coloniale internationale à Vincennes, les membres du groupe surréaliste dénoncent la politique impérialiste de la France. L’exposition « Décadrage colonial » propose de revenir sur ce chapitre singulier, et les imaginaires visuels générés à l’époque grâce à la photographie, dont les usages connaissent alors un essor considérable dans la presse et l’édition.

L’exposition explore, à travers la collection du Cabinet de la photographie et des documents de la Bibliothèque Kandinsky, les tensions et les ambivalences qui traversent la production de la nouvelle scène photographique parisienne de cette période : fascination pseudoscientifique pour les cultures dites de l’ailleurs, fétichisation et érotisation des corps noirs, participation au renouvellement de l’ethnographie ou encore contribution à l’élaboration d’une nouvelle image de la nation…

En réponse à l’exposition coloniale de 1931, les membres du groupe surréaliste éditent des tracts et organisent avec une frange de la gauche radicale une contre-exposition intitulée « La Vérité sur les colonies ». Si depuis sa création, le mouvement surréaliste a entretenu des liens tendus avec le Parti communiste, l’engagement anticolonial est un champ de convergence constant dont « La Vérité sur les colonies », réunissant objets, statistiques et photographies, est le point culminant en ce tournant des années 1930.

En écho à l’événement, le photographe américain Man Ray réalise un « reportage » sur l’exposition coloniale sous la forme d’un bref cahier énigmatique. Restreint dans sa diffusion, on y décrypte néanmoins une dénonciation puissante de l’artificialité et de la violence, notamment sexuelle, du système de la colonisation. L’un des rares exemplaires, ayant appartenu à Charles et Marie-Laure de Noailles, aujourd’hui dans les collections du Musée national d’art moderne, est le point de départ de cette exposition.

Mis en perspective avec les enjeux historiques, sociaux et politiques de l’époque, « Décadrage colonial » s’inscrit dans la continuité des projets d’expositions et de recherches liées à l’acquisition de la collection Bouqueret en 2011, avec « Voici Paris », « Elle est moderne, elle est photographe » et « Photographie, arme de classe ».

Photographes représentés (non exhaustif) :

Adam Pierre, Albin-Guillot Laure, Bellon Denise, Boucher Pierre, Feher Emeric, Ichac Pierre, Kollar François, Krull Germaine, Lipnitzky Boris, Lotar Eli, Man Ray, Parry Roger, Rudomine Albert, Steiner André, Tabard Maurice, Ubac Raoul, Verger Pierre, Zuber René

Commissariat de l'exposition : Damarice Amao, attachée de conservation, assistée de Lilah Rémy, chargée de recherches, Cabinet de la photographie, Musée national d’art moderne

CENTRE POMPIDOU, BEAUBOURG, PARIS

Galerie de photographies

centrepompidou.fr

Man Ray: The Paris Years @ VMFA - Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

Man Ray: The Paris Years 

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond 

October 30, 2021 - February 21, 2022

(c) Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts presents Man Ray: The Paris Years, an exhibition organized by Dr. Michael Taylor, VMFA’s Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Art and Education. The exhibition includes more than 100 compelling portrait photographs made by the artist in Paris between 1921 and 1940, featuring cultural luminaries such as Barbette, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Ernest Hemingway, Miriam Hopkins, James Joyce, Henri Matisse, Méret Oppenheim, Alice Prin (Kiki de Montparnasse), Elsa Schiaparelli, Erik Satie, Wallis Simpson and Gertrude Stein.

The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Emmanuel “Manny” Radnitzky grew up in New York and adopted the pseudonym Man Ray around 1912. A timely sale of paintings to Ferdinand Howald, an art collector from Columbus, Ohio, provided Man Ray with funds for a trip to Paris, and he arrived in the French capital on July 22, 1921. Although the artist worked in a variety of media over the next two decades, including assemblage, film, sculpture and painting, photography would be his primary means of artistic expression in Paris.

Shortly after moving to France, Man Ray embarked on a sustained campaign to document the international avant-garde in a series of remarkable portraits that established his reputation as one of the leading photographers of his era. Man Ray’s portraits often reflect a dialogue or negotiation between the artist’s vision and the self-fashioning of his subjects. Whether they had their portrait taken to promote their work, affirm their self-image, project their desires, fulfill their dreams or create a new identity, Man Ray’s sitters were not inanimate objects, like blocks of marble to be shaped and coerced, but were instead highly creative cultural and thought leaders who were active participants in the creative act. By telling the stories of his respective sitters and the innovative techniques he used to create their portraits, Man Ray: The Paris Years empowers the subjects portrayed in these photographs and gives them an agency and voice that is not typically realized in monographic accounts of modern artists.

“Timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the artist’s arrival in the French capital and, coincidentally, the near-centennial anniversary of the Spanish flu pandemic, Man Ray: The Paris Years proves to be a visually provocative and especially relevant exhibition,” said Alex Nyerges, VMFA’s Director and CEO. “This is an opportunity to better understand the lives of his subjects and see Man Ray in a different light.”

“Man Ray used photography to challenge artistic traditions and break boundaries, including fixed gender roles and racial barriers,” said Michael Taylor. “His portraits went beyond recording the mere outward appearance of the person depicted and aimed instead to capture the essence of his sitters as creative individuals, as well as the collective nature and character of Les Années folles (the crazy years) of Paris between the two world wars.”

Man Ray’s radical portraits also capture an important constituency of the avant-garde at this time, namely the femme moderne (modern woman). Adventurous, ambitious, assertive, daring, enterprising and self-assured modern women like American photographers Berenice Abbott and Lee Miller, French artist Suzanne Duchamp and American sculptor Janet Scudder took full advantage of their unprecedented freedom and access to educational and professional opportunities to participate as equals to their male counterparts in the Parisian avant-garde. Although these women came from different classes and economic backgrounds, they shared a collective goal in the 1920s and 1930s to be creatively, financially and intellectually independent.

“Rejecting traditional gender roles and expectations, modern women were interested in erasing sexual differences,” said Michael Taylor. “They often embraced the symbolic trappings and autonomy of their male counterparts including wearing men’s clothes, driving fast cars, smoking cigarettes and sporting tightly cropped ‘bobbed’ haircuts.”

The exhibition also tells the important stories of Black subjects such as Henry Crowder, Adrienne Fidelin and Ruby Richards, whose contributions have often been unfairly relegated to the margins of modernism due to the legacy of colonialism and racism. The artist’s series of portraits of the dancer and singer Ruby Richards, who was born in St. Kitts in the British West Indies and grew up in Harlem, New York, brings to light an important performer whose work with Man Ray has never been acknowledged in previous accounts of his work. Richards moved to Paris in 1938 to replace the legendary African American performer Josephine Baker as the star attraction at the Folies Bergère, and the famous cabaret music hall commissioned Man Ray to help introduce her to French audiences through his portrait photographs.

Many of the subjects portrayed in Man Ray’s photographs were born in Spanish-speaking countries such as Argentina, El Salvador, Peru and Spain, including famous modern artists like Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso, as well as the flamenco dancer Prou del Pilar and the pianist Ricardo Viñes. As a state art museum VMFA is committed to representing the cultural and linguistic diversity of the community. According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 7 percent of Virginia’s 8.5 million residents speak Spanish at home. This data has informed the museum’s decision to incorporate dual-language labels throughout the Man Ray: The Paris Years exhibition, as well as the audio tour and gallery guide. Recognizing that English is not the native language of everyone who visits the exhibition, VMFA is offering content in both Spanish and English to create a more accessible, inclusive and welcoming experience for all of our visitors.

Informed by extensive archival research, this exhibition and accompanying catalogue offers a more complete account of Man Ray’s Paris years by focusing not just on his achievement as a photographer and his superb gifts as a portraitist, but also on the friendships and exchange of ideas that took place between the artist and his subjects in Paris between the two world wars.

VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS - VMFA

200 N. Arthur Ashe Boulevard., Richmond, VA 23220

www.vmfa.museum

Photographs Auction @ Phillips, London - Highlights

Photographs Auction
Phillips, London
16 May, 2019

Phillips presents Photographs in London, an auction of 162 lots taking place on 16 May at 2pm BST. Available for sale only at Phillips is ULTIMATE, a multifaceted selection of exclusive works ranging from rare masterpieces to unique works and sold-out editions. This Spring, Photographs will also feature ULTIMATE EDITORIAL, celebrating collaborative creativity in ten captivating photographs by today’s leading and emerging forces in fashion, from legendary photographer Steven Meisel to rising star Txema Yeste. The Photographs sale showcases the work of Man Ray, Witkacy, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn and Gregory Crewdson, among others.

Genevieve Janvrin & Yuka Yamaji, Co-Heads of Photographs, Europe, said, “This season we are incredibly excited to be offering so many fresh-to market works with ULTIMATE, including our cover lot by Anne Collier, Helena Almeida’s unique work Seduzir, and two rare vintage prints from Ishiuchi Miyako’s Yokosuka Story. We are also thrilled to present ULTIMATE EDITORIAL, a carefully curated selection of photographs which truly captures the diversity and creativity in fashion photography today. The extraordinary calibre of photographs featured in this curation is a testament to the power of collaborative creativity.”

ULTIMATE

Leading ULTIMATE is Helena Almeida’s unique Seduzir [Seduce], 2002, hailing from a body of work Almeida created between 2000 and 2002 (estimate: £50,000-70,000). For her painstakingly detailed creative process, Helena Almeida begins with preparatory drawings of choreography that she faithfully follows in the studio. She then films herself, observing how her body moves and explores the space. Once perfected, her private performance is photographed by her husband Arthur Rosa.

Anne Collier photographs found objects and appropriated imagery, exemplified by Folded Madonna Poster (Steven Meisel), 2007 in this sale; a once-folded poster of Madonna from a photograph taken by Steven Meisel for her 1993 single ‘Bad Girl’ (estimate: £20,000-30,000). Influenced by the work of Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons and other ‘Pictures Generation’ artists, Collier re-contextualises popular imagery and visual clichés. She challenges how photography structures our ways of seeing by drawing our attention to these mechanics, as seen in the present work.

ULTIMATE also offers fresh works by eight artists debuting at auction, including Andrew Zuckerman’s hyperreal portrait of a grizzly bear standing nearly three metres tall, Yuji Hamada’s study of the Rubik’s Cube through the Polaroid emulsion-lift technique, and Jinhee Kim’s hand-embroidered Labor of Love diptych.

ULTIMATE EDITORIAL

The ten captivating images in ULTIMATE EDITORIAL were created for editorial since 2011, and appeared originally in magazines such as Vogue, LOVE and Numéro. All ten works have been released exclusively for ULTIMATE EDITORIAL and are either completely unique or from an edition of one in a unique size. The subjects in these photographs, including considerable star power from Naomi Campbell and Guinevere van Seenus to Cara Delevingne and Liu Wen, have forged strong relationships with the artists that continue to this day. As seen here, these collaborations have produced defining images that reflect and inform our society and visual culture.

Leading ULTIMATE EDITORIAL is Steven Meisel’s Naomi Campbell, New York City, 2019, the very image featured on the March 2019 cover of British Vogue. The work captures the creative collaboration between two legends of fashion – image-maker Steven Meisel and supermodel Naomi Campbell – who have defined key moments in our social history and visual culture for over 30 years. Here, through multiple exposure and deliberate blurring, Steven Meisel has created a surreal composition.

PHOTOGRAPHS

The Photographs sale celebrates the legacy of Man Ray with La Prière, a desirable work from 1930. The model pictured is Lee Miller who not only posed for Man Ray during their short-lived, tumultuous relationship, but also collaborated with him to choreograph iconic images such as La Prière. By the 1930s, nudes comprised an important portion of Man Ray’s oeuvre,  and La Prière is one of a select number of early works that he revisited, producing small editions as both gelatin silver prints and gelatin silver emulsion on linen. The work offered here was acquired in 1982 from Italian art historian and curator Arturo Schwarz and has been in the same collection for over 35 years. Widely respected as a leading authority on Surrealism and Dadaism, Schwarz championed Man Ray and exhibited his work at his influential Milan gallery Galleria Schwarz, which he operated from 1954 to 1975. This work is number six from the edition of seven that Man Ray printed on linen and is one of the few images he is known to have created in this way.

The sale offers further exceptional works by Annie Leibovitz, Richard Mosse, and Thomas Ruff, among others.

Auction: Thursday, 16 May 2019, 2pm

Auction viewing: 10 – 16 May

Location: 30 Berkeley Square, London

PHILLIPS
www.phillips.com

Brancusi, Rosso, Man Ray - Framing Sculpture, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Brancusi, Rosso, Man Ray - Framing Sculpture
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Through May 11, 2014

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen brings together works from all over the world by three artists who were decisive for the development of modern art: Constantin Brancusi, Medardo Rosso and Man Ray. This is the first exhibition to combine works by these famous sculptors together with their photographs, affording a unique insight into the artists’ working methods.

Masterpieces that have rarely or never been seen in the Netherlands will be lent by important museums such as the Centre Pompidou, MoMA and Tate Modern. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will show 40 sculptures and more than 60 photographs by Constantin Brancusi (Hobiţa 1876 - Paris 1957), Medardo Rosso (Turin 1858 - Milan 1928) and Man Ray (Philadelphia 1890 - Paris 1976). The exhibition features sculptures such as Brancusi’s ‘Bird in Space’ (1941) and Rosso’s ‘Ecce Puer’ (1906) alongside works by Man Ray from the museum’s collection, including the sculpture ‘The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse’ (1920/1971). Presenting the sculptures together with the artists’ photographs reveals their often-surprising perspectives on their own works.

Framing sculpture

All three artists lived in Paris at the beginning of the 20t th century and all three documented their own sculptures extensively through photography. The photographs show how they interpreted their sculptures and how they wanted them to be seen by others. Constantin Brancusi is considered the father of modern sculpture with his highly simplified sculptures of people and animals. In his photographs he experimented with light and reflection so that his sculptures absorb their environment and appear to come to life. Medardo Rosso is the artist who introduced impressionism in sculpture. The indistinct contours of his apparently quickly modelled figures in plaster and wax make them appear to fuse with their surroundings. Rosso cut up the soft-focus photographs of his work, made them into collages and reworked them with ink so that the sculptures appear even flatter and more contourless. Man Ray is best known as a photographer but was also a painter and sculptor. His choice of materials was unconventional: he combined existing objects to create new works, comparable to the ‘readymades’ of his friend Marcel Duchamp. Man Ray’s experimental use of photography led him to make photographs without the use of a camera. He made these so-called ‘rayographs’ by placing objects directly on photographic paper and exposing them briefly to light, leaving behind a ghostly impression.

Through the eyes of the artist 

The photographs of Brancusi, Rosso and Man Ray give the public the opportunity to see the sculptures through the artists’ own eyes. Three multimedia presentations, including projections and animations, will use modern digital techniques to replicate the artists’ explorations of form.

Museum Boijmans
Museumpark 18, 3015 CX, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
www.boijmans.nl

Expo Le Plateau, Paris : Nul si découvert - Commissaire d'exposition : Guillaume Désanges

Commissaire d'exposition : Guillaume Désanges 
Nul si découvert / Void if removed / Erudition Concrète 4 
Frac Ile-de-France / Le Plateau, Paris  
Jusqu'au 7 août 2011 

LE PLATEAU, l'espace d'exposition du Frac d'Ile-de-France, à Paris, dans le 19e arrondissement, présente jusqu'au 7 août l'exposition NUL SI DECOUVERT / VOID IF REMOVED. C'est le quatrième et dernier volet du programme ERUDITION CONCRETE proposé par GUILLAUME DESANGES invité à concevoir depuis 2009 un cycle d’expositions au Plateau. S’inscrivant dans la continuité des précédentes, poursuivant ainsi une réflexion renouvelée sur l'art et le savoir, l'art et la connaissance, cette exposition prend comme point de départ trois histoires pour aborder, par l’art, l'idée d’expériences à la fois concevables et impossibles. 

Collage GD DR - Work Method

Avec cette exposition, Le Plateau offre à voir quelques bijoux de l'art contemporain, entre surréalisme et, surtout, art conceptuel. Sont exposées des œuvres de Bas Jan Ader, Eric Baudelaire, Bernard Bazile, Alighiero Boetti, Chris Burden, Coop Himmelblau, Marcel Duchamp, Ceal Floyer, Ryan Gander, Dora García, Joseph Grigely, Ann Veronica Janssens, Jiří Kovanda, João Louro, Julien Loustau, Daniel Pommereulle, Stephen Prina, Anna Maria Maiolino, Man Ray, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson, Carey Young, Rémy Zaugg. 

JOSEPH GRIGELY

Joseph Grigely (né en 1956 à Longmeadow, vit et travaille à New York)

Remembering is a difficult job but somebody has to do it, 2004 

Courtesy Air de Paris, Paris  

ANN VERONICA JANSSENS

Ann Veronica Janssens (née en 1956 à Folkestone, Royaume-Uni, 

vit et travaille à Bruxelles, Belgique) 

Absence d’infini, 1991 

Sculpture miroir 

Collection du Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou 

© Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou 

Voici le trois histoires servant de point de départ à l'exposition - le texte est de Guillaume Désanges :

- Le lac Vostok, en Antarctique est une poche d’eau capturée sous une épaisse couche de glace, qui renfermerait potentiellement des formes de vie millénaires. Tentés d'aller vérifier, les scientifiques se l'interdisent encore puisque pénétrer cet espace altérerait immédiatement son équilibre supposé. Le dilemme entre accroissement de la connaissance et souci de conservation semble ici sans issue. La profanation du lac déclencherait la même bombe à « désagrégation spontanée » que dans la fameuse scène de Roma de Fellini, où le percement du métropolitain expose les fresques somptueuses d’une villa romaine à une disparition immédiate.

JULIEN LOUSTAU

Julien Loustau (né en 1971 à Saliès-de-Béarn, vit et travaille à Paris) 

Sub, 2006 

Nouveaux médias, vidéo 

Collection 49 NORD 6 EST - Frac de Lorraine, Metz 

© Julien Loustau 

- L’expérience du « chat de Schrödinger », est une parabole de la mécanique quantique, portant sur la désintégration des atomes. Supposons un chat enfermé dans une caisse avec une fiole de gaz mortel qui peut se répandre selon une certaine probabilité. Comment savoir si le chat est mort ou vivant sans ouvrir le coffre ? Tant qu’aucune vérification n’est effectuée, le physicien Ernest Schrödinger affirme que le chat est vivant et mort à la fois, « mort-vivant ». Non pas l'un ou l'autre, mais bien l'un ET l'autre, du moins jusqu'à l'ouverture de la boîte. C’est donc le moment de la vérification qui infléchit l’état de l’objet d’étude, qui sauve ou tue le chat.

MAN RAY

Man Ray (Philadelphie, 1890-1976, Paris)

L’Enigme d’Isidore Ducasse, 1920 (remade 1972) 

Machine à coudre, laine, ficelle 

Courtesy Marion Meyer Contemporain, Paris 

© Marc Domage

- Le LHC européen, l'accélérateur de particules le plus puissant du monde, doit permettre aux physiciens d’étudier les composants fondamentaux de la matière, en recréant les conditions qui existaient juste après le Big Bang. Lors de sa mise en service en 2008, un certain nombre de scientifiques ont réclamé la suspension de l'expérience par crainte de création de trous noirs qui auraient englouti la terre. L’accomplissement d’une expérience inédite peut susciter un accroissement considérable (de savoir, d’être, d’espace, d’énergie, etc.) comme aboutir à des pertes irréversibles, voire catastrophiques. Mais comment vérifier le bien fondé de ces craintes sans le tester ?

RYAN GANDER

Ryan Gander (né en 1968 à Chester, vit et travaille à Londres)

Latent Lament, 2008

Tirage photographique protégé de la lumière dans un sac en polyuréthane

Courtesy gb agency, Paris

ANNA MARIA MAIOLINO 

Anna Maria Maiolino (née en 1942 à Scalea, Italie,
vit et travaille à Sao Paulo, Brésil)

É o que sobra (Que reste t-il ?)

de la série Fotopoemaçao (Photopoèmaction), 1974 

Photographie analogique, impression numérique 

Courtesy Anna Maria Maiolino 

ANNA MARIA MAIOLINO

Anna Maria Maiolino 

Entrevidas (Entre deux vies) 

de la série Fotopoemaçao (Photopoèmaction), 1981 

Photographie analogique, impression numérique 

Courtesy Anna Maria Maiolino 

Dans ces perspectives, l’exposition présente des situations où l'observation anéantit l'observation. Précisément, des œuvres – sculptures, photographies, vidéos ou performances – qui sont d’autant plus frustrantes et fragiles que les phénomènes qu’elles contiennent ou abordent menacent de s’évaporer à l’ouverture. L’hermétisme attise la curiosité, encourage la violation du secret, mais maintient le savoir dans une spéculation pacifique, à distance, comme un mirage proposant la « figuration d’un possible » (Marcel Duchamp), et susceptible de susciter un vertige fantastique. Ce type de mécanisme « nul si découvert » concerne autant des configurations scientifiques, poétiques, que philosophiques et politiques. Mais l’expérience d’une expérience impossible n’est pas seulement un casse-tête métaphysique : il peut s’agir de situations très concrètes, physiques et sensuelles. L'art, dans sa capacité inégalée à formaliser des idées en dehors de tout système déterminé et de tout fonctionnalisme, est peut-être le lieu privilégié de ces expériences de « l'inexpérimentable », ces expressions de l'ineffable, ces impossibilités de la possibilité.

Une manière de clore ce cycle Erudition Concrète sur la connaissance par deux perspectives divergentes sans être contradictoires : l’irréductible inaccessibilité du savoir et l’infini de ses possibilités. 

BAS JAN ADER

Bas Jan Ader (né en 1942 à Winschoten, Pays-Bas, disparu en mer en 1975)

I’m too sad to tell you, 1971 

Film, projection
Courtesy Musée du Boijmans, Rotterdam 

COOP HIMMELBAU

Coop Himmelb(l)au (agence d’architecture fondée en 1968 à Vienne 

par Wolf Dieter Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky et Michael Holzer 

Basel Contact, 1971 

Tirages photographiques présentant des extraits du film 

Courtesy de l’artiste 

© Peter Schnetz

JIRI KOVANDA

Jiri Kovanda (né en 1953 à Prague, vit et travaille à Prague)

Pure and Clear (On the opening I was putting sweets into pockets of bags of visitors secretly), 3 mai 2007. 

Trafo Galerie, Budapest 

Photographie N&B, texte sur papier 

Courtesy de l’artiste et de la galerie gb agency, Paris 

ALIGHIERIO BOETTI

Alighiero Boetti (Turin, 1940-1994, Rome) 

Per filo e per segno, 1990 

Stylo à bille sur papier marouflé sur toile 

Collection du Frac Languedoc Roussillon, Montpellier 

© Jean-Luc Fournier

L’exposition Nul si découvert a bénéficié du soutien du British Council, ainsi que de Procedes Hallier. 

En collaboration avec Work Method. Avec le soutien de parisART. 

GUILLAUME DESANGES : critique d’art et commissaire d’exposition

Guillaume Désanges co-dirige Work Method, structure indépendante de production. Il est membre du comité de rédaction de la revue Trouble et correspondant français pour les revues Exit Express et Exit Book (Madrid). 

Il a coordonné les activités artistiques des Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (2001-2007), et organisé les expositions Pick-Up à Public> (Paris), Intouchable, l'Idéal Transparence à la Villa Arson (Nice) et au Musée Patio Herreriano (Valladolid),  Jiri Kovanda vs Reste du monde, galerie gb agency (Paris), De Appel (Amsterdam), La Passerelle (Brest), Centre d'Art Santa Monica (Barcelone), Child's Play, Biennale Periferic, (Iasi, Roumanie), Nam June Paik Center (Corée du Sud). Il a également développé plusieurs projets curatoriaux de type performatifs comme  "Une histoire de la performance en 20 minutes" (Centre Pompidou, Paris / De Appel, Amsterdam /  Artists Space, New York / MacVal, Paris / U-Turn, Copenhague, etc..), "Vox Artisti, la voix de ses maîtres" (Halles de Schaerbeek, Bruxelles / University of Chicago / Bétonsalon, Paris), "Signs and Wonders" (Tate Modern, Londres / Centre Pompidou, Paris). 

En 2007-2008, Guillaume Désanges est commissaire d'exposition invité, chargé de la programmation du centre d'art La Tôlerie, à Clermont-Ferrand. En 2009-2011, il est commissaire associé au Frac Ile-de-France / Le Plateau, Paris et membre du comité technique du Frac Lorraine. 

FRAC ILE-DE-FRANCE 

LE PLATEAU, PARIS 

www.fracidf-leplateau.com

Site de Guillaume Désanges : www.guillaumedesanges.com

Le Frac Île-de-France est une initiative du Conseil régional d’Ile-de-France. 

Il reçoit le soutien du Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication – DRAC d’Ile-de-France et, dans le cadre de son action au Plateau, de la Mairie de Paris. 

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention at The Jewish Museum, NYC

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention

The Jewish Museum, NYC

Through March 14, 2010

The first major multimedia Man Ray exhibition in New York since 1974, Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention, provides a rare opportunity to reassess the artist’s impact and gain new insights. Man Ray was one of the most influential and important artists in Dada and Surrealist circles. Yet his work and career remain mysterious to many people. Over 200 works in all media, on view at The Jewish Museum through Sunday, March 14, 2010, provide a new interpretive context in which to understand Man Ray’s art.

Visitors to Alias Man Ray are privy to the artist’s endless experimentation in photographs, paintings, sculptures and objects, drawings, films and a selection of his writings. A trailblazing figure in 20th-century art, Man Ray (1890-1976) revealed multiple artistic identities over the course of his career – Dadaist, Parisian Surrealist, international portrait and fashion photographer – and produced many important and enduring works as a photographer, painter, filmmaker, writer, sculptor, and object maker. Relatively few people know that he was born Emmanuel Radnitzky to Russian Jewish immigrants.

The exhibition explores the deliberate cultural ambiguity of Man Ray who became the first American artist to be accepted by the avant-garde in Paris. It also examines the dynamic connection between Man Ray’s assimilation, the evolution of his art, and his willful construction of a distinctive artistic persona.

Man Ray had an incredible affinity for the cutting edge art of his time. He found a kindred spirit in Marcel Duchamp, and eventually became a legend himself. His artistic achievements include creating the first kinetic sculpture years before Duchamp coined the term “mobile” in reference to Alexander Calder’s work. Man Ray also blurred traditional boundaries between painting and photographs, and broke new ground in photography with rayographs and solarization.

As the first Man Ray retrospective at a New York City museum in a generation, the exhibition contains many iconic works like the photographs Le Violon d’Ingres (1924) and Noire et Blanche (1926); the paintings War (A.D. MCMXIV) (1914), The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows (1915-16) and La Fortune (1938); and the painted screen La Forêt Dorée de Man Ray (1950). Two short silent films by Man Ray: Le retour à la raison (1923), the artist’s first film, and Emak-Bakia (1926), whose title means “leave me alone,” as well as excerpts from Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde, a 1997 American Masters/WNET production, are also on view.

Best known as a photographer, Man Ray moved from one medium to another as he defied aesthetic boundaries. The Jewish Museum show does not confine itself to one period of the artist’s career or a single medium, such as photography. This approach is essential to illustrating how Man Ray continuously broke with aesthetic tradition and made a monumental contribution to 20th-century art with his wildly sophisticated and deeply influential work.

He came of age at the beginning of the 20th century and the rise of abstract art. Man Ray grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His father worked as a tailor and his mother was a seamstress. After being introduced to New York art circles by photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, he went off to Paris—the center of experimental art—and was embraced by the avant-garde. The year was 1921 and Man Ray was 31. In Paris, he was perceived as neither Jewish nor a New Yorker but as a free-thinking American who quickly gained notice.

To make ends meet, he took assignments photographing a broad spectrum of literary and artistic figures. That group now reads like a modernist pantheon—André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Marcel Proust and Gertrude Stein, among others. These innovative portraits, all on view in the exhibition, provide a chronicle of the social milieu in which Man Ray thrived.

Man Ray engaged in a constant process of self-inscription and erasure, managing to outwit anyone who wanted to label him. Like his fellow Dadaist and close friend Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray took delight in playing games and confounding expectations. With his steadfast independence and his need to explore every artistic avenue, Man Ray forged a vision that changed the very way art was conceived.

Here are just a few of the press responses to the show. The Wall Street Journal's recent review of the exhibition was entitled “Masked Man, Revealed” and referred to the artist as “a protean master of the 20th-century avant-garde.” ARTnews observed that the show was “ambitious.” The New York Times said that the exhibition was a “retrospective with an irresistible biographical hook,” and The Brooklyn Rail found Alias Man Ray to be “a timely” and “comprehensive survey of Man Ray’s 60-year career as an artist, and what an artist he was” with The Daily Beast declaring it “a lucid, revisionist examination of Man Ray’s life and work.”

The exhibition has been organized by Mason Klein, Curator at The Jewish Museum. The accompanying 256-page catalogue with 246 illustrations, co-published by Yale University Press and The Jewish Museum, includes essays by Mr. Klein, Merry A. Foresta, and George Baker, with an illustrated timeline by Lauren Schell Dickens presenting the facts of Man Ray’s life in the cultural and historical context of his times. The hardcover book is available at The Jewish Museum’s Cooper Shop and bookstores everywhere for $50.00.

Produced by The Jewish Museum in association with Acoustiguide, a random access audio guide has been created for the Alias Man Ray exhibition. Available to visitors for $5, it features an introduction by The Jewish Museum’s Director Joan Rosenbaum; and critical commentary by curator Mason Klein; Neil Baldwin, author of Man Ray: American Artist; and Man Ray scholar Merry A. Foresta.

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention is made possible by grants from S. Donald Sussman and the David Berg Foundation. Major funding was also provided by the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Eugene M. and Emily Grant Family Foundation in honor of Evelyn G. Clyman, the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, Ellen S. Flamm, and the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund. Additional support was provided by the Neubauer Family Foundation Exhibition Fund and other donors. The exhibition is sponsored by the Jerome L. Greene Foundation. The catalogue is funded through the Dorot Foundation publications endowment.

The Jewish Museum
1109 5th Ave at 92nd St, Manhattan, New York NY 10128

Man Ray, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Man Ray

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

December 2, 1999 - January 29, 2000

Fraenkel Gallery presents an exhibition of rare vintage photographs by MAN RAY. These photographs, admired and studied by scholars for many decades, typify the revolutionary trends set by Man Ray and his fellow participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Stunning in their iconographic stature, these vintage prints map Man Ray's artistic progress from 1921, when he first moved from New York to Paris, through the early 1930s, by which time he was a leader among the Surrealists. To study these photographs is to witness Man Ray's uncanny ability to transform the ordinary into the fantastic.

Among the pieces on view in the exhibition is the exceedingly rare large-format rayographs that Man Ray made at the beginning of his career as a serious artist. As a way of seeing, this autobiographically named technique challenged conceptions of the physical world and its translation into visual media. Of Man Ray's style it is said:

The camera thereby became a way to shatter the fundamental ambiguity of the world. As early as 1918, Man Ray used it not only to challenge standard conventions of perspective but also to underscore the indeterminate nature of photographed reality. Without wanting to assert a direct correlation between the publication of new scientific theories and the new visual idiom explored by Man Ray, his efforts now appear striking in the way they placed photography at the center of one of the major aesthetic debates of the day. (Man Ray: Photography and its Double, p. 207)

Man Ray's captivating rayograph of The Banjo is one such example displayed in the exhibition. Also included in the show is the rare and intimate view Self-Portrait in Studio, the imaging of the self inherent both in the artist's physical presence and in that of two of his rayographs depicted on his studio walls.

FRAENKEL GALLERY

49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

fraenkelgallery.com

The Photogram: 1918–1948, Ubu Gallery, NYC

The Photogram: 1918–1948

Ubu Gallery, New York

January 23 – March 6, 1999

Ubu Gallery presents The Photogram: 1918–1948, a survey of the historical development of a unique and beautiful photographic process – an abstract marriage of light and chemistry made without the objectifying presence of the camera. 

ARTISTS: Robert Disraeli, Frantisek Drtikol, Jane Edwards, Werner Feist, Gene Fenn, Heinz Hajek-Halke, Harold Leroy Harvey, Jindrich Heisler, Karol Hiller, Marta Hoepffner, Gyorgy Kepes, Edmund Kesting, Willy Kessels, Milos Korececk, Fred G. Korth, Jerzy Kujawski, E.L.T. Mesens, László Moholy-Nagy, Jean Mowat, Oskar Nerlinger, Margaret de Patta, Man Ray, David Robbins, Jaroslav Rössler, Theodore Roszak, Christian Schad, Arthur Siegel, Maurice Tabard, Stefan Themerson, Georg Trump, Luigi Veronesi, Andreas Walser, Georgii Zimin, Ziubkova

At its simplest, a photogram is essentially a one-of-a-kind negative image created by placing objects on a sheet of photographic paper that is exposed to light and then developed and processed in the manner of a normal photographic print. Although variants of this type of process date back to the origins of photography, the creative potential of the photogram went unrealized until unlocked by Christian Schad, a member of the original Zurich Dada group, in 1918. At the heart of the Dadaist aesthetic was the concept of creating a new art from the detritus of a “morally corrupt,” bourgeois society. Like the materials found in Kurt Schwitters’s collages, Christian Schad appropriated as his subject matter an eclectic array of found objects – discarded tickets, fabric, newsprint, string, etc. Tristan Tzara dubbed Schad’s series of small format photograms “Schadographs,” playing upon the name of their creator and the shadow aspect of the process.

In the early 1920s, Man Ray, Lázló Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky – working independently – pushed the medium past Schad’s collage-like photograms. Their most significant innovation was the introduction of a sense of depth or interior space obtained by varying the dimensionality, volume and translucence of the objects and the form and manner of the lighting sources. This approach fully exploited the fluidity of the process, imbuing the resultant photogram with an enigmatic presence at once familiar and comforting as well as foreign and disturbing. Full of startling juxtapositions, they provide a visual jolt by transforming the mundane into the mysterious.

While the aforementioned artists were the pioneers of the medium, almost immediately a host of other practitioners sharing similar concerns – masters and students, “plastic artists” and photographers, some formerly not visual artists at all – continued to explore the possibilities of the photogram. All were fascinated by its “non-objective” and “automatic” qualities – the process could be influenced at every step, but the results were largely unpredictable. This reflected the prevailing avant-garde sensibility of the period wherein artists sought to divorce themselves from “imperfect” human perception expressiveness of the materials. The exhibition at Ubu Gallery includes works by more than 25 of such artists who pushed the creative boundaries of the photogram during the 1918 – 1948 period.

UBU GALLERY

416 East 59 Street, New York, NY 10022

www.ubugallery.com