Buongiorno!

Oggi vi presento un artista a tutto tondo. Nato in America, ha vissuto per lungo tempo in Francia, venendo a contatto con i movimenti artistici del Surrealismo e del Dadaismo.

Io trovo le sue fotografie geniali.

Voi che dite?

Anna

 

Man Ray, nato Emmanuel Rudzitsky (Filadelfia, 27 agosto 1890 – Parigi, 18 novembre 1976), è stato un pittore, fotografo e grafico statunitense esponente del Dadaismo.

Pur essendo un pittore, un fabbricante di oggetti e un autore di film d’avanguardia (Le retour à la raison (1923), Anémic Cinéma con Marcel Duchamp (1925), Emak-bakia (1926), L’étoile de mer (1928), Le mystères du chateau de dé (1929) precursori del cinema surrealista) è conosciuto soprattutto come fotografo surrealista, avendo realizzato le sue prime fotografie importanti nel 1918.

Emmanuel nasce a Filadelfia da una famiglia di immigrati russi di origine ebraica. Cresce a New York dove completa gli studi. Termina la scuola superiore ma rifiuta una borsa di studio in architettura per dedicarsi all’arte. A New York lavora nel 1908 come disegnatore e grafico. Nel 1912 inizia a firmare le sue opere con lo pseudonimo “Man Ray”, che significa uomo raggio. Acquista la sua prima macchina fotografica nel 1914, per fotografare le sue opere d’arte.

Nel 1915 il collezionista Walter Conrad Arensberg  lo presenta a Marcel Duchamp, di cui diverrà grande amico. I tre fondarono la Society of Independent Artists.
Nel 1919 dipinge le sue prime aerografie, immagini prodotte con un’aeropenna, uno strumento di ritocco di uso comune per un grafico disegnatore. A New York, con Marcel Duchamp formò il ramo americano del movimento Dada che era iniziato in Europa come un rifiuto radicale dell’arte tradizionale. Dopo alcuni tentativi senza successo e soprattutto dopo la pubblicazione di un unico numero di “New York Dada” nel 1921, Man Ray affermò che “il Dada non può vivere a New York”.

Nel 1921 Duchamp torna a Parigi. Man Ray, che in precedenza aveva rinunciato a trasferirsi in Francia a causa della grande guerra, lo segue. A Parigi Duchamp gli presenta gli artisti più influenti di Francia, fra cui anche André Breton e Philippe Soupault. Soupault ospitò nella sua libreria (Librarie Six) la prima mostra di Man Ray, dove venne esposta la famosa opera Cadeau, un ferro da stiro su cui erano stati incollati dei chiodi, tipico esempio della sua giustapposizione sintagmatica di oggetti senza un legame logico, ma solo «mentale», paradossale, controverso; in questo caso decontestualizzandone la normale utilizzazione «codificata», fino a trovare uno strettissimo rapporto allusivo al «negativo».[4] Il successo Parigino di Man Ray è dovuto alla sua abilità come fotografo, soprattutto di ritrattista. Celebri artisti dell’epoca, come James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau e molti altri, posarono di fronte alla sua macchina fotografica.
Nel 1922 Man Ray produce i suoi primi fotogrammi, che chiama ‘rayographs’ (rayografie), ovvero immagini fotografiche ottenute poggiando oggetti direttamente sulla carta sensibile.

Man Ray scoprì per caso le rayografie nel 1921. Mentre sviluppava alcune fotografie in camera oscura, un foglio di carta vergine, accidentalmente, finì in mezzo agli altri e dato che continuava a non comparirvi nulla, poggiò, piuttosto irritato, una serie di oggetti di vetro sul foglio ancora a mollo e accese la luce. L’artista ottenne così delle immagini deformate, quasi in rilievo sul fondo nero. Attraverso i suoi rayographs, termine costruito sul suo cognome, ma che contemporaneamente evoca il disegno luminoso, poteva sondare ed esaltare il carattere paradossale e inquietante del quotidiano.

Nel 1924 nasce ufficialmente il surrealismo, Man Ray è il primo fotografo surrealista. La produzione dei suoi lavori di ricerca va di pari passo con la pubblicazione delle sue fotografie di moda su Vogue. Si innamora della famosa cantante francese Alice Prin, spesso chiamata Kiki de Montparnasse, che in seguito divenne la sua modella fotografica preferita. Insieme a Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró e Pablo Picasso, fu rappresentato nella prima esposizione surrealista alla galleria Pierre a Parigi nel 1925.

Nel 1934, la celebre artista surrealista Meret Oppenheim, conosciuta per la sua tazza da te ricoperta di pelliccia, posò per Man Ray in quella che divenne una ben nota serie di foto che la ritraggono nuda in piedi vicino a un torchio da stampa. Anche della pittrice surrealista Bridget Bate Tichenor, del cui padre Ray era grande amico, restano numerose fotografie. Insieme alla fotografa surrealista Lee Miller che fu la sua amante e assistente fotografica. All’epoca utilizzò sistematicamente per primo la tecnica fotografica della solarizzazione.

Lo scoppio della seconda guerra mondiale obbliga Man Ray, che è di origine ebrea, a rientrare negli Stati Uniti. Nel 1940 arriva a New York ma poco dopo si trasferisce a Los Angeles. In questo periodo insegna fotografia e pittura in un college, espone in varie mostre le sue fotografie, fra cui anche alla galleria di Julien Levy di New York. Finita la seconda guerra mondiale Man Ray ritorna a Parigi, dove vivrà fino al giorno della sua morte, in questi anni continua a dipingere ed a fare fotografie. Nel 1975 espone le sue fotografie alla Biennale di Venezia.

Negli ultimi anni della sua vita Man Ray fece spesso ritorno negli Stati Uniti, dove visse a Los Angeles per alcuni anni. Tuttavia egli considerava Montparnasse come casa sua e vi fece sempre ritorno e fu lì che morì il 18 novembre 1976. Venne seppellito nel cimitero di Montparnasse. Il suo epitaffio recita: “Non curante, ma non indifferente.”

Di Man Ray fotografo si è già parlato, non va tuttavia dimenticato il suo contributo di pittore e scultore. Sono infatti famose le sue sculture note come “oggetti d’affezione”. Un altro è noto come “Oggetto da distruggere”, un metronomo sulla cui punta Man Ray incolla la fotografia di un occhio. L’originale è perduto, la leggenda vuole che durante un’esposizione un visitatore abbia preso alla lettera l’invito implicito nel nome e lo abbia appunto distrutto.
L’originalità del suo lavoro si evince anche dal fatto che “L’oggetto di Man Ray, non è mai soltanto un ready made, ma, quasi sempre un ready made modificato … in cui opera … uno strano connubio, che comunque si abbini all’altro per contraddizione, creando una situazione di paradosso… Tra i dadaisti Man Ray è quello la cui operazione si è svolta secondo un procedimento più analogo a quello letterario – e surrealista – che non a quello degli esponenti del Dadaismo nelle arti plastiche

 

Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 – 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.

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 antisemitism 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, titled Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention, suggests that the artist may have been “the first Jewish avant-garde artist.”

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 attended, including stints at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League, 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 readymades—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,
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,[14] 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 photographic 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 Galleries in Beverley Hills, which brought together a wide array of work and featured his newly painted canvases of the Shakespearean Equations series.

Man Ray called Montparnasse home and returned there in 1951. In 1963, he published his autobiography, Self-Portrait, which was republished in 1999. 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