Man Ray 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.
Background
Man Ray's birth name was Emmanuel Radnitzky in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, in 1890. He was the eldest child of Russian Jewish immigrants Max, a tailor, and Minnie Radnitzky. He had a brother, Sam, and two sisters, Dora and Essie, 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 name.
Education
Man Ray displayed artistic and mechanical abilities during childhood. His education at Brooklyn's Boys' High School from 1904 to 1909 provided him with a 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.
Career
Right from the moment, he came into the limelight until his death, Man Ray did not allow much of his early life to be known, even denying that he once had another name other than Ray.
Ray's father worked in a garment factory. He also owned a small tailoring shop outside his home, enlisting all his children from a tender age. Ray's mother, who was very passionate about tailoring, enjoyed making and designing her family's clothes. She used to make clothes from her own designs and create patchwork items out of scraps of fabrics. While Man Ray didn't want to associate himself with his family's background, this experience did leave a mark on his artwork. A number of clothing and sewing related items appear at every phase of his work and in nearly every medium.
Ray's artistic and mechanical ability came out at a tender age. His high school education played a more important role in providing him with a firm grounding in drafting as well as other art techniques. He also educated himself with regular visits to art museums, where he learnt the works of Old Masters like ike Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian and Caravaggio. As a student, Ray was inspired by Mr. Alfred Stieglitz, whose gallery he toured regularly, as well as Mr. Robert Henri, who was his high school teacher. At age 25, Ray had his very first one-man painting fair. His friendship with Duchamp, which spanned for 55 years, influenced their work and resulted in joint creative endeavors.
Soon after graduating from high school in 1908, Ray was offered a scholarship to study architecture but decided to pursue a career in arts. While his parents were unhappy with his decision, they supported his love for the arts, and even rearranged the modest living quarters of the family so that their son could employ the room as his studio. Ray stayed for 4 years working towards being a professional painter, while also earning some cash as a technical illustrator and commercial artist at various Manhattan companies.
Initially, Ray was inspired by cubism and expressionism. But when he met Marcel Duchamp, he started to add some movement to his works. His focus then changed to Dadaism. Dadaism challenged the then perceptions of art and literature, and advocated for spontaneity. Together with Duchamp and Francis Picabia, Man Ray became the leading figure in Dada movement.
In 1920s, influenced by the writings of psychologist Sigmund Freud, the literary, intellectual, and artistic movement called Surrealism sought a revolution against the constraints of the rational mind; and by extension, they saw the rules of a society as oppressive. Surrealism also embraces a Marxist ideology that demands an orthodox approach to history as a product of the material interaction of collective interests, and many renown Surrealism artists, later on, became 20th-century Counterculture symbols such as Marxist Che Guevara. Man Ray was the only member of Paris surrealist movement from the US. Among his popular artistic works at that time was The Gift, the sculpture which had two found objects.
Encouraged by Marcel Duchamp, Ray relocated to Paris in 1921. With the exception of a decade in Hollywood during WW1, he spent the whole of his life in France. During his time in France, Ray continued to be part of artistic avant-garde, coming into contact with renowned figures such as Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Man Ray started working in several mediums including sculpture, painting, film, and photography. His earliest artistic works w ere relatively static, influenced mostly by cubism and expressionism.
Unlike many American artists who spent only a short time in Paris, Man Ray made it his home for 20 years. There he was an influential member of the international Dada and Surrealist circles of artists and writers, which included Max Ernst, Dali, Joan Miro, Rene Magritte, Picasso and André Breton.
Ray Man became popular for the representations of his artistic works. He went on to develop a career as a fashion photographer, capturing images for popular magazines in Paris. While in France, he produced brilliant artworks which are today known as Rayogrammes - images created on a piece of photographic paper without a camera; the subject is placed directly on a piece of paper, light is exposed then the image is produced. The shadow of the object is what produces the image, which emphasizes the influence of the light and shadow instead of the importance of the picture itself.
Another popular work from this period was Violin d'Ingres in 1924. This photograph featured the naked back of his lover, an actor known as Kiki, styled after the painting by a French artist called Jean August Dominique. In a witty twist, Man Ray drew two black shapes on her back to make it appear like musical instruments. Ray made a number of short films between 1923 and 1929, creating classic Surrealistic works like L'Etoile de Mer, Emak Bakia, as well as Les Mysteres du chateau de. He also experimented with the method known as the Sabatier effect, which adds a silvery quality to the picture.
In 1940, Ray fled the war in France and moved to Los Angeles to continue his art. He lived in L.A from 1940 to 1951. A few days after arriving, he met and started to date Juliet Browner. They tied the knot after 5 years of courting in a distinctive triple wedding with Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst. While Ray was a very successful photographer in New York and Hollywood, he returned to France in 1951. There, he continued to focus on his paintings. He published his autobiography titled 'Self-Portrait' in 1963.
In his final years, Ray continued his finest artworks, with exhibits in London, New York, Paris and other popular cities before his death. He died in his studio in his beloved city of Paris on November 18, 1976. He was 86 years of age.
Achievements
His works can be found in a number of museums around the globe, and to date he is remembered by many for his artistic humor and uniqueness.
He was a painter, object artist, and a filmmaker. He was the very first artist whose images were more valuable to collectors than his artistic work. He, therefore, made a significant contribution to the evaluation of photography as a form of art.
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.
In 1974, Man Ray received the Royal 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."
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 US Postal Service's "Modern Art in America" series of stamps.
Quotations:
It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them." — 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." — 1948 essay, "To Be Continued, Unnoticed".
"To create is divine, to reproduce is human." — "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." — 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." — 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."
Connections
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.
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.
