Man Ray

While reading the three chapters for this week I discovered a very small section in Chapter 13 Called Photography and the Modern Movement. In this section Meggs briefly mentions Emanuel Rabonovich, or as he is more commonly known, Man Ray. About six months ago my girlfriend suggested we go to the Legion of Honor to see the Man Ray exhibit and at the time I had never heard of him. We were mesmerized with his innovative photography techniques and his paintings; he was a master of many mediums including film. But the most touching aspect of Man Ray’s artwork and life, was his relationship and artistic collaborations with Lee Miller. The woman in the photos on page 274 is her and although there’s many more examples of Ray shooting Miller, she was also a photographer also and she caught a few famous shots of him.

 

Since Meggs only writes about Man Ray’s photography I thought for this module I wanted to explore various artworks not mentioned in Meggs  articles about their influence on the modern art movement and graphic design. A lot like the techniques of the Beggerstaffs, in Man Ray’s The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows (bellow) the colors are cut-outs of paper and placed on the same plane of the solid color background. As the story goes, Man Ray was displeased with the original cut-outs meant to represent the form of the dancer and ended up using the scraps that had fallen on the form. The shapes in Ray’s painting are definitely abstract, unlike the vivid pictures in the Beggerstaffs posters but the technique and resulting effect is very similar.

The pieces below, from Man Ray’s portfolio Revolving Doors, represent the epitome of surrealism and cubism combined, where the viewer must stretch their imagination a bit to understand the form being presented. The bright colored geometric shapes of the Dragonfly (top) form a sort of iridescent wing, where the line downward line mimics the fragile tail. The Mime (bottom) is created with colors and shape that are not particularly reminiscent of a mime but the posture of the form is paused, as if frozen for the viewers entertainment.

  References:

The Rope Dancer Accompanies 

Dragonfly 

Mime