Man Ray: when objects dream

Uittreksel

"American artist Man Ray (1890-1976) was a visionary known for his radical experiments that pushed the limits of photography, painting, sculpture, and film. In the winter of 1921, he pioneered the rayograph, a new twist on a technique used to make photographs without a camera. By placing objects on or near a sheet of light-sensitive paper, which he exposed to light and developed, Man Ray turned recognizable subjects into wonderfully mysterious compositions. Introduced in the period between Dada and Surrealism, the rayographs' transformative, magical qualities led the poet Tristan Tzara to describe them as capturing the moments "when objects dream." The exhibition will be the first to situate this signature accomplishment in relation to Man Ray's larger body of work of the 1910s and 1920s. Drawing from the collections of The Met and more than 50 U.S. and international lenders, the exhibition will feature approximately 60 rayographs and 100 paintings, objects, prints, drawings, films, and photographs--including some of the artist's most iconic works--to highlight the central role of the rayograph in Man Ray's boundary-breaking practice. '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'-- Man Ray." -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website

Inhoud

Directors' foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Lenders to the exhibition -- Introduction / Stephanie D'Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson -- Portfolio : Champs délicieux, 1922 -- Essays and plates -- Mysterious silhouettes -- Objects at hand -- Sensitive surfaces -- Concentrated forms of expression -- A new field of gravity -- Flou -- Dangerous games -- The tangible object -- Chemical paintings -- Body, hoar-frost, or fern -- Dreams -- Auras for the ordinary -- Portfolio : électricité, 1931 -- Chronology / Micayla Bransfield -- Works in the exhibition -- Notes -- Selected bibliography -- Index -- Photograph credits.