Lot n° 71
Estimation :
1000 - 1500
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 1 300EUR
MAN RAY (1890-1976)
ABC, 1969
Collage of a gelatin-silver print on wood, and color printing of the letters on the picture
Signed by the artist in pencil
Plate: 52 x 40 cm
Image: 36.5 x 28.5 cm
(Slight accident on left edge)
ABC, 1969
Collage of a gelatin-silver print on wood, and color printing of the letters on the picture
Signed by the artist in pencil
Plate: 20.48 x 15.75 inch.
Picture: 14.38 x 11.23 inch.
(Slight accident on the left edge)
Provenance:
Collection Edmonde et Lucien Treillard, Paris
Bibliography:
- Man Ray, photographic retrospective, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, 1996-1997, p. 140 (this copy)
- Man Ray, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2004, ill. p. 104 (this copy).
The place of women in Man Ray's work
The Surrealists attributed mediumistic powers to women. She was in their eyes appreciably and morally closer to their main concern: the unconscious. The hysteria is, for the surrealists, the demonstration of a superior power. This is why when Nadja is locked up in a psychiatric hospital, she is not considered by André Breton as mentally ill, but simply presented as a misunderstood. The expression "convulsive beauty" used by Breton is explicit in this respect, since it associates a medical symptom, a convulsion, with beauty.
Symbolically, Surrealism placed the woman in its center, as the focus of its dreams. In the first issue of La Révolution Surréaliste (1924), an image of the anarchist Germaine Berton is surrounded by portraits of the Surrealists and those they admired, notably Sigmund Freud. At the bottom center is a phrase from Charles Baudelaire: "Woman is the being who casts the greatest shadow or the greatest light in our dreams.
Man Ray is not different from the surrealists on this point: we find indeed representations of women throughout his work: portraits, images for fashion, but also nudes and erotic images, sometimes even to the point of pornography: the album 1929, but also a small booklet entitled Exposition coloniale internationale (1931) grouping several photographs whose association provokes the imagination; two are presented in our sale: Corrida (lot n°126) and Aloes (lot n°124).
Object of desire, of fantasy, the woman evolves in a strange world, itself dematerialized. It is most often the solarization that is used by Man
Ray when he photographs a nude. But sometimes he also uses a screen, such as a sheet of silk placed in the enlarger. This is another way to dematerialize the subject, as if it were an apparition, a ghostly vision. The woman is therefore not an object for Man Ray, but an object of desire and fantasy. She is both shadow and light, dream and reality, and appears in negative as well as in positive. An emblematic nude by Man
Ray, Le Violon d'Ingres (1924), highlights a classical beauty more than it transforms the woman into a sexual object.
The notion of the "bizarre" or "marvelous" returns systematically and this is the reason why the woman is often "cut" into pieces: Man
Ray photographs busts, mannequins, hands... It is the impression of reality given by an amputated living being that creates for Man Ray what Freud calls "the uncanny".
E. de l'Ecotais
The place of women in the work of Man Ray
The Surrealists attributed psychic magnetism to women. In their eyes, women were noticeably closer morally to their main concern: the unconscious. Hysteria was, for the Surrealists, the demonstration of a superior power. It was for this reason that when Nadja was committed to a psychiatric hospital, André Breton did not consider her to be mentally ill, but simply misunderstood. The expression "convulsive beauty ", used by Breton, is explicit in this respect, since it associates a medical symptom, a convulsion, with beauty.
Symbolically, Surrealism placed women at its center, as the focal point of its dreams. In the first issue of La Révolution Surréaliste (1924), an image of the anarchist Germaine Berton is surrounded by portraits of the Surrealists and those they admired, notably Sigmund Freud. At the bottom in the center is a quote from Charles Baudelaire: "Woman is the being who projects the greatest shadow or the greatest light in our dreams.
Man Ray did not differ from the Surrealists on this point: one finds representations of women throughout his work: portraits and fashion images, but also nudes and erotic images, some that are almost pornographic: the album 1929, and also a small booklet entitled International Colonial Exhibition (1931) gathered several photographs whose association is quite p
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