Other Surrealists

Other Surrealists
Approved of by André Breton
Man Ray
Le Violon d'Ingres
(Ingres's Violin)
1924
Gelatin silver print
11 5/8 x 8 15/16 in.
Getty Collection (Los
Angeles)
Man Ray
When Man Ray added the
title Le Violon d'Ingres, it
referenced a French idiom
that means "hobby." The
title seems to suggest that,
while playing the violin was
Ingres's hobby, toying with
the model was a pastime
of Man Ray. The picture
maintains a tension
between objectification
and appreciation of the
female form.
Man Ray
“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.”
MAN RAY
1890-1976
Emmanuel Radnitsky was born in 1890 in Philadelphia. In 1897 the
family moved to Brooklyn, and around 1911 their last name was
changed to Ray. Soon thereafter "Manny" Ray, who by then had
embarked on an artistic career, shortened his name to Man Ray to avoid
classification as an artist with an ethnic identity - a type of stereotyping
that he hated.
MAN RAY
1890-1976
Soon Man Ray was well known as a painter, a maker of objects, a
photographer, and a participant in New York's modernist movement. In
1921, after several of his artist friends had moved to Paris, he followed
them and soon became part of the Dada and Surrealist avant- garde of
Paris. Man Ray was a great poseur, but in spite of his desires to be
recognized as a painter, he became best known as "the photographer
who thought he was a painter."
Man Ray
Le Cadeau (The Gift)
1921
Man Ray
Object to be Destroyed
1923
Man Ray
Man Ray's Object to Be
Destroyed remained
intact for almost 35
years--although Man
Ray intended to destroy
it--until a group of antiDada art students in
Germany broke it while
demonstrating at a
Dada show. Shortly
thereafter Ray
reproduced the work
and called it
Indestructible Object.
Lee Miller and Man Ray
An event which was crucial to the development of Man Ray's
creativity occurred in the summer of 1929. A young woman
named Lee Miller came to him from America with a letter of
introduction from Alfred Stieglitz and essentially told him that she
was to be his student. In fact, they ended up living together for
three years. But it was not quite that simple, as Man Ray was
courting a cabaret artist named Kiki de Montparnasse, who was
known for being as passionate as she was jealous.
Lee posed for Man Ray, and he tutored her in photography. Lee
learned fast, and soon Man Ray was passing on a lot of his
photographic work to Lee to free himself for painting.
Lee Miller
(1907–1977)
Self Portrait
1930
Gelatin silver print
3 1/2 x 2 1/8 in. (9.0 x 5.2 cm)
Lee
Miller
and
David E.
Scherma
n
Miller
(1907–1977)
and
David E.
Scherma
n
Lee Miller in Hitler’s Bathtub
1945
The night after Miller visited
Dachau, on April 30,
1945–earlier that day Hitler
committed suicide in
Berlin–Miller and Scherman
entered Munich with the
American 45th Division that
was liberating the city. They
happened upon a dilapidated
and normal-looking apartment
building on Prinzenregentplatz 27
and realized, upon entering, that
it was Hitler’s Munich apartment.
They stayed there for three days.
Lee Miller
(1907–1977)
“I was living in Hitler’s private apartment when his death
was announced, midnight of Mayday. . . Well, alright,
he was dead. He’d been an evil-machine-monster all
these years, until I visited the places he made famous,
talked to people who knew him, dug into backstairs
gossip and ate and slept in his house. He became less
fabulous and therefore more terrible, along with a little
evidence of his having some almost human habits; like
an ape who embarrasses and humbles you with his
gestures, mirroring yourself in caricature.”
Lee Miller
(1907–1977)
Tania Ramm
and Bell Jar
1930
Gelatin silver print
6 7/8 x 5 3/4 in. (17.7 x 14.7 cm)
Lee Miller
(1907–1977)
Lilian Harvey
1933
Who invented Solarization?
Their best known joint achievement was their rediscovery,
probably in the winter of 1929- 1930, of solarization. The most
widely quoted account of this event is that of Lee Miller as told in a
1975 interview with Amaya. "Something crawled across my foot in
the darkroom and I let out a yell and turned on the light. I never
did find out what it was, a mouse or what. Then I quickly realized
that the film was totally exposed: there in the development tanks,
ready to be taken out, were a dozen practically fully- developed
negatives of a nude against a black background.
Who invented Solarization?
It seems that Man Ray and Lee Miller were the first photographers
to use Sabatier solarization as a purposeful artistic device. Man
Ray certainly deserves credit for making solarization a
reproducible and useful technique. However, he may have
received too much credit for the solarizations that emanated from
the darkroom he shared with Lee Miller during 1930 and 1931.
Some of the solarizations which have been attributed over the
years to Man Ray probably represent collaborative efforts by him
and Lee Miller. Notable among the solarizations with ambiguous
origins are the nude study Primat de la Matiere sur la Pensee and
the image of Lee Miller's head La Dormeuse.
Man Ray
The primacy of matter over thought
1931
“The tricks of today are the
truths of tomorrow.”
Lee Miller
(1907–1977)
Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning
1946
Max Ernst
With Dorothea Tanning
1891-1976
German painter, printmaker and sculptor,
naturalized American in 1948 and French in
1958. He was a major contributor to the theory
and practice of Surrealism. His work challenged
and disrupted what he considered to be
repressive aspects of European culture:
Christian doctrine
conventional morality
aesthetic codes of Western academic art.
Max Ernst
Two Children Are
Threatened by a
Nightingale
1924
Oil on wood with
painted wood
elements and
frame,
Max Ernst
…gave two autobiographical
references for the
nightingale: the death of his
sister in 1897 and a fevered
hallucination he experienced
in which the wood grain on a
panel near his bed took on
"successively the aspect of
an eye, a nose, a bird's
head, a menacing
nightingale, a spinning top,
and so on."
Oedipus Rex
1922
Max Ernst
Max Ernst
The Blessed Virgin
Chastises Jesus Before
Three Witnesses
1926
“All good ideas arrive by chance.”
Max Ernst
The Antipope
1941-2
Oil on canvas
63 1/4 x 50 inches
(160.8 x 127.1 cm).
The Solomon R.
Guggenheim
Foundation
Méret Oppenheim Object (Breakfast in Fur) 1936
Méret Oppenheim
Méret Oppenheim
Oppenheim quickly became
known as the perfect
embodiment of the Surrealist
woman, the femme-enfant,
who through her youth,
naivety and charm was
believed to have more direct
and spontaneous access to
the realms of the dream and
the unconscious. She was
celebrated by the Surrealists
as the ﾔfairy woman whom
all men desire.
Man Ray
Portrait of Meret Oppenheim
1936