STEVE LINN

Occupations and Evasions (Man Ray), 2008

FREE STANDING SCULPTURE mixed media  
62 x 20 x 22 in
157 x 51 x 56 cm

Cast glass, sandblasted carved glass, brass, copper, wood, and graphite on white paint.

The son of an immigrant Russian Jewish family, Emmanuel Radnitsky (the spelling of the original family name varies according to translation from the Russian) was born in Philadelphia in 1890 and raised in Brooklyn. Due to ethnic discrimination the family name was changed to Ray in 1912. Manny, his nickname evolved to Man as he got older and he officially adopted Man Ray as his name in 1913. High school offered him a technical and commercial art education and afterward he spent several years as a technical artist and illustrator. In 1913 at the famous Armory Show he met Marcel Duchamp, who had moved to New York. The two became fast friends, which led to a longing to live in Paris. He moved there in 1921 and stayed until France fell to the Germans at which time he moved back to the United States and lived in Los Angeles. In 1951 Man Ray moved back to Paris with his new wife, Juliet Browner. Remaining there until his death in 1976, he is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery and his tombstone reads “Unconcerned but not indifferent”.

Many of the details in this piece are derived from a wide variety of Man Ray’s work as a painter, photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker. This diversity made him rare in the art world.

An integral member of the dadaist and surrealist movements, Ray always considered himself first and foremost a painter, although history will show that the largest and most innovative part of his work was in the realm of photography. I have chosen to rearrange by drawing one of his best-known paintings, the 1916 work: “The rope dancer accompanies herself with her shadows”. The drawing on the other side of the base is a recomposition of two drawings made for the book “Les Mains Libres”, a collaboration with the Poet Paul Eluard in 1937. The two carved glass panels in the base are from photographic works. On the left, “cliché verre”, a process whereby scratching on exposed film to make it clear, the film is then exposed to light on photo paper to produce a drawn photograph. On the right, “space drawing”, a technique whereby rapidly moving a penlight a darkened room, the image is reproduced photographically using a very slow shutter speed. 74 years after Man Ray created these first light drawings. the photographer Ellen Carey discovered Man Ray’s signature in a drawing. One can also see the abstracted outline of the seated figure making the drawing. The carved wood object is from a piece called “The enigma of Isidor Ducasse” where Man Ray wrapped a sewing machine in an army blanket. The imagery comes from a line in “Les Chants de Maldorer” by Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym of Isidor Ducasse: He is fair as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella. This unusual juxtaposition became the maxim of the surrealists. The cast glass piece is from “Le baiser”, a rayograph; this cameraless process consists of placing objects on photosensitive paper and exposing them to light. Man Ray considered this pure Dadaism because the images were related to accident, chance and the subconscious. The brass camera, cast glass arm and carved glass figure are from his photographic “Autoportrait” of 1931.

This incredible diversity can be summed up in Ray’s quote, “It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them”.

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