Man Ray's Deadpan Wit on Display at the Met

""When Objects Dream," the sensational Man Ray show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Feb. 1), is centered on the artist's refined experiments with the cameraless images he called rayographs: the shadowy impressions left on photographic paper by scattered objects after the paper has been exposed to light. It should come as no surprise that his first experiments in the form, published, in 1922, as a suite of twelve abstract images, are among his most accomplished."

"Ray had already channelled the antic, subversive spirit of Dada and Surrealism with a series of readymade sculptures that included a flatiron studded with a row of tacks. But, like Marcel Duchamp, Ray was a movement unto himself. No matter the medium-painting, sculpture, film, photography-he reimagined it with a focussed intelligence and a deadpan wit that still looks definitively avant-garde."

"Their installation opens up like a series of magic boxes, with windows that draw visitors deep into the exhibition, across time and space. As promised, many of the most astonishing images are photograms that, even when we can make out their ordinary components-a magnet, a pipe, a key, a handgun-glow like visions from another consciousness. And they always illuminate a painting or a sculpture nearby."

Man Ray's Metropolitan Museum exhibition centers on his cameraless photograms, or rayographs, which are shadowy impressions left on photographic paper by objects exposed to light. His first 1922 suite of twelve abstract rayographs ranks among his most accomplished works. Ray translated Dada and Surrealist energy into readymade sculptures and reinvented painting, sculpture, film, and photography with focused intelligence and deadpan wit. Curators Stephanie D'Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson create dialogues across mediums, arranging installations like magic boxes with windowed views. Many photograms render ordinary objects—a magnet, pipe, key, handgun—as luminous visions, while a 1921 painted tin "Lampshade" anticipates later rayographs.

Read at The New Yorker