"Let that mantra linger in your head as you approach " Man Ray: When Objects Dream," a brilliant sparkplug of a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It explains how one American artist learned to multiply himself into a Dada-Surrealist octopus, saying yes to so many things that no one could keep count. Man Ray was a painter, photographer, gizmo-maker, draftsman, filmmaker, chess-set designer, writer, poet, editor, publisher, adman, cartographer, prankster."
"The best business decision Emmanuel Radnitzky ever made was to call himself "Man Ray." Two words, two syllables; one from earth, the other of heaven. The nomenclature wouldn't have made a difference, though, if he didn't associate himself with the right people-namely, Alfred Stieglitz and Marcel Duchamp. Stieglitz was a photographer who brought the European avant-garde to America, opened Man Ray's mind to photography,"
Man Ray adopted a concise name and formed pivotal relationships with Alfred Stieglitz and Marcel Duchamp that redirected his career toward Paris and photography. He accidentally invented the rayograph, a camera-less photogram technique producing silhouettes by placing objects on photosensitive paper and exposing them to light. He embraced Dada and Surrealist approaches while working across painting, photography, film, design, writing, and object-making. He coined or invented niche forms such as the aerograph and rayograph and combined technical experimentation with playful pranksterism to blur boundaries between art and everyday objects.
Read at The New Yorker
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