La Poire d’Erik Satie, 1986, Man Ray

Born in South Philadelphia in 1890 as Emmanual Radintzky, Ray was the eldest child of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. Fed up of slow Pennsylvanian life, his father moved the family to Williamsburg, New York in 1897.

Although Ray’s parents continued to practice Judaism, the family changed their surname to ‘Ray’ to avoid anti-Semitism that was rife in America at the time. Young Emmanuel was often referred to as ‘Man’ or ‘Manny’ by his brothers and sisters and, as a result, the artist developed the pseudonym ‘Man Ray’. 

Ray’s passion for art started at a young age when he was enlisted by his father to work for his tailoring business. Although he wanted to disassociate himself from his family, tailoring had an undeniable impact on Ray’s artwork.

Irons, sewing machines, mannequins and needles are often featured in his paintings and photographs. ‘La Voliere’, 1919, one of Ray’s early airbrush paintings, depicts his New York studio complete with a dressmaker’s mannequin he famously kept as a companion.

At school, Ray excelled in art, specialising in freehand drawing and architecture. He visited museums regularly to study works by Old Masters and, by 1912, he had enrolled in the Francisco Ferrer School where he trained under the tutelage of artists like Robert Henri, Samuel Halpert, and Adolf Wolff.

After he graduated, Ray worked as a commercial artist and technical illustrator for multiple companies. During this period, he developed a close relationship with gallery owner and photographer Alfred Stieglitz and became an avid admirer of contemporary European art.

His interest in international art accelerated when he befriended French conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp in 1915. Shortly after the two men met, Duchamp created his most famous ‘readymade’, Fountain.

Duchamp had a huge impact on Ray’s artistic career, introducing him to the Dada movement, which was beginning to develop amongst young artists. Dada fought Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism and instead demanded total abstraction.

The movement mocked materialistic and nationalistic attitudes which had developed during the First World War, and it soon became a powerful creative influence on many European cities. Despite multiple attempts by Ray and Duchamp to promote Dadaism in New York, they failed to excite lasting public enthusiasm for the movement.

For Ray, Dada’s experimentation was no match for the wild and chaotic streets of New York. Reflecting on that period, he professed, ‘Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is Dada, and will not tolerate a rival’.  

Dissatisfied with the American publics’ reaction towards Dada, Ray moved to Paris in 1921. For the next 18 years, he lived in the city’s Montparnasse districts, interacting with some of the most significant members of the modern art world including Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein and Salvador Dali. 

Infatuated by the development of photography, Ray embraced the medium. Whilst developing photographs in the darkroom, Ray accidentally discovered an optical method called shadow graphing – placing objects directly onto photo-sensitized paper and exposing them to light.

He dubbed the technique ‘Rayographs’ and continued to experiment with light exposure for the next 40 years. ‘Nude Paris’, 1928, which depicts the model and actress Kiki de Montparnasse, is a fantastic example of Ray’s ability to manipulate shadow by creating layers.