: "When they said I was ahead of my times, I said, 'No I'm not, I'm
of my time, you are behind the times,"' Man Ray once said.
And his times - from the 1920s until the mid-1970s - were
electrifying if not, in the beginning at least, electrified.
Man Ray, the quintessential American artist in Paris, lived in
Montparnasse, mingling with the greatest names of the century
from 1921 right up until the eve of World War II. Long before
returning to America, Man Ray had not only made photography an
accepted artistic medium, he had also defined modern fashion
photography, made short films and captured in his lens the most
noted artists, designers, patrons and dealers of an era. He had
been Dada, Surreal and a fierce individualist. Even though he
once said, "To be successful, art must be unsaleable," he never
seemed to have experienced it, except perhaps for the short while
he was trying to make a living painting, just before
light-sensitive paper became his canvas and the lens his brush.
Remarkably, accidents seemed to play an important role in both
Man Ray's migration from painter to photographer and his
photographic innovations. One notable example is the portrait of
the Marquise Luisa Casati in which a blurred image gives her
three eyes. Man Ray considered the mistake a throw-away. Casati
loved the duality and circulated the prints throughout Paris,
spurring Man Ray's career as a society photographer.
Reverse negative of "Juliet," 1945. This silver gelatin print
demonstrates the way in which solarization can be manipulated.
Francis M. Naumann Fine Art.
Intensely gifted, endlessly curious and working with the
compulsion that is creativity's métier, Man Ray cleverly maneuvered
circumstance. In his hands, accidents of fate became career makers
and social catapults. Darkroom mishaps quickly became tools for
creating art, as the show "Man Ray in the Age of Electricity" at
the Heckscher Museum of Art clearly demonstrates.
The show - which runs through August 13 - features 50 rare images
in which the incandescent bulb was introduced as a component in
the notoriously lights-off environment of the darkroom. The
results became the techniques known as "rayographs" and
"solarization."
According to Dr Kenneth Wayne, curator, "This is the first show
to combine rayographs and solarization. At the time Man Ray
started working, electricity wasn't a standard feature in Paris.
He was lucky enough to find a room in the Hotel des Ecoles, one
of the first fully electrified buildings. Up until then gas was
the main utility."
Commenting on the very name Man Ray, Wayne said, "He was born
Emmanuel Radnitsky and shortened it to Man Ray, like a light beam
or ray of light. I think light had been of interest to him his
entire life." Indeed, his early paintings demonstrate a keen
interest in the cast shadow. He seems to have viewed it as a
legible outline that was also varied in form.
"With rayographs," Wayne explained, "Man Ray put objects on
light-sensitive paper and turned the lights on and off really
quickly. Solarization was created by turning the lights on during
the development process."
