The Surrealists (top L-R: Man Ray, Arp, Tanguy, Breton; bottom L-R: Tzara, Dali, Eluard, Ernst, Crevel), 1930 Vintage gelatin silver print
4 x 5-1/2 inches
“The camera, for him, is a mere instrument in the service of the mind.”-- Marcel Duchamp“I am trying to make my photography automatic – to use my camera as I would a typewriter.” – Man Ray
…to which, confusing matters (because Man Ray loved to contradict himself) we shall add the words of the poet, W. B. Yeats: “We must labor to make it natural.” When all was in readiness in the studio at 31 bis rue Campagne-Premiere – lights in place, camera standing on the tripod a fair distance from the chair – Man Ray waited quietly for the appointed hour, insisting upon any time after eleven o’clock in the morning. He lounged back into the sofa adorned with a silk-screened fabric throw-cover of his own design, smoked a pipe, playing the session through mentally, before it occurred, so that during the shoot he would appear prescient.
“Move all you like,” he advised the subject. “Your eyes, your head; it is to be a pose, yes, but it will have the qualities of a snap-shot.” Dressed in the customary white shirt and dark suit, he stalked the prey subtly, quietly, motivated by the portrait painter’s curiosity about the structure of the human face, caring little about the person’s thoughts, fame or fortune. Roland Penrose recalled that sitting for Man Ray “was as quick and casual as bantering with him in a café. He did not fiddle forever with the lens or the lights.’” Of course, Penrose did not smile; Man Ray never let pass that dread command, knowing it gave rise to a stilted grimace.
And he preferred to present the impression of not working. “When my clients leave my studio,” Man Ray said, “they often tell me, ‘I never had such an easy sitting!’” It may have passed smoothly for them, but I will never forget when, on my visit to Man Ray’s final studio on the rue Ferou, I opened an old file cabinet and flipped through the scores upon scores of out-takes from portraiture sessions outlined with crop lines and dismissively crossed out with grease-pencil.
Once in the sanctity of the darkroom, Man Ray chose coarse-grained, soft paper, to achieve a grounded cast to the image. Through overexposure he worked toward a predominance of grey middle tones, considered to be “very kind to the face,” and shunned the darker reaches of the spectrum, because “blacks give no more strength to a photograph than ‘strong’ drink gives to a man.”
Man’s men do not exude the lush eroticism of his notorious and insatiable love affair with the female form. Man’s men express a different sexual vulnerability. While many – Cocteau, Dali, Schoenberg -- seem to look directly at the camera, their gaze falls slightly short. Perhaps something in the middle distance, or in their minds, intimidated them.
More indicative are the portraits Man Ray favored where the likes of Eluard, Breton, Duchamp, and Giacometti are enthralled by a sight “off-screen,” to the right or left or a bit upward, as if obsessed by a point where the wall meets the ceiling. These exemplars intrigue me most of all as a viewer here in the Zabriskie Gallery. Eighty years ago, on the ground floor of a certain shabby-chic duplex apartment off the teeming Boulevard Raspail in the Fourteenth Arondissement, in the instants leading up to these photographs, a momentary power play was staged, during which the artist held sway while he enthralled a willing acquaintance, or seduced a friend.
His relationships with men were faithful, collaborative and transgressive. Marcel Duchamp performed in drag as Rrose Selavy only in the intimate company of Man Ray; Paul Eluard’s poems were written as improvisations following the lead of Man Ray’s drawings; Max Ernst and Man Ray were married on the same spontaneous day in Hollywood to Dorothea Tanning and Juliet Browner.
I’ve always gravitated to the group shot of the Surrealists as a testament by Man Ray about his conflicted association with the fraternal (so-called) movement, rather than as a memento of an historic time and place. Man Ray is positioned on the far right because, moments before, he had pressed the timer on his camera in order to give him the opportunity to include himself in the image, although he took enormous pleasure in denying he could ever be part of this -- or any -- group.
Thus do Man’s brash and beautiful men, playing upon his willfully inconsistent allegiances and ambivalences, continue to fascinate us.
-- Neil Baldwin is the author of Man Ray: American Artist (Clarkson N. Potter and DaCapo Press, New York; and Hamish Hamilton, London; Plon/Groupe de la Cite/Paris; Soshi-Sha, Tokyo). As of Fall 2006, he will be Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at Montclair State University.
…to which, confusing matters (because Man Ray loved to contradict himself) we shall add the words of the poet, W. B. Yeats: “We must labor to make it natural.” When all was in readiness in the studio at 31 bis rue Campagne-Premiere – lights in place, camera standing on the tripod a fair distance from the chair – Man Ray waited quietly for the appointed hour, insisting upon any time after eleven o’clock in the morning. He lounged back into the sofa adorned with a silk-screened fabric throw-cover of his own design, smoked a pipe, playing the session through mentally, before it occurred, so that during the shoot he would appear prescient.
“Move all you like,” he advised the subject. “Your eyes, your head; it is to be a pose, yes, but it will have the qualities of a snap-shot.” Dressed in the customary white shirt and dark suit, he stalked the prey subtly, quietly, motivated by the portrait painter’s curiosity about the structure of the human face, caring little about the person’s thoughts, fame or fortune. Roland Penrose recalled that sitting for Man Ray “was as quick and casual as bantering with him in a café. He did not fiddle forever with the lens or the lights.’” Of course, Penrose did not smile; Man Ray never let pass that dread command, knowing it gave rise to a stilted grimace.
And he preferred to present the impression of not working. “When my clients leave my studio,” Man Ray said, “they often tell me, ‘I never had such an easy sitting!’” It may have passed smoothly for them, but I will never forget when, on my visit to Man Ray’s final studio on the rue Ferou, I opened an old file cabinet and flipped through the scores upon scores of out-takes from portraiture sessions outlined with crop lines and dismissively crossed out with grease-pencil.
Once in the sanctity of the darkroom, Man Ray chose coarse-grained, soft paper, to achieve a grounded cast to the image. Through overexposure he worked toward a predominance of grey middle tones, considered to be “very kind to the face,” and shunned the darker reaches of the spectrum, because “blacks give no more strength to a photograph than ‘strong’ drink gives to a man.”
Man’s men do not exude the lush eroticism of his notorious and insatiable love affair with the female form. Man’s men express a different sexual vulnerability. While many – Cocteau, Dali, Schoenberg -- seem to look directly at the camera, their gaze falls slightly short. Perhaps something in the middle distance, or in their minds, intimidated them.
More indicative are the portraits Man Ray favored where the likes of Eluard, Breton, Duchamp, and Giacometti are enthralled by a sight “off-screen,” to the right or left or a bit upward, as if obsessed by a point where the wall meets the ceiling. These exemplars intrigue me most of all as a viewer here in the Zabriskie Gallery. Eighty years ago, on the ground floor of a certain shabby-chic duplex apartment off the teeming Boulevard Raspail in the Fourteenth Arondissement, in the instants leading up to these photographs, a momentary power play was staged, during which the artist held sway while he enthralled a willing acquaintance, or seduced a friend.
His relationships with men were faithful, collaborative and transgressive. Marcel Duchamp performed in drag as Rrose Selavy only in the intimate company of Man Ray; Paul Eluard’s poems were written as improvisations following the lead of Man Ray’s drawings; Max Ernst and Man Ray were married on the same spontaneous day in Hollywood to Dorothea Tanning and Juliet Browner.
I’ve always gravitated to the group shot of the Surrealists as a testament by Man Ray about his conflicted association with the fraternal (so-called) movement, rather than as a memento of an historic time and place. Man Ray is positioned on the far right because, moments before, he had pressed the timer on his camera in order to give him the opportunity to include himself in the image, although he took enormous pleasure in denying he could ever be part of this -- or any -- group.
Thus do Man’s brash and beautiful men, playing upon his willfully inconsistent allegiances and ambivalences, continue to fascinate us.
-- Neil Baldwin is the author of Man Ray: American Artist (Clarkson N. Potter and DaCapo Press, New York; and Hamish Hamilton, London; Plon/Groupe de la Cite/Paris; Soshi-Sha, Tokyo). As of Fall 2006, he will be Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at Montclair State University.