Ray, Man
born: 1890 Philadelphia
died: 1976 Paris

A number of unprecedented art forms go back to the experiments of Man Ray, whose career began as a commercial artist in New York. After beginning collaboration with Marcel Duchamp in 1916, Ray soon advanced to become a major proponent of Dadaism and Surrealism. In 1918 he introduced the technique of "aerography", or " airbrush painting", into fine art, and he invented the " Rayogram" a photographic images produced by placing objects directly on the photo paper and exposing them. Ray also developed innovative techniques in the fields of filmmaking and photomontage, and he participated in numerous Dada publications. His painting and drawing skills resist stylistic categorization. Following the initial, Cubist-influenced paintings, Surrealist and Constructivist elements came increasingly to the fore. Ray's sculptures were generally made by the assemblage method, a combination of prefabricated elements - ready-mades - whose unfamiliar juxtaposition sparked new, often-Surrealist meanings. His best-known works, apart from the mysterious, wrapped object and the antique Greek or Roman sculptures tied with string, include the objects dangerous objects whose familiar functions are altered to the point of risk to life and limb. In 1919 Man Ray hung a damaged, spiral-shape paper lampshade from the ceiling of his New York studio (where he worked from 1921 to 1940, going to Paris in 1951). In the 1920s he had several reproductions and enlarged versions of the Lampshade made in metal. The version illustrated, which comes packed in a hatbox, is a later copy, a reproduction of a ready-made. The spiral, a frequent shape in Man Ray's repertoire, can be set in motion by the slightest touch or draft of air.

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