Man Ray (1890 –1976) was a pioneer of the Dada movement in the United States and France and a central protagonist of Surrealism. Today he is one of the best-known American artists of the twentieth century, celebrated above all for his innovative and often seductively glamorous photography. Surprisingly, given Man Ray’s key role in the history of early-twentieth-century Modernism, a comprehensive collection of his writings on art has not been published in English until now. Man Ray: Writings on Art fills a conspicuous gap in scholarship on the artist and his period. It brings together his most significant writings, many of them published here for the first time. These occasionally quixotic texts, which include artist books, essays, interviews, letters, and visual poems, reveal the incredible scale of the artist’s output and the remarkable continuity of his aesthetic and political beliefs. This volume offers a long overdue vision of Man Ray as someone who used words both as a creative medium and as a means of articulating ideas about the nature and value of art. With richly reproduced illustrations, it provides powerful insight not only to scholars of art history and academics, but also to working artists and those who count themselves as Man Ray fans.

A biography of the elusive but celebrated Dada and Surrealist artist and photographer connecting his Jewish background to his life and art Man Ray (1890-1976), a founding father of Dada and a key player in French Surrealism, is one of the central artists of the twentieth century. He is also one of the most elusive. In this new biography, journalist and critic Arthur Lubow uses Man Ray's Jewish background as one filter to understand his life and art. Man Ray began life as Emmanuel Radnitsky, the eldest of four children born in Philadelphia to a mother from Minsk and a father from Kiev. When he was seven the family moved to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where both parents worked as tailors. Defying his parents' expectations that he earn a university degree, Man Ray instead pursued his vocation as an artist, embracing the modernist creed of photographer and avant-garde gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. When at the age of thirty Man Ray relocated to Paris, he, unlike Stieglitz, made a clean break with his past.

On photography of man Ray

Replication and originality are central concepts in the artistic oeuvres of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. Remaking the Readymade reveals the underlying and previously unexplored processes and rationales for the collaboration between Duchamp, Man Ray, and Arturo Schwarz on the replication of readymades and objects. The 1964 editioned replicas of the readymades sent shock waves through the art world. Even though the replicas undermined ideas of authorship and problematized the notion of identity and the artist, they paradoxically shared in the aura of the originals, becoming stand-ins for the readymades. Scholar-poet-dealer Arturo Schwarz played a crucial role, opening the door to joint or alternate authorship—an outstanding relationship between artist and dealer. By unearthing previously unpublished correspondence and documentary materials and combining this material with newly conducted exclusive interviews with key participants, Remaking the Readymade details heretofore unrevealed aspects of the technical processes involved in the (re)creation of iconic, long-lost Dada objects. Launched on the heels of the centenary of Duchamp’s Fountain, this new analysis intensifies and complicates our understanding of Duchamp and Man Ray’ initial conceptions, and raises questions about replication and authorship that will stimulate significant debate about the legacy of the artists, the continuing significance of their works, and the meaning of terms such as creativity, originality, and value in the formation of art.

The first reference work devoted to their lives and roles, this book provides information on some 200 artists' models from the Renaissance to the present day. Most entries are illustrated and consist of a brief biography, selected works in which the model appears (with location), a list of further reading. This will prove an invaluable reference work for art historians, librarians, museum and gallery curators, as well as students and researchers.

Arranged in alphabetical order, these 5 volumes encompass the history of the cultural development of America with over 2300 entries.

Making Images Move reveals a new history of cinema by uncovering its connections to other media and art forms. In this richly illustrated volume, Gregory Zinman explores how moving-image artists who worked in experimental film pushed the medium toward abstraction through a number of unconventional filmmaking practices, including painting and scratching directly on the film strip; deteriorating film with water, dirt, and bleach; and applying materials such as paper and glue. This book provides a comprehensive history of this tradition of “handmade cinema” from the early twentieth century to the present, opening up new conversations about the production, meaning, and significance of the moving image. From painted film to kinetic art, and from psychedelic light shows to video synthesis, Gregory Zinman recovers the range of forms, tools, and intentions that make up cinema’s shadow history, deepening awareness of the intersection of art and media in the twentieth century, and anticipating what is to come.

Man Ray (1890-1976) has long been considered one of the most versatile and innovative artists of the twentieth century. As a painter, writer, sculptor, photographer, and filmmaker, he is best known for his intimate association with the French Surrealist group in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s, particularly for his highly inventive and unconventional photographic images. These remarkable accomplishments, however, have tended to overshadow the importance of his earlier work--significant not only for comprehending Man Ray's future artistic development, but also for fleshing out our understanding of the visual arts in America during one of the most important and crucial phases of the evolution of modernism. The book, and the exhibition for which this work will serve as the catalog, concentrate on Man Ray's production from 1907 to 1917. Conversion to Modernism will be the first comprehensive, fully illustrated work to examine this artist's seminal years. The show and the catalog begin with Man Ray's high school years in Brooklyn, his studies at the Art Students League and the American Academy in New York, and the time he spent in life drawing classes at the more progressive Ferrer Center From 1913 to 1915, Man Ray lived in a small artists' colony in Grantwood, New Jersey. It was here, studying with Samuel Halpert (a former student of Matisse), that Man Ray began to become the artist we know today. The last section of the show and of the book include recently discovered photographs and other works that are influenced by a knowledge of the emergent Dada movement. Here is Man Ray in recognizable form just before he leaves the country for France in 1921. This exhibit will first be on display at the Montclair Art Museum from January 26 through March 2003. It will then travel to museums in Athens, Georgia, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

The American artist Man Ray was one of the most influential figures of the historical avant-garde, contributing significantly to the development of both Dadaism and Surrealism. Whilst his pioneering work in photography assured him international acclaim, his activity in other areas, notably film, is to this day both unknown and undervalued. During the 1920s Man Ray made four short experimental films and collaborated on a host of other projects with people such as Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, René Clair and Hans Richter. These works, along with a series of cinematic essays and home movies made during the 1920s and 1930s, represent the most important contribution to the development of an alternative mode of filmmaking in the early twentieth century. This book explores Man Ray's cinematic interactions from the perspective of his interdisciplinary artistic sensibility, creating links between film, photography, painting, poetry, music, architecture, dance and sculpture. By exposing his preoccupation with form, and his ambiguous relationship with the politics and aesthetics of the Dada and Surrealist movements, the author paints an intimate and complex portrait of Man Ray the filmmaker.