Man+Ray

Man Ray, born as Emmanuel Radnitzky, was a well-known American visual artist who lived in France for most of his career. He produced major works in a variety of the media, such as film and photography (he's well known for his portrait photographs), he mostly considered himself a painter.

Man Ray was born on August 27, 1890 in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. Both of his parents were Russian Jewish immigrants and he was the eldest of five children. Early in 1912, the family changed their surname to Ray because of the ethnic discrimination happening during this time. Emmanuel's younger siblings called him Manny as a nickname, and because of that, he changed his name to Man and began to use Man Ray as his full name. Ray’s father worked in a garment factory and operated a small tailoring business out of the house. He required his children to help with the business and his mother sewed the family clothes with patchwork she created. The tailoring had a lasting effect on his art work in his later years. He went to school at Brooklyn's Boys' High School from 1904 to 1909 and showed interest in the arts and mechanical classes. While he was attending school, he studied the work of the Old Masters at the local art museum. After he graduated from high school, he turned down scholarships and stayed home to start his painting career. He was paid for being a commercial artist and technical illustrator. He went to the Ferrer School in New York in the year 1912 and that's the when his most intense and rapid artistic development began.

In 1915, Ray had a solo show of his paintings and drawings after he moved to Grantwood, New Jersey and he produced his first photographs in 1918. He started working on another format of art called Data, which is a radical anti-art movement. For his version of Rope Dancer, in 1918, he had a spray-gun look combined with a pen drawing. I've looked it up, and it's quite interesting to look at. He also started to make readymades, which are ordinary objects that are selected and modified. Some of his readymade art works are: Gift, a flatiron with metal tacks attached to the bottom (1921), Enigma of Isidore Ducasse, an unseen object wrapped in cloth and tied with a cord and Aerograph, airbrush paint on glass (1919). In 1920, Ray founded the Société Anonyme, with Katherine Dreier and Duchamp, and it became the first museum which displayed modern art in the U.S. In 1913, Man Ray met his first wife, Donna Lecoeur, who was a Belgian poet in New York. They got married a year later, but separated in 1919, and officially divorced in 1937.

In July of 1921, Man Ray moved to Paris, France for his work and settled in the Montparnasse area, which was favored by many artists and poets. When he moved to Paris, he met a model by the name of Kiki de Montparnasse, also known as Alice Prin. She was his companion for most of the 20's and was featured in some of his famous photographic images and his experimental films. In 1929, he began a love affair (at this time he was still married to Donna) with the surrealist photographer, Lee Miller. He became a distinguished photographer in Montparnasse for the next twenty years and many famous artists posed for his camera.

In the year 1925, Man Ray was in the first surrealist exhibition in Paris with Jean Arp, Max Ernest, Pablo Picasso, and many more. With Lee Miller, who was his photographic assistant and lover, he reinvented the photographic technique called Solarisation. In this technique, dark areas look light and light areas look dark. He also invented a type of photogram which he called "Raygraphs" and described them as pure Dadaism. During World War II, Man Ray was forced to return to the United States. He moved to Los Angeles, California and placed his creative energy into painting from 1940 to 1951. Upon his return to the America, he met Juliet Browner, who was a first-generation American of Romanian-Jewish lineage. They married in 1946 with their friends (they had a double wedding) Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning.

Man Ray returned to Montparnasse in 1951 where he published his autobiography in 1963. It was called Self-Portrait and was republished in 1999. On November 18, 1976, Man Ray passed away in Paris from a lung infection. He was buried in Montparnasse, Paris. When his wife, Juliet Browner, died in 1991, she was buried with him in his tomb. Before she died, Juliet donated much of his work to museums and most of his works are stored at the Pompidou Center. By: Caitlyn Dixon