Full Art Mode

Exit Full Art Mode by clicking on Page or ESCTouch screen to exit Full Art Mode

skip

Man Ray, Noire et Blanche, 1926 (um 1970), Silbergelatineprint, Galerie 1900-2000, Paris © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18

review

Man Ray

14.02.2018 - 24.06.2018

Man Ray, Tränen, 1933 (1959), Silbergelatineabzug, Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach © Foto: Ruth Kaiser © © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, Le Violon d’Ingres, 1924 (1990), Silbergelatineprint, Courtesy Galerie Johannes Faber © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, Indestructible Object, 1923/65, Metronom, Foto eines Auges, Büroklammer, Box, Sammlung Marion Meyer, Paris © Marc Domage, courtesy Galerie Eva Meyer, Paris © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, Autoportrait, 1937/71, Bronze auf Plexiglas, Sammlung Marion Meyer, Paris © Galerie Eva Meyer, Paris © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows, 1916, Öl auf Leinwand, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of G. David Thompson, 1954 © 2017. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florenz © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, Gabrielle Chanel, 1935/36, Silbergelatineprint, Museum Ludwig, Köln © Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, Man Ray 1914, 1914, Öl auf Karton, The Roland Penrose Collection © The Artists Estate. Courtesy of The Penrose Collection 2017. All rights reserved. © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, Solarized Portrait of Lee Miller, 1929, Silbergelatineabzug, Museum Ludwig, Köln © Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, Ohne Titel (Rayografie), 1923, Silbergelatineabzug, Museum Ludwig, Köln © Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, Mime aus dem Album Revolving Doors, 1926, Serigrafie, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. Surrealist Collection © 2017. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florenz © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, L’Énigme d’Isidore Ducasse, 1920/1971, Empaquetage (Nähmaschine, Wolle, Seil), Sammlung Marion Meyer, Paris © Xavier Lahache, courtesy Galerie Eva Meyer, Paris © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray, Cadeau | Gift, 1921/1958, Bemaltes Bügeleisen und Nägel, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, James Thrall Soby Fund, 1966 © 2017. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florenz © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18Man Ray,  The Veil, 1930, Silbergelatineabzug, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of James Thrall Soby © 2017. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florenz © MAN RAY TRUST/ Bildrecht, Wien, 2017/18

Man Ray (born as Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 in Philadelphia, died in 1976 in Paris) has always been primarily received as a photographer. He achieved worldwide renown for his portraits of artists and his rayographs of the 1920s, produced without the use of a camera. However, Man Ray painted, drew, designed, made films and objects, wrote, invested his talents enthusiastically in typography, book and magazine design, and pursued a veritable career as experimental fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue – thus providing enviable scope for Kunstforum to visualise all this in its exhibition.

Man Ray exploited countless artistic media and techniques in an inventive and playful manner. In his autobiography, appearing in 1963, he wrote: “... the instrument did not matter – one could always reconcile the subject with the means and get a result that would be interesting (...) One should be superior to his limited means, use imagination, be inventive.”

While Man Ray’s photography is omnipresent in every overview on Dadaism and Surrealism, until now only few people in the German-speaking regions have been aware of him as a universal artist. His artistic brinkmanship relates not only to very diverse media, but also the two art capitals of the twentieth century – Paris and New York, where Man Ray alternately lived. Kunstforum’s exhibition will be devoted to “the universal Man Ray” and critically address discourses that mark his oeuvre in general, such as the closeness and distance between male and female physicality and creativity and their enactment in his oeuvre; it will also show Man Ray as “friend to everyone who was anyone”, who associated in the most glamorous circles of society and thus as prototype of the artistic networker and catalyst.

A selection of 150 keyworks from all over the world, including painting, photography, objects, works on paper, collages and assemblages and experimental film, will help to map the outline of an enigmatic and complex artist personality who paved the way for modern and contemporary art, and – in congenial artistic complicity with Marcel Duchamp – laid groundwork for how and what we see as “art” today.

curated by

Lisa Ortner-Kreil

review

Fascination Japan

Monet · Van Gogh · Klimt

10/10/2018 - 20/01/2019

previous exhibition

review

Gerhard Rühm

04/10/2017 - 28/01/2018

next exhibition