Man Ray

unique Rayograph, on a hand-ruled mount with a stylized signature in ink and technical annotations by the photographer in pencil, inscribed 'Rayogram (unique)' by the photographer and with his '31 bis Rue Campagne Première' (Manford M-5) studio stamp on the reverse, 1925-26

This print:

XXe Siècle, May-June 1938, p. 16

Copy photographs of this print:

Emmanuelle de l'Ecotais, Man Ray Rayographies (Paris, 2002), no. 162

Jean-Hubert Martin, Man Ray: Photographs (New York, 1982), pl. 205

This unique Rayograph is on heavy-weight paper with a matte surface. It is heavily silvered and, as is visible in the catalogue reproduction, there are several losses in the emulsion throughout the image. When viewed in raking light, some fingerprints can be seen in the silvered portions of the image. The mount is soiled, age-darkened, and lightly foxed. Man Ray's notations on the front of the mount are as follows (with rough translations): 'cette epreuve a suivre pour les valeurs' [follow this print for values] 'Dans l'aggrandisement, ne pas tenir compte des defauts – imprints digitales, rayures, etc' [in the enlargement, do not include the defects, fingerprints, streaks, etc.] 'tirer sur un peu plus contraste sans perdre les details dans le noir' [make the print a little more high-contrast without losing details in the darks] Our printing date of 'no later that 1935' is based upon the fact that Man Ray moved from the Rue Campagne address, given in his studio stamp on the reverse of this print, in the summer of 1935.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The images in this and the following lot—an original and unique Rayograph, and an immense two-panel enlargement of the Rayograph—form a remarkable pair and shed light on a little-discussed aspect of Man Ray's work: his creation of large-scale tapestries based upon his photographic work.  The Rayograph was made by Man Ray in 1925 or 1926; the two-panel enlargement was made, likely in the 1930s, in preparation for the production of a tapestry version of the image.  Both the Rayograph and the enlargement were both recently discovered in Aubusson, the French town renowned for the production of tapestries since medieval times. 

Man Ray research scholar Steven Manford identifies the present Rayograph as one of a group of six close variants, all of which were made using some combination of the objects present here: small wooden artist's mannequins, and a comb or similar object used to create the narrow alternating bands of light and dark common to all of the images.  One Rayograph from the group is in the Societé Anonyme Collection at Yale (de l'Ecotais 163).  Two were sold at auction, one in these rooms in May 1980 (Sale 4382, Lot 258), and the other (de l'Ecotais 165) at Sotheby's London in October 1999 (La Photographie. Collection Marie-Thérèse et André  Jammes, Sale 9316, Lot 254).  Another is in the Archives Lucien Treillard (de l'Ecotais 164).  The final image in the group is in a private collection and not publicly documented. 

The sole instance of publication of the Rayograph offered here is in the May-June 1938 issue of the arts journal XXe siècle, where it appears as a full-page illustration.  The hand-ruled border and stylized signature visible in the XXe siècle illustration confirm that the present Rayograph was used for the reproduction.  By contrast, the laterally-reversed reproductions of this image in both de l'Ecotais's Man Ray Rayographies and Jean-Hubert Martin's Man Ray: Photographs were made from a modern copy photograph of the image, realized in the early 1970s as part of a small edition.  The Centre Pompidou, which holds approximately 40 negatives copied from original Rayographs, does not have a negative of the present Rayograph. 

Steven Manford notes that mannequins, principle to the composition of this Rayograph and its variants, played an important role in Man Ray's work from the early 1920s into the final decade of his life, appearing in photographs, Rayographs, paintings, drawings, and editions.  His famous image of a seated mannequin posed between a sphere and cone appeared in the June 1926 issue of the journal La Revolution Surréaliste, and was reproduced again as the cover illustration for the slim catalogue accompanying Man Ray's 1962 photographic retrospective at the Paris National Library.  In addition to their appearance in the group of Rayographs of which the present image is part, mannequins appear in two other later Rayographs made in the 1930s (cf. de l'Ecotais 246), which, unlike the present group, possess a narrative aspect (one mannequin pursuing the other).  Later in life, Man Ray would return once again to working with mannequins with his portfolio Resurrection of the Mannequins (1966), and the reissue of his earlier, risqué, mannequin tableaux, Mr. and Mrs. Woodman (1970).  The present Rayograph, with its ambiguous juxtaposition of two figures seen against—and through—a field of translucent black-and-white bands, resists the application of an obvious narrative.  Instead, it possesses that enigmatic Surreality of which Man Ray was a master.    

While it is unlikely that Man Ray created this Rayograph with the intention of executing a design for a tapestry, his plan to do so was clear by the following decade, when it was illustrated in XXe siècle over the caption 'Projet Pour Une Tapisserie.'  Man Ray's detailed technical instructions, written on the mount of the present photograph, may well have served as instructions to the printer making the enlargement in the following lot.  The two-panel enlargement would have served as a guide to the artisans making this (presumably unrealized) tapestry.  For more information, please see the notes accompanying Lot 124). 

One other interesting aspect of the Rayograph's 1938 appearance in XXe siècle is the heading under which it is reproduced: 'La Dernière Photo de Man Ray' (the last photograph of Man Ray).  The dating of the image to the mid-1920s, and the fact of Man Ray's significant photographic output post-1938, controverts the variant definitions of dernière as either 'the most recent' or 'final.'  Manford speculates that this heading may be indicative of Man Ray's state of mind at the time, and of his changing attitude toward photography.  After the lukewarm response to his 1934 monograph, Photographs by Man Ray, 1920 Paris 1934, the photographer turned his attention to contract work for the magazine Harper's Bazaar.  This accounted for the bulk of his professional work in the latter part of the decade, and from the fall of 1936 through the spring of 1938 Man Ray published a remarkable 75 photographs in Bazaar's pages.  His last photograph for the magazine was published in February of 1938, shortly before the XXe siècle item appeared.  In this sense, the Rayaograph was his 'final' photograph.  This self-imposed moratorium was broken two years later, with the new body of photographs Man Ray began for Bazaar beginning in March 1940.  

This work will appear in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of the Rayographs being prepared by Man Ray research scholar Steven Manford, to whom we give thanks for the detailed information set forth here.