Man Ray

a sequence of 3 nude studies of Lee Miller, pencil notations on the reverse of each, circa 1930; accompanied by the frame backing with National Portrait Gallery exhibition labels

Private collection, New York

Sotheby’s New York, 5 October 1995, Sale 6747, Lot 344

London, National Portrait Gallery, Man Ray Portraits, February-May 2013, and traveling thereafter to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, June-September 2013

Marianne Karabelnik, Stripped Bare: The Body Revealed in Contemporary Art: Works from the Thomas Koerfer Collection (London, 2004), p. 27 (these prints)

A tightly cropped variant of one image:

Man Ray 1890-1976 (London, 1994), pl. 114

Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais and Alain Sayag, eds., Man Ray: Photography and its Double (Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1998), p. 134

These three diminutive, lovely photographs are all printed on the same single-weight paper. The surface of each is very faintly glossy, and they possess a very slight pleasingly warm tonality. Each print shows a great deal of detail: in particular, Miller's hair and eye-lashes are rendered in surprising detail. The intricate swirling pattern of shadows upon Miller's torso in each of the images is delivered with great clarity. In these prints, Man Ray handled the modulation of light to shadow with characteristics skill. Each is in essentially excellent condition, with age appropriate silvering present in the dark areas. Each shows inconsequential wear on the edges and corners. Each has remnants of paper-tape hinges on the reverse. The image in which Miller holds the curtain over her body has a very faint handling areas in to the left of center – visible only upon close examination in raking light. The fully-frontal view of Miller is trimmed to a slightly smaller size than the other two images. On the reverse of each is written: 'Man Ray,' and '784.69.' When examined under blacklight, these prints do not appear to fluoresce.
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 photographs in Lots 126 through 132 are from the collection of Swiss filmmaker Thomas Koerfer.  Koerfer’s oeuvre of nine feature films is a rich and varied one. His first film, The Death of a Flea Circus Director (1972), won critical and public acclaim at its premiere at Critics’ Week at Cannes, and later that year was shown at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.  The Assistant (1975), an adaptation of Robert Walser’s proto-Modernist novel, also premiered at Cannes.  Embers (1985) tells the story of a Swiss businessman and art collector who enriches himself—and his collection of Impressionist paintings—by selling arms to the Third Reich.  The film stirred much discussion and controversy within a Switzerland uncomfortable with confronting its past.  Koerfer’s latest film, Green Henry, is based upon the famous bildungsroman by Gottfried Keller.

In addition to his film and theatre work, Thomas Koerfer has been continually engaged in the art world of Zürich and is an adventurous and keen-eyed collector of contemporary art and photographs.  He was for many years on the board of the Kunsthalle Zürich and served as president of the foundation committee of the Fotomuseum Winterthur for 12 years.  His collection, the subject of the 2004 book, Stripped Bare: The Body Revealed in Contemporary Art, will be shown at the Kunsthaus Zürich in June of 2015.

This suite of sensual images shows Man Ray's lover and muse, Lee Miller.  Man Ray had met the young and beautiful American Lee Miller in Paris in 1929, and she became his studio assistant and then his lover.  A fine photographer in her own right, Miller was linked to Man Ray for three years, a tumultuous period in which she inspired some of Man Ray's most famous photographs and paintings. 

The photographs offered here are a perfect collaboration between photographer and model.  In these images, Miller shifts her body in relation to the sunlight, manipulating both the window and the curtain, creating a series of sensual tableaux.  Throughout, Man Ray makes inventive use of natural light filtered through curtains to delineate the contours of Miller’s form.  The sunlight passing through the mesh-patterned curtains projects lines of latitude and longitude onto Miller, creating an erotic topographical map of her body.  This effect is most pronounced in the first image of this trio, which Man Ray cropped radically in subsequent prints to focus solely on Miller’s torso.  As in Man Ray’s other great nude studies, these three images show the photographer’s ability to combine a classic depiction of the nude with a distinctly novel photographic approach.  

This series comes from a session during which at least four exposures were made; the negatives are in the collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris.  As of this writing, other prints of these images, in this full-frame format, have not been located.