MAN RAY | RAYOGRAPH

Galerie Fey & Nothelfer, Berlin

Galleria Milano, Milan, 1970

Private collection, Milan

Christie's London, 1 November 2005, Sale 7141, Lot 22

Angela Madesani, La fotografia tra le due guerre (Galleria Milano, 1996), no. 66

Le Arti della Fotografia (Varese: Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, 1998), p. 47

Emmanuelle de l'Ecotais, Man Ray: Rayographies (Paris, 2002), pp. 145, 257, cat. 223, reproduced upside down

Like many of Man Ray’s experiments with the photogram, the layered, sophisticated Rayograph offered here defies easy interpretation. To create this graphic and almost three-dimensional image it is likely that Man Ray employed separate exposures. A sea of spots, possibly sequins, cascades across the luminous orb dominating the image. The mysterious silhouette of a bird-like figure anchors the lower portion. Has the inventive Man Ray drawn in the darkroom an avian embryo waiting to be hatched? In Man Ray Rayographies, Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais reproduces a series of Rayographs made circa 1929-30 that seem to depict this evolution (cf. cat. 224-226). Whether the spontaneous product of scattering objects at random onto the photographic paper or a thoughtfully conceived darkroom arrangement, this Rayograph demonstrates the dazzling possibilities of the photogram in the masterful hands of Man Ray. 

While Man Ray had largely shifted his attention to other areas of photographic interest by 1930 – especially in the realms of solarization and fashion – and had accelerated his devotion to his lifelong love of painting and drawing, it was in 1931 (the year the present unique Rayograph was created) that he released Electricité (see Lot 95), a portfolio of one of his most celebrated series of photograms. In them Man Ray demonstrates all the technological skill and spatial innovation he brought to the process since he began his first photogram experiments in the early 1920s. 

A related Rayograph, formerly in the collection of Arnold Crane, is now in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum (84.XM.1000.62).