About
Over the course of his storied career, Man Ray created work spanning a variety of mediums: painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, film, poetry, and prose. His work aligned variously with Cubism, Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism—all the while retaining its own distinct style. Man Ray is most noted for his profound body of photographic works, which encompass fashion, portraiture, and technical experimentation such as solarization and the widely celebrated photograms or “rayographs”: the artist created these compelling images without a camera, arranging found objects onto sheets of photosensitive paper and exposing them to light. The rayographs wavered between representation and concept, epitomizing the indeterminate forces that have come to define his vast oeuvre. Alluding to relationships between the real and the fictive, Man Ray commanded a deft mastery over the liminal territory between the abstract and figurative form.
Man Ray was born in 1890 in Philadelphia, and died in 1976 in Paris. His work is held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Israel Museum, Jerusalem, among others. Recent solo exhibitions include Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention, Jewish Museum, New York (2009–10); Man Ray Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London (2013); and Man Ray—Human Equations, Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (2015).
Exhibitions
For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn.
Sydney Stutterheim meditates on the power and possibilities of small-format artworks throughout time.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2020
The Spring 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #412 (2003) on its cover.
The Films of Man Ray: Mysterious Encounters of Realities and Dreams
Timothy Baum muses on Man Ray’s foray into filmmaking in the 1920s, the subject of the exhibition Man Ray: The Mysteries of Château du Dé at Gagosian, San Francisco.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2019
The Winter 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a selection from Christopher Wool’s Westtexaspsychosculpture series on its cover.
Man Ray: Visual Poet and Wit
At the 2018 Frieze Masters fair in London, Gagosian’s stand presented more than ninety works by Man Ray: objects and assemblages, collages, oils, prints, drawings, and photographs. Richard Calvocoressi traces the development of the artist’s wide-ranging work and looks at his legendary three-year collaboration with Lee Miller.
Gagosian Quarterly Talks
Exiles in Paradise
Lawrence Weschler profiles the European exiles in Los Angeles during the 1930s and ’40s, examining how cultural visionaries, from Man Ray to Arnold Schoenberg, navigated the dramatic change in setting.
Man Ray’s LA
Timothy Baum explores this period of transition in response to an exhibition of Man Ray’s vintage gelatin silver photographs from his “Hollywood” period.
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2018
The Spring 2018 Gagosian Quarterly with a cover by Ed Ruscha is now available for order.
Art and Food
Mary Ann Caws and Charles Stuckey discuss the presence of food and the dining table in the history of modern art.
Man Ray
In the early 1980s, Ira Nowinski visited a studio frozen in time.
Sprayed: An Interview with Peter Stevens
Harnessing the gestural, unpredictable, projectile qualities of spray paint, artists have repurposed it as an alternative to the brush, to create hazy textures, drips, puddles, and graffiti-like text. Peter Stevens discusses this history of spray paint as an artistic medium with Alison McDonald.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
TEFAF New York Spring 2022
Urs Fischer and Man Ray
May 6–10, 2022, booth 350
Park Avenue Armory, New York
www.tefaf.com
Gagosian is pleased to announce its participation in TEFAF New York Spring 2022, with a special presentation juxtaposing works by Urs Fischer and Man Ray. Two artworks, hung in opposite corners of the stand, beckon to one another, engaging in a silent dialogue.
Gagosian’s booth at TEFAF New York Spring 2022. Artwork, left to right: © Man Ray 2015 Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris 2022; © Urs Fischer. Photo: Ariel Roubino
Art Fair
FIAC Online 2021
Printemps oublié
March 2–12, 2021
Gagosian is pleased to present Printemps oublié for the first online edition of FIAC. This curated presentation reflects the dual character of springtime as a reminder of past trials and the harbinger of a vibrant new season to come.
All the artworks will appear on the Gagosian website and a rotating selection will appear in the inaugural FIAC Online Viewing Rooms, from March 4 to 7.
Jeff Koons, Bluebird Planter, 2010–16 © Jeff Koons
Talk
In Focus
Michael Craig-Martin, Man Ray, Giuseppe Penone
Thursday, July 30, 2020, 12pm edt
Join Gagosian for a trio of online presentations to learn about the ways Michael Craig-Martin, Man Ray, and Giuseppe Penone approach three-dimensional form and its potential to change the way we engage with the world. Craig-Martin will speak about his own practice, while Max Teicher and Pepi Marchetti Franchi will each discuss the works of Man Ray and Penone respectively. To join, register at zoom.us.
Installation view, Michael Craig-Martin: Sculpture, Gagosian, Britannia Street, London, May 31–August 23, 2019. Artwork © Michael Craig-Martin. Photo: Mike Bruce
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Photography’s Last Century
The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection
Through May 21, 2023
Jepson Center, Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia
www.telfair.org
Photography’s Last Century celebrates the remarkable ascendancy of photography during the past hundred years, and Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee’s promised gift of over sixty photographs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where this exhibition originated. The collection is particularly notable for its breadth and depth of works by women artists, its sustained interest in the nude, and its focus on artists’ beginnings. Work by Gregory Crewdson, Andreas Gursky, Man Ray, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Whiteread is included.
Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, 2005 © Gregory Crewdson
On View
The Whitney’s Collection
Selections from 1900 to 1965
Opened June 28, 2019
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
whitney.org
This exhibition of more than 120 works, drawn entirely from the Whitney’s collection, is inspired by the founding history of the museum. The Whitney was established in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to champion the work of living American artists. A sculptor and a patron, Whitney recognized both the importance of contemporary American art and the need to support the artists who made it. The collection she assembled foregrounds how artists uniquely reveal the complexity and beauty of American life. Work by Jay DeFeo, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann is included.
Installation view, The Whitney’s Collection: Selections from 1900 to 1965, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, June 28, 2019–May 2022. Artwork, left to right: © 2020 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Norman Lewis; © 2020 The Franz Kline Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Ron Amstutz
Closed
The Voice of Things
Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection, Volume II
July 27, 2021–February 5, 2023
West Bund Museum, Shanghai
www.westbund.com
The title of this exhibition is taken from the iconic collection of prose poems published in 1942 by French poet and resistance fighter Francis Ponge (1899–1988). In it, he describes the beauty of banality and opens up a new way of looking at everyday objects and bringing them to life. Organized as part of a five-year partnership with the Centre Pompidou, Paris, this exhibition brings together emblematic artworks from the Centre Pompidou’s collection, ranging from the early twentieth-century avant-garde to contemporary works that question our globalized world. Work by Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, and Tatiana Trouvé is included.
Tatiana Trouvé, Polder, 2001, installation view, West Bund Museum, Shanghai © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Liang Xiaobo
Closed
America. Entre rêves et réalités
La collection du Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection
June 9–September 11, 2022
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Canada
www.mnbaq.org
Featuring more than a hundred paintings, photographs, sculptures, and video works drawn from the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, this exhibition, whose title translates to America. Between Dreams and Realities, offers a broad overview of modern and contemporary American art. Organized thematically, it looks carefully and critically at the notion of the American dream and uncovers how artists have variously grappled with questions of identity, the challenges of globalization, the realities of everyday life in America, and the complexities of its technological and political revolutions. Work by Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Sally Mann, Man Ray, Brice Marden, Nam June Paik, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Mary Weatherford is included.
Mary Weatherford, Engine, 2014, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC © Mary Weatherford. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen Studio
Press
Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan on Their Surreal Soundscapes for Man Ray’s Silent Films by Robert Archambeau
Hyperallergic
February 10, 2020
Online
PDF
Man Ray Made Iconic Surrealist Photographs—and so Much More by Alina Cohen
Artsy
January 21, 2020
Online
PDF
Gagosian Gallery trains its lens on photography by Charles Desmarais
San Francisco Chronicle
May 2, 2018
Online
PDF
Man Ray’s love-hate relationship with Hollywood by Jonathan Griffin
The Economist 1843
February 15, 2018
Online
PDF
Man Ray in LA: what happened when the pioneering artist hit Hollywood by Alex Rayner
The Guardian
January 16, 2018
Online
PDF