Man Ray

In reference to the photograph with drawing.
This image, on top of which the artist has applied ink drawings, is a gelatin silver composite print from three negatives, one from 1924, and the others likely from the same date.
This artefact by Man Ray is a subversion, characteristically at once wry and effective, of his original photographs of a standing nude Kiki. He adds vigorous ink drawing to a triple-exposed print that in itself already challenges the viewer by its accumulation of layers and its internal changes of scale. Beyond its erotic intention, the work's underlying message might be interpreted as Man Ray's unstated but ever-implicit position that he will not submit to the conventions of photography nor be defined as a photographer, but rather as an artist for whom the camera is just one of the available tools that might be used individually or in combination.
The work is a clever 'clin d'oeil', a knowing wink at art history and at certain key artistic tendencies of the day. The highly exaggerated, reductive silhouette that Man Ray has achieved evokes those of Cycladic fertility symbols, and in turn calls to mind the stylised nudes of Modigliani that make reference to these and other ancient sculptural interpretations of the female body. The raised arms echo certain of Modigliani's recumbent nudes, which have a powerful precursor in Goya's notorious The nude Maja of 1797-1800. The sharply angled upturned arms of Man Ray's nude, elbows pointing vertically, assertively displaying her body, match those of the central figure in Picasso's Les demoiselles d''Avignon of 1907, the pivotal painting that dramatically initiated Cubism. Man Ray's intervention in ink to emphasise the delineation of his model's face from two angles underscores his acknowledgement of the Cubist strategy of presenting multiple facets of a subject on a single picture plane. In short, Man Ray's camera, pen and brush work cleverly together to pay homage to the female form and to the history of its depiction, particularly in the work of those radical artists who shaped the avant-garde in Paris in the first decades of the 20th century.
The model is identified by the Centre Pompidou and elsewhere as Kiki, the subject of a number of emblematic images by Man Ray from the years of their relationship and collaboration in the mid- to late-1920s. The publication in La Révolution Surréaliste (issue 2 January 15th 1925) of a deliberately blurred and partly occluded version of one of the negatives used in this composition points to the making of the negatives in 1924. This was the year of one of Man Ray's most celebrated images of Kiki, 'Le violon d'Ingres', in which his drawing of the two f-notes that make her back resemble a violin reminds us of his readiness to mix his media.
Careful examination of the present work and of related prints establishes its incorporation of two slight variants of a standing contraposto pose, one laterally reversed, and a third, straight frontal pose, the image first seen in La Révolution Surréaliste. The original glass negative for this frontal pose is in the collection of the Centre Pompidou (ref. AM 1995-201 [277]). Considerable care has been invested by Man Ray in the making of the present complex hybrid work, a work that well demonstrates the artist's unique ability to bring layers of mystery to the product of the overtly neutral, factual recording instrument that is the camera.
The present work has an interesting provenance. It was among the group of prints acquired over a period of years as gifts from Man Ray and Juliet to close friends, the London couple Michael and Elsa Combe-Martin. The group comprised a wide range of subjects and included most notably a fine print of Noire et blanche and the fine print of Glass tears now in the collection of Sir Elton John. The collection was dispersed anonymously at auction in London under my auspices over a period of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
We are grateful to Philippe Garner for his assistance in providing this catalogue note.
Medium gelatin silver print with applied ink