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Summary of Man Ray

Man Ray's career is distinctive above all for the success he achieved in both the United States and Europe. First maturing in the center of American modernism in the 1910s, he made Paris his home in the 1920s and 1930s, and in the 1940s he crossed the Atlantic once again, spending periods in New York and Hollywood. His art spanned painting, sculpture, film, prints and poetry, and in his long career he worked in styles influenced by Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. He also successfully navigated the worlds of commercial and fine art, and came to be a sought-after fashion photographer. He is perhaps most remembered for his photographs of the inter-war years, in particular the camera-less pictures he called 'Rayographs', but he always regarded himself first and foremost as a painter.

Accomplishments

• Although he matured as an abstract painter, Man Ray eventually disregarded the traditional superiority painting held over photography and happily moved between different forms. Dada and Surrealism were important in encouraging this attitude; they also persuaded him that the idea motivating a work of art was more important than the work of art itself.
• For Man Ray, photography often operated in the gap between art and life. It was a means of documenting sculptures that never had an independent life outside the photograph, and it was a means of capturing the activities of his avant-garde friends. His work as a commercial photographer encouraged him to create fine, carefully composed prints, but he would never aspire to be a fine art photographer in the manner of his early inspiration, Alfred Stieglitz.
• André Breton once described Man Ray as a 'pre-Surrealist', something which accurately describes the artist's natural affinity for the style. Even before the movement had coalesced, in the mid 1920s, his work, influenced by Marcel Duchamp, had Surrealist undertones, and he would continue to draw on the movement's ideas throughout his life. His

Childhood

Man Ray was born as Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 to a Russian-Jewish immigrant family in Philadelphia. His tailor father and seamstress mother soon relocated the family to the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, where Ray spent most of his childhood. His family changed their surname to Ray due to the fear of anti-Semitism. His name evolved to Man Ray after shortening his nickname, Manny, to Man. He kept his family background secret for most of his career, though the influence of his parents' occupations is evident in many of his works.

In high school, Ray learned freehand drawing, drafting and other basic techniques of architecture and engineering. He also excelled in his art class. Though he hated the special attention from his art teacher, he still frequented art museums and studied on his own the works of the Renaissance Masters like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, and Caravaggio. Such self-motivation from the early age proved to be a solid grounding for the versatility he showed throughout his artistic career. Upon graduating from high school in 1908, he turned down a scholarship to study architecture, and began pursuing his career as an artist.

Early Training

In his studio at his parents' house, he worked hard towards becoming a painter while taking odd jobs as a commercial artist. He familiarized himself with the world of art by frequenting art galleries and museums in New York City and became attracted to contemporary avant-garde art from Europe. In 1912, he enrolled in the Ferrer School and began developing as a serious artist. While studying at this school that was founded by libertarian ideals, he met his first influential teachers and artists like Robert Henri, Samuel Halpert, Max Weber, and Adolf Wolff and was surrounded by those with anarchist ideas, which helped shape his own ideology.

After briefly sharing a small studio in Manhattan wi

By Shira Wolfe

“Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is Dada, and will not tolerate a rival.”         

Man Ray

Man Ray, born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was a renowned representative of avant-garde photography in the 20th century and is considered as the pioneer of Surrealist photography. Ray's artistic work is very diverse. He was a painter, object artist, and a film maker. He was the very first artist whose images were more valuable to collectors than his artistic work. He therefore made a significant contribution to the evaluation of photography as a form of art.

His early life

Right from the moment he came into the limelight until his death, Man Ray did not allow much of his early life to be known, even denying that he once had another name other than Ray. Man Ray was born to Jewish immigrants from Russia. He was the only child before his family was blessed with another son and 2 daughters, the youngest child was born shortly after they relocated to Brooklyn in 1897. Man Ray's family changed their surname to Ray in 1912. Ray was nicknamed Manny but changed his name to Man, and slowly started to use Man Ray.

Ray's father worked in a garment factory. He also owned a small tailoring shop outside his home, enlisting all his children from a tender age. Ray's mother, who was very passionate about tailoring, enjoyed making and designing her family's clothes. She used to make clothes from her own designs and create patchwork items out of scraps of fabrics. While Man Ray didn't want to associate himself with his family's background, this experience did leave a mark on his art work. A number of clothing and sewing related items appear at every phase of his work and in nearly every medium.

His love for art

Ray's artistic and mechanical ability came out at a tender age. His high school education played a more important role in providing him with a firm grounding in drafting as well as other art techniques. He also educated himself with regular visits to art museums, where he learnt the works