At an intimate dinner party this past Saturday, I was seated next to an aerialist (really) who had just come from viewing Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention at the Jewish Museum. After discussing the exhibit for most of the meal, I am now dying to visit it first hand and see it all for myself.
Unlike the spectacle you'll witness at MoMA for Tim Burton, the exhibit at the Jewish Museum was designed as a traditional retrospective with an irresistible biographical hook. Interested in a variety of visual arts, Man Ray only came to photography when he discovered he would be unable to make a living as a painter. He began taking pictures for dress designer Paul Poiret, and soon made his name as a portraitist and fashion photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair. His portraits of Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein, among others, hung on the walls of the legendary bookshop Shakespeare and Company, whose owner Sylvia Beach once wrote, “To be done by Man Ray means that you were rated as somebody.”
Read below for more on Man Ray from the Jewish Museum:
"The quintessential modernist, Man Ray recast the concept of artistic identity, working as a painter, photographer, sculptor, printmaker, filmmaker, poet, and essayist. He perpetually tinkered with material at hand, putting to ingenious use the practical skills learned in a variety of jobs, from advertising to mapmaking to engraving. Man Ray airbrushed paintings to make them look like photographs and exposed objects on light-sensitive paper to create cameraless “rayographs.” He met the demand for originality in the world of fashion by creating a hybrid of Surrealism and high style, and even became a celebrity himself as a portrait photographer—indeed, his fame as a photographer overshadowed his accomplishments as a painter. A conflicted identity, however, was central to an artist who yearned to escape the limitations of his Russian Jewish immigrant past.
"For Man Ray, a sense of otherness was deeply connected to the problem of assimilation—the wish for both “notoriety” and “oblivion”—and hence “the desire to become a tree en espalier,” a tree trained to grow into a vine that becomes entwined with others, its origins disguised. The artist’s self-consciousness was an outgrowth of his time, a period that witnessed the rise of nation-state identity and xenophobia, and an unprecedented wave of immigration, class consciousness, and anti-Semitism. His life and work powerfully reflect his contradictory need to obscure and declare himself..." Continue reading...
What are you doing today? Visit the Museum on Mondays for special offerings...
Gallery Talks
Enjoy a special docent-led tour or staff gallery talk every Monday at 12:15 pm through Dec 31; then January 4, 2010 and forward, every Monday at 1:00 pm.
Tonight, March 8th - A Closer Look - The Paris Years, with Linda Sterling, Docent
Admission Discounts
Artists and photographers enjoy $5.00 admission with a business card or copy of their resume.
Become a member and receive a free Man Ray exhibition catalogue. 
Renew your membership and receive a free audio guide.
All visitors receive 50% off the audio guide.
Shop Discounts
Save 10% off the exhibition catalogue** (members save 20%).
Plus!
One randomly selected visitor will receive a Man Ray catalogue every Monday.
What exhibits have you gone to lately?
