Museo Carmen Thyssen

For this exhibition devoted to the American Emmanuel Radnitzky (1890-1976) –better known as Man Ray– the Museum’s Sala Noble (Grand Hall) has turned into a sort of avant-garde cabinet of curiosities. Offering a survey of his most iconic photographs, from a French private collection, it is organised around three themes: nudes, rayographs and portraits.

Man Ray excelled in capturing nudes and anatomical studies, which reflect his idea of the body as an object of desire. They are figures brimming with the ‘convulsive beauty’ advocated by Surrealism, their expressiveness accentuated by bold angles, transparencies, light effects and fragmentation. He conveys an erotic view of an empowered and bold woman, as in the photographs featuring colleagues, muses and lovers such as Meret Oppenhiem, Lee Miller, Dora Maar, Suzy Solidor and Kiki de Montparnasse.

Man Ray explored his most experimental side in his attraction to everyday elements of little artistic worth, particularly in his rayographs: photographs produced without a camera. Consisting of negative silhouettes on a real scale, these images were created by placing small objects on photosensitive paper and exposing them to light for seconds. He brought them together in the Champs délicieux album (1922) with a preface by the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, who coined the French term rayographies, derived from the photographer’s pseudonym.

Man Ray likewise produced an interesting gallery of photos of prominent people of 1920s an 1930s Parsi, a period in which portraiture and fashion photography earned him huge prestige. These compositions, with sober settings and the faces as the focus of attention, highlight their maker’s technical skill and are wonders of creation that are unique in the genre. As a complement, a group of self-portraits of the photographer on view on a display case illustrates his more carefree, teasing and performative side, which emerged over the years.

Photo: Man Ray, Ingres’ Violin, 1924. Gelatin silver print on paper. Private collection. Paris © Man Ray 2015 Trust, VEGAP, Málaga, 2024. Photo: Telimage, Paris