Man Ray Portraits

The National Portrait Gallery will next year host a retrospective of one of the artistic heavyweights of the Modernist movement – Man Ray.

The exhibition aims to shed light on the elusive figure of Ray, who during his long career allowed few details of his early life or heritage to escape into the public domain. Few people, for instance, know that Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitzky to Russian Jewish immigrants, a fact he suppressed to the point of refusing to publicly acknowledge he was ever called anything but Man Ray.

Catherine Deneuve, 1968 by Man Ray Private Lender

Source: © Man Ray Trust / ADAGP, Paris © Centre Pompidou,MNAM-CCI,Di st. RMN/Guy Carrard

Helen Tamiris, 1929 by Man Ray

Man Ray Portraits will include over 150 prints from Ray’s career taken between 1916 and 1968, many of which have never been seen in the UK, and will bring together works from the Pompidou Centre, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Catherine Deneuve, 1968 by Man Ray Private Lender

Source: © 2008 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2012 © Photo The Jewish Muse

Man Ray Self-Portrait with Camera, 1932 by Man Ray

Famous for his portraits of friends and lovers, the exhibition will feature photographs from Ray’s Paris hey day of his intimate social circle, which included James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Virginia Woolf and Wallis Simpson.

Le Violon d’Ingres, 1924 by Man Ray Museum Ludwig Cologne, Photography Collections (Collection Gruber)

Source: © Man Ray Trust ARS-ADAGP / DACS

Catherine Deneuve, 1968 by Man Ray

Philadelphia-born Ray cut his teeth as a young photographer in New York to fund his artwork, establishing the New York Dada movement with friend Marcel Duchamp and dabbling in Surrealism along the way. Ray’s friendship with the French artist eventually led to his move to Paris in 1921 and it was during this time that Ray captured his most famous images of his cultural contemporaries and became the first American artist to be accepted by the avant-garde elite gathered in the city. 

Le Violon d’Ingres, 1924 by Man Ray Museum Ludwig Cologne, Photography Collections (Collection Gruber)

Source: © Man Ray Trust ARS-ADAGP

Barbette, 1926 by Man Ray

It was during this epoch of artistic experimentation that Ray developed a type of photogram, a photographic image made without a camera, which he dubbed ‘Rayographs’. He is also credited with perfecting the technique, alongside his lover and collaborator Lee Miller, of solarisation, the photographic phenomenon where the image recorded on a negative is reversed in tone.

Catherine Deneuve, 1968 by Man Ray Private Lender

Source: © Man Ray Trust / ADAGP, Paris © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN / image Centre Pompidou, MNAM

Henry Crowder, 1928 by Man Ray

Ray left France after the outbreak of WWII and returned to his native US. Although he officially devoted himself once more to painting, Ray continued to take photographic portraits during these years, several of which will have never been seen before this exhibition.

Man Ray Portraits is at the National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London, WC2H from 7 February – 27 May 2013.

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  • Johanna Pinder-Wilson November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Really looking forward to visiting the Man Ray Exhibition at the NPG this weekend. I recently met up with the photographer Mark Colliton (Mark Colliton Photography) for an object and portrait photo shoot. Inspired by the 1968 Man Ray portrait of Catherine Deneuve with the juxtaposition of all the quirky objects around its sitter, the shoot followed in this direction, link as follows: http://goo.gl/FGJKA

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