Photo Elysée is devoting an exhibition to Man Ray, who immortalized the surrealist All-Paris of the 1920s while experimenting with new photographic processes. The Lausanne exhibition brings together 188 photographs from a private collection.
When we talk about surrealism and photography, “the name of Man Ray inevitably comes up,” Nathalie Herschdorfer, director of the museum, explained to the press on Thursday. With “Man Ray liberate photography”, Photo Elysée is part of the celebrations of the centenary of the movement created in 1924 by André Breton. The neighboring museum, the mudac, opened fire in March. The MCBA will follow in April.
New York then Paris
Man Ray (1890-1976) made his first photographs in New York in the 1910s. But it was in the following two decades, while living in Paris, that he abandoned the idea of a career in painting. and devotes himself to photography, a medium which will allow him to go beyond the representation of reality.
The exhibition, to be discovered from Friday until August 4, focuses on the years 1920-30, where Man Ray, close to Marcel Duchamp, rubbed shoulders with the Parisian artistic scene. He met Salvador Dali, Paul Eluard, Georges Braque, Jean Cocteau and Tristan Tzara and photographed them in his studio. Introduced to fashion designer Paul Poiret, he began taking fashion photos. “Very quickly he earned a very good living,” observes Ms. Herschdorfer.
Staging
The exhibition looks back on his relationships with his muses, which he portrays. “Love and sexuality are themes that were abundantly described by the surrealists,” recalls the director. On the picture rails, Lee Miller, Meret Oppenheim and Kiki de Montparnasse follow one another, the woman with violin soundholes painted on her bare back, a photo sold for more than 12 million dollars, a record.
The artist experiments and explores. He creates photograms, which he calls after his name “rayographs”. In a darkroom, he places an object on photosensitive paper and creates an image with light, without a camera. He tried other techniques, such as solarization, a discovery in which Lee Miller played “an important role”, underlines Ms. Herschdorfer.
Created from an anonymous private collection, currently shown only in Asia, the exhibition presents some of Man Ray’s emblematic photographs. Some prints date from the 1920s or 1930s – often small formats -, others were reworked later by the artist, a practice which persisted after his death. About 80% of the prints in the exhibition were made during his lifetime, the museum said.
Cindy Sherman and Marclay
With the common thread of the “portrait” as a filigree, Photo Elysée is simultaneously devoting an exhibition to the American photographer Cindy Sherman and her recomposed faces. Work by Christian Marclay and ECAL students around the photo booth, as well as a research project on “data” complete its programming.
This article was automatically published. Source: ats
