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Reviewed by:
  • Man Ray: Paris > > L. A.
  • Renée Riese Hubert
Man Ray: Paris > > L. A. Exhibition catalog. Track 16 Gallery. Robert Berman Gallery. Santa Monica: Smart Art Press, 1996. Pp. 126, 140 illus. $30.00 (paper).

A commentary on the Man Ray catalog published in conjunction with the Track 16 Gallery and the Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica offers various options. Since the catalog reproduces beautifully and faithfully so many of the works exhibited (September 1996–January 1997) we may wonder whether we should view it as a legitimate attempt to duplicate the show and therefore evaluate its merits by mimetic standards. However, the carefully researched text by Dickran Tashjian encourages us to stress as biographical the account of Man Ray’s California years. Its goal is not primarily to explain the exhibit. Catalogs belong to hybrid genres, as they transform spatiality into verbal language, reducing original works to a select number of copies, and three-dimensionality into two-dimensionality. A catalog simultaneously requires viewers and readers.

In the Man Ray catalog, while some reproductions function as marginal vignettes, dramatic effects are produced by full-sized color photographs. In the Santa Monica exhibit, space, artworks, and documents remained somewhat distant and depersonalized, whereas in the catalog they acquire monumental if not seductive qualities. We owe this “improvement” to vivid colorations, close angles, and skillfully handled perspectives. Reductive frontal views of objects are generally avoided. Thanks to this strong theatrical focus, the notion of series prevalent in the exhibition is to a large extent abolished. The catalog photographs produce an aestheticizing effect, which replaces the mysterious and often disquieting aspect of the art objects themselves. The presence of most reproductions is justified by the object’s exposure in the show as well as its relevance to the text, yet we can neither claim that the reproductions serve as illustrations nor that they provide a point of departure for the critic’s comments. The text is also removed from the captions on the wall.

The exhibit did not, of course, feature as many outstanding works as, for instance, Merry Foresta’s 1988 Perpetual Motif. A gallery show focusing on a given period of Man Ray’s life, Paris > > L. A. was almost exclusively composed of works for sale coming from Juliet Man Ray’s estate. Tashjian gives an account of the years 1940–51 with occasional reference to what followed and preceded; he reveals for instance the artist’s success as a fashion photographer, a skill Man Ray abandoned in America. The California years definitely deserve the careful examination that Tashjian devotes to them, all the more so because he makes ample use of the archives acquired by the Getty Center for the Arts and Humanities, notably the correspondence with Elsie Siegler, Man Ray’s sister. In giving so thorough an account, the critic displays remarkable perseverance in gathering information and documentation. He makes use of Man Ray’s own writings, autobiography, manifestos, prefaces, and letters to friends. Several of these [End Page 173] texts, typed by Man Ray, are reproduced in the catalog. In these documents, the artist states how he viewed various media, how he questioned the notion of progress in relation to the arts, how he weighed collaborative versus independent work. Tashjian considerably expands the range of the often anthologized texts by Man Ray. The extensive repertoire that he assembles from various channels is woven together into a lively narrative.

Man Ray’s famous mixed media Self Portrait also plays a well-deserved role. In it, the artist himself at different moments weighs his identity as painter against that as photographer. This issue is taken up by Tashjian, who does not have an easy task; Man Ray’s self-evaluations and self-definitions are never in any way definitive or even reliable. It is hard to circumscribe photography as an art. As a cameraman, Man Ray is most highly acknowledged for his daring experimentation with rayographs and solarization. (In this essential field, the Track 16 Gallery did not always provide first-rate copies.) Man Ray also, as we mentioned, produced fashion photography, working for Harper’s Bazaar. In addition, he owes much of his fame to the...

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