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Lot Essay
Made in 1990, Male Mannequin is a brilliant example of Charles Ray's mannequin sculptures. Like the other works in the series, Male Mannequin disrupts the normative conventions regarding representation and portraiture, displacing them in favor of a novel mix of the artificial and the natural. The result is a Neo-Dada and Neo-Surrealist hybrid of stunning intensity.
Beginning in 1990, Charles Ray departed from the Conceptual and Minimalist traditions that had characterized his early works and instead began a series of sculptures based on store mannequins. He approached the series in a programmatic fashion: it is no accident that the subjects of these works are Man, Woman, Child, Family, and the Self-Portrait. The present work, Male Mannequin, is Ray's sculpture of Man in the series. With the exception of his Self-Portrait and of his sculpture of Woman, Fall, all the figures in the series are depicted in the nude with anatomically precise genitalia cast from life. In the case of Male Mannequin Ray used his own genitalia for the molds for the sculpture. In Fall, Boy and Family Romance Ray altered the scale of the figures to create an unsettling and even threatening effect. But he instead made Self-Portrait and Male Mannequin at a natural scale based on his own height.
Indeed, Male Mannequin is in some sense a self-portrait. But whereas most self-portraits depict the face in a specific manner and generalize the body, Ray upended that tradition, representing his own genitalia in Male Mannequin but giving the face of the sculpture generic features. Traditionally, nude self-portraiture is related to the idea of absolute and uncompromising truthfulness. But that idea is inverted in the present work by its reliance on the generalized and stylized figure canon of store mannequins. Moreover, in the past, nude self-portraiture was regularly contemplative and/or religious in nature and was often associated with a famous line from the Bible: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither; the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Lord" (Job I:21). But the utter artificiality of Male Mannequin removes it from the realm of the natural; it was not born and it does not pass away. It is unnatural, non-human and a self-portrait of this kind is eerie and contradictory. This is the effect Ray has in mind when he says that he wants his mannequin sculptures to be "indeterminate."
Historically, representations of the nude male are bound up with the idea of Adam. Adam was made by God "in His own image and likeness." But Adam nevertheless also sinned and fell and was cast out from Eden, and his nakedness became a cause for shame. Thus, idealization in the male nude is typically related to notions of Edenic innocence and/or Classical perfection. But the idealization of Male Mannequin is neither Edenic nor Classical; on the contrary, derived from the needs of commerce, it stands in starkly ironic contrast to past notions of perfection. In the Modern era perfection is artificial not natural. In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is a new, modern, Adam, and all of Ray's mannequin sculptures are vaguely monstrous.
In Male Mannequin Ray focuses the viewer's attention on the tension created by the clash of the artificial and the natural. If the sculpture were either completely idealized like a store mannequin, or purely naturalistic like a life-cast, it would have comparatively little power. Instead, the tension caused by their combination is surprising and alarming, in a manner reminiscent of the great masterpieces of Dadaism and Surrealism.
Beginning in 1990, Charles Ray departed from the Conceptual and Minimalist traditions that had characterized his early works and instead began a series of sculptures based on store mannequins. He approached the series in a programmatic fashion: it is no accident that the subjects of these works are Man, Woman, Child, Family, and the Self-Portrait. The present work, Male Mannequin, is Ray's sculpture of Man in the series. With the exception of his Self-Portrait and of his sculpture of Woman, Fall, all the figures in the series are depicted in the nude with anatomically precise genitalia cast from life. In the case of Male Mannequin Ray used his own genitalia for the molds for the sculpture. In Fall, Boy and Family Romance Ray altered the scale of the figures to create an unsettling and even threatening effect. But he instead made Self-Portrait and Male Mannequin at a natural scale based on his own height.
Indeed, Male Mannequin is in some sense a self-portrait. But whereas most self-portraits depict the face in a specific manner and generalize the body, Ray upended that tradition, representing his own genitalia in Male Mannequin but giving the face of the sculpture generic features. Traditionally, nude self-portraiture is related to the idea of absolute and uncompromising truthfulness. But that idea is inverted in the present work by its reliance on the generalized and stylized figure canon of store mannequins. Moreover, in the past, nude self-portraiture was regularly contemplative and/or religious in nature and was often associated with a famous line from the Bible: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither; the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Lord" (Job I:21). But the utter artificiality of Male Mannequin removes it from the realm of the natural; it was not born and it does not pass away. It is unnatural, non-human and a self-portrait of this kind is eerie and contradictory. This is the effect Ray has in mind when he says that he wants his mannequin sculptures to be "indeterminate."
Historically, representations of the nude male are bound up with the idea of Adam. Adam was made by God "in His own image and likeness." But Adam nevertheless also sinned and fell and was cast out from Eden, and his nakedness became a cause for shame. Thus, idealization in the male nude is typically related to notions of Edenic innocence and/or Classical perfection. But the idealization of Male Mannequin is neither Edenic nor Classical; on the contrary, derived from the needs of commerce, it stands in starkly ironic contrast to past notions of perfection. In the Modern era perfection is artificial not natural. In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is a new, modern, Adam, and all of Ray's mannequin sculptures are vaguely monstrous.
In Male Mannequin Ray focuses the viewer's attention on the tension created by the clash of the artificial and the natural. If the sculpture were either completely idealized like a store mannequin, or purely naturalistic like a life-cast, it would have comparatively little power. Instead, the tension caused by their combination is surprising and alarming, in a manner reminiscent of the great masterpieces of Dadaism and Surrealism.