MAN RAY (1890-1976)

La Volière

细节
MAN RAY (1890-1976)
La Volière
Gelatin silver print. circa 1924. Signed, dated n.27 '24, inscribed a Mesens en echange pour une autre oiseau and annotated Paris in ink on the recto; credit and notation cage d'oiseau ink on the verso.
5 7/8 x 4½in. (15 x 11.4cm.)
来源
Ex-Collection, Edouard Léon Théodore Mesens.
出版
See: Foresta et al., Perpetual Motif, p. 26, fig. 19; and Schwarz, Man Ray, p; 24, fig. 21 for the original La Volière aerograph from 1919.

拍品专文

Man Ray began to produce aerographs in New York around 1919, where they were first exhibited at the Daniel Gallery. Although criticized for these works in New York, the Paris community embraced his painting style as a "visual translation of Breton's poetics as well as a vulgarization of traditional painting in keeping with Tzara's revolution". Titled La Volière in 1919 and later Aviary in 1921, the painting represents Man Ray's New York studio where "- he had kept the manikin, he said as a "companion" - the painting became in Paris a sign of the times. Slang for brothel, the French title expanded to include the larger definition of le bordel, which popularly referred to any confusing situation as well as a prostitute's place of employment. Equating painter and whore, studio and brothel, the aerograph implied artistic corruption, while its seductive techinque - veils of paint seeming barely to touch the surface - revealed a tantilizing alternative to old methods" (Perpetual Motif, p. 27.)
It was rare for Man Ray to present photographs of his paintings as finished works. The inscription on the recto and the care in which this and the following lot were printed is indicative of the value he placed on the works as photographs in their own right.