Peter Clothier

Given that Man Ray achieved maturity in Paris when the Dadaists were busy proclaiming the gospel of anti-art, it's hardly surprising that his name evokes the spirit of iconoclasm and experimentation more than the image of a consistent body of work. Aside from the single trademark painting, The Lovers - that pair of lips hovering in a sky of lacy clouds - he is known chiefly for the "Rayographs" which originated in approved surrealist manner, by happy accident, out of his work as a fashion photographer.

Man Ray's stated objective to "amuse, annoy, bewilder, mystify, [and] inspire reflection" is amply borne out in this museum-scale exhibit that evolved from the recent release, from the estate of May Ray's wife, Juliet Browner, of a large cache of work which she had hoarded since the artist's death in 1976. It brings together an enormous diversity of material, including fashion and portrait photography, a vast array of doodles, drawings, and paintings, and a representative selection of readymades and constructed objects, ranging from variations on the Dadaist Cadeau (Gift), the celebrated and oft-reissued pressing iron set with nails, to more traditional sculptural objects and chess sets.

What's portrayed here is a restless, whimsical mind and the busy hand of a fabricator. While an accompanying book focuses on the artist's Los Angeles days, from 1940 to 1951, the exhibition reinforces the idea that his strongest work was produced in pre-war France. Its single most impressive work is Le Beau Temps, 1939, a large, rarely-seen painting which reflects the personal, psychic, and historical angst of pre-war Europe war in bold, Freudian surrealist syntax, and which stands out as perhaps the most ambitious and resolved work in the artist's oeuvre.

While this collection includes a number of other memorable works, in general it eschews judicious editing in favor of a warts-and-all approach. As a documentation of the versatility of the only card-carrying American Surrealist, it's a welcome mother lode of fascinating information. But Ray was neither quite Duchamp, the arch subversive, nor quite the peer of accomplished Surrealist painters like Dali, at his best, and de Chirico. (Was it the grandiose youthful dogma of the Surrealists, I wonder, that led so many of them into self-repetition and early decline?) My guess is that history will assign him a minor but significant role as a tireless gadfly and promoter of aesthetic freedom, but also as one of those charming and adventurous Americans in Paris.

---Peter Clothier is a Los Angeles based art critic and has written numerous  articles, art reviews, art catalogues, book reviews, and essays.