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Man Ray: 1890-1976 (Photobook)
Katherine Ware , and Emmanuelle De L'Ecotais Manufacturer: Taschen ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items: ASIN: 3822871850 |
Customer Reviews:
The original is still the master........2001-04-23
Add this book to your collection for the plates alone, but the accompanying essays are terrific. Better yet, visit the mind-expanding collection at the Getty in Los Angeles.
Stunning Stylized Images of a Most Innovative Artist.......2000-12-01
Before saying more about this outstanding volume, let me caution you (as the cover art surely must) that Man Ray often created images of nude women. If such things offend you, this volume will not be appropriate for you.
The essays in this volume as reproduced in English, German, and French. I found them very helpful for providing technical background on the influences on and methods used in Man Ray's work. His approach was very Edison-like in its many unsuccessful experiments and accidents that led to important breakthroughs. A random mouse helped him learn how to do solarization.
It is not surprising that Marcel Duchamp and he became instant friends. Their perspectives on art have many points in common.
Born as Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia in 1890, he had moved to New York by age 7, and became exposed there to many important artistic influences. These included the Stieglitz gallery, the Armory Show in 1913, and leading artists in New York. He started as a photographer in 1914 just before meeting Marcel Duchamp. His primary years of productivity were spent in Paris, from which he was driven by the Nazi invasion in 1940. His return to the United States was less than a total joy, and he resided again in Paris after 1951.
I believe that this volume is as much a delight for the mind as it is for the eye. Subtle differences in processing of similar images create enormously changed reactions in the viewer. You then move forward to study the reason for your changed perspective and find it in a small detail . . . like a slightly lifted eyebrow. Miror images in positive and negative reproduced side by side on facing pages create a similar reaction.
Here are my favorites from these outstanding reproductions of Man Ray's best work:
Integration of Shadows 1919
Untitled 1922
La violin d'Ingres 1924
Retour a la raison 1923
Meret Oppenheim 1932
"Beauty in ultra violet" c. 1931
Erotique voilee [Meret Oppenheim] 1933
Le Priere c. 1930
Anatomia 1929
Nusch and Sonia 1935
Untitled 1931
Untitled [hair] 1931
Lee Miller c. 1930
Objet mathematique 1934-36
Les Arums 1039
Untitled [Dancer] c. 1935
Enough Rope 1944
Rayograph 1925
Rayograph 1930
Champs delicieux 1922
Marcel Duchamp 1916
Constantin Brancusi 1933
Max Ernst c. 1934
Andre Breton c. 1930
Marcel Duchamp 1921
Joan Miro c. 1930
Pablo Picasso 1932
If you enjoy the the ultimate in photographic creativity, this is the book for you!
After you finish this work, I suggest that you take these insights and begin to create some art of your own. Consider creating composite images by including your own collages with natural objects and photographing them, for example. You can even include your own poems as adjoining commentaries.
Expand your mind and your grasp by taking advantage of all the resources at your disposal!
The guy of art.......2000-12-01
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Man Ray (TASCHEN Icons Series)
Manufacturer: Taschen ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 3822855561 |
Customer Reviews:
Good, but not an introduction for beginners.......2002-03-08
This book is definitely not for beginners, not meant to be an introduction to Man Ray. However, it has some value for people familiar with Man Ray, Andre Breton and/or Dada. Think of it as material for art history or food for thought about the time.
Do yourself a favor and don't try to learn about Man Ray from this book or any of the enthusiastic or overblown "reviews" of it. Start with something more comprehensive.
If and when you already know about Man Ray and where he fits, get this book and carry it around when you want to feed your head a little. It is nicely done and fills that need very well.
For those unfamiliar with Man Ray, he is not primarily known as a photographer and never intended to be. It is probably the ease of publishing his photographs that has distracted people to thinking of him this way. Don't miss the rest of his work, especially his writing. Read his autobiography and use his photographs as a "program" to identify the players, perhaps.
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Man Ray: Women
Manufacturer: Damiani ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 8889431326 Release Date: 2006-03-01 |
Book Description
Man Ray found the surreal in the commonplace, particularly in the female form, and this has made his photography some of the world's most accessible and recognizable: his ubiquitous La Violin d'Ingres creates a cello from a woman's torso with the addition of curliqued vents inked on her sides; his classic image of shining cinematic tears glistening on a powdered cheek has been tucked into mirror frames all over the world. This collection of more than 130 pictures dated between 1920 and 1950 covers not only Ray's work as one of the world's leading avant-garde artists--he was a tireless experimenter who participated in the Cubist, Dadaist and Surrealist art movements--but also his commercial work. It includes fashion photography and advertising images; portraits of many artists, including Marcel Proust, Marcel Duchamp and Andre Breton; and a portfolio of 26 Femmes. Art dealer Giorgio Marconi, who met May Ray in 1966 in Milan, contributes an insightful interview.
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Man Ray (Aperture Masters of Photography)
Manufacturer: Aperture ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0893817430 Release Date: 2005-06-15 |
Book Description
Customer Reviews:
kind of disappointing.......2000-12-27
A Good Portal Into the Work of Man Ray.......2000-04-19
The reproductions are good, but not exceptional. Some of the images lacked the glow - the sense of captured light - seen in higher-end reproductions of the images. This slight deadening of the images was most apparent in Man Ray's wonderful solarized photos - images with a which when reproduced well seem to be lit from within.
Art and photography books are perhaps the least suited for e-commerce as we know it today. Some of my favorite images were not in the Aperture books, and I would have been able to see this before buying by thumbing through the book at a traditional bookstore. Hopefully, as technology advances, Amazon will allow us to "thumb through" these books of images on-line, by being able to view all the images electronically before buying.
All in all, this Aperture series is a good, inexpensive place to get started for someone who would like to see representative images of an artist with whom he or she is unfamiliar. They are not by any means comprehensive works, nor do they have the most beautiful reproductions of some of the mostmemorable images of this century. These books are, however, much less expensive than museum catalogs, have intelligent introductory essays, and are printed passably - they serve a valuable purpose in making the work of these photographers more accessible, and encouraging further exploration into an artist's work.
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Self Portrait
Man Ray Manufacturer: New York Graphic Society ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0821217054 |
Customer Reviews:
Entertaining Bio of an Active Artist.......2006-03-05
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Photographs by Man Ray: 105 Works, 1920-1934.
Man Ray Manufacturer: Dover Publications ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0486238423 |
Book Description
Customer Reviews:
Definitely not an "Object to be Destroyed".......2000-02-28
Love this book!.......1999-08-05
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Perpetual Motif: The Art of Man Ray
Stephen C. Foster , and Billy Kluver Manufacturer: Abbeville Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 0896598705 |
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Man Ray Photographs
Jean-Hubert Martin , and Man Ray Manufacturer: Thames & Hudson ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items: ASIN: 0500274738 |
Book Description
"I paint what cannot be photographed, I photograph the things I don't want to paint....I would photograph an idea rather than an object, and a dream rather than an idea." Man Ray's own words suggest the essence of his brilliant, original, and deeply influential photographic oeuvre. Taking up photography in 1915 for the purpose of reproducing his paintings, he earned money doing the same thing for others when he went to live and work in Paris in 1921. This led to one of the most versatile careers in the history of photography, ranging from portraits of celebrated artists, musicians, and writers such as André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie, Arnold Schönberg, T. S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein, to the pictures using light effects outside the camera for which he is famous (cliché-verres, rayographs, and solarizations). These photographs are among the most exciting and revealing manifestations of the profusely fertile artistic impulse that made Man Ray equally celebrated as a painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker. Besides many classic images, the book includes a number of photographs that had never been seen before, including portraits of Virginia Woolf and of Antonin Artaud and a large selection of erotic pictures. They add up to a truly revealing look at Man Ray, Jean Cocteau's "great poet of the darkroom." 347 duotone photographs.
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Man Ray's Montparnasse
Herbert R. Lottman Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0810943336 |
Amazon.com
The Paris dada manifesto of 1921 "Dada Overthrows Everything" posed a dare to posterity: "What does Dada do? 50 francs reward for anyone who finds the way to explain us." Cultural historian Herbert Lottman finds a great way to explain dada: by focusing on its court photographer, Man Ray. Man Ray's Montparnasse brings you into the salons of Peggy Guggenheim and Gertrude Stein, and gives context to his dazzling photos: his naked mistress Kiki impersonating a violin; Duchamp impersonating a woman named Rrose Selavy (pronounced "c'est la vie"); Picasso as a toreador; and Proust on his deathbed, asleep at last, seemingly at peace and in some sort of reverie.If one man's life could sum up the explosively creative international arts enclave Montparnasse in Paris between the wars, doubtless it would be Man Ray. Who else crossed paths with Hemingway, Mayakovski, Calder, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Atget, Satie, Cocteau, the battling bohemians André Breton and Tristan Tzara, and Arno Breker, who wound up as Hitler's favorite sculptor? It was a tumultuously innovative time. The antiwar Swiss loathed the elitist French dadaists; dadaists quarreled with surrealists. Breton broke a writer's arm with his cane because he badmouthed Picasso, Duchamp, and Gide. When Malcolm Cowley punched out a reactionary restaurateur, it was a great career move--his fame spurred his nascent literary career. Apollinaire warned young dada friends against Cocteau ("Don't trust Cocteau! He's a cheat and a chameleon!"), because he was a darling of high society. Eluard said the surrealists would "shoot him down like a stinking animal."
What made Man Ray an instant insider was his skill with the camera and his refusal to join the culture wars. "My neutral position was invaluable to all," he said. "I became an official recorder of events and personalities." "He was like the kid on the block with the guitar invited to everyone's party," writes Lottman. "He lived a double life, dressing for dinner in society, then reassuming a bohemian posture for life among the writers and painters."
Lottman's book is delightful, a quick read that makes legendary names in the history of art come alive as wildly misbehaving young people. When Henry Miller would drunkenly harangue a café, he earned a catcall: "Why don't you write a book?" Reading Lottman, you get a vivid sense of how the overlapping lives in that astounding time and place erupted in art. It's a privilege to be invited to such a historic party. --Victoria Ellison
Book Description
In the years between the two world wars, Montparnasse, on the Left Bank of Paris, was a hotbed of artistic experimentation, social change, and notorious affairs. Man Ray, the renowned photographer, was there to document it all: he took his camera into cafes, salons, artists' studios, and writers' homes, and the resulting pictures provide a singular--and intimate--perspective on this legendary period in cultural and art history.Well-known cultural and social historian Herbert R. Lottman interweaves Man Ray's biography, filled with intriguing stories of artists, models, dealers, poets, and hangers-on, with his stunning black-and-white images of everyone from Picasso, Duchamp, Dalí, and Gertrude Stein to the famed model Kiki, poet André Breton, and Marcel Proust on his deathbed. The result is an enthralling view of that remarkable time and place, a subject that has endless appeal.
Customer Reviews:
Don't do Montparnasse without it, an interesting book.......2004-05-22
Fascinating View of Montparnasse.......2003-05-01
The reader learns about the different bars/clubs that were important. He learns who met where; the locations of various artist studios; and the general feel of the era. The dissent in the da da movement and the surrealist movement was significant.
Man Ray's neutral role in all of this is interesting. Lottman makes it appear that obtaining portrait sitters was one of Ray's primary goals. That along with women and his cars.
I enjoyed the book and believe that there is much to be learned from it. Caveat: If there are historicals errors as the other reviewer mentions, then it is difficult to know what you can and cannot believe.
Shallow Scholarship.......2002-07-02
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Man Ray. Bazaar Years
John Esten Manufacturer: Rizzoli ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 0847810097 Release Date: 1989-01-15 |
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