Beschreibung:

THE FACE OF MODERNISM: A PRIVATE WEST COAST COLLECTION Man Ray Tristan Tzara 1924 Gelatin silver print. 9 x 6 7/8 in. (22.9 x 17.5 cm) Signed by Man Ray and Tristan Tzara both in pencil on the mount; '31 bis rue Campagne-Première' credit stamp on the reverse of the mount.
Provenance From the artist; to the Collection of Timothy Baum, New York Zabriskie Gallery, New York Private Collection, New York Literature Dover Publications, Inc., Photographs by Man Ray: 105 Works, 1920-1934, p. 69 Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Man Ray, 1890-1976, p. 165 Schwarz, Man Ray: The Rigour of Imagination, pl. 421 The Tokyo Shimbun, Photographies de Man Ray, pl. 226 Catalogue Essay This penetrating portrait is a testament to the collaborative friendship of two great figures in the history of Modern art. The subject is Tristan Tzara poet, playwright, one of the founders of Dada and its leading international promoter. Taken by Man Ray in his early years as the portrait artist of the avant-garde in Paris, this particular print, signed by both Man Ray and Tzara, embodies the deep alliance between the two in the midst of the Parisian avant-garde’s transition from Dada to Surrealism. American born Man Ray immigrated in the early 1920s to what was then the center of art, Paris, and opened his studio at 31 Rue Campagne-Première, where he chronicled the legendary figures of the avant-garde. Visual memory of this historic time is rooted in his brilliant photographs of those who entered his studio; the makers and shakers of art, literature, film, music, dance and fashion. In Man Ray’s portrait of Tzara, the face of the poet is offset by his own black garb. Leaning back against a white studio wall, the infamous provocateur coils his arm like a spring behind his head and boldly addresses the camera. The duality of his gaze is accentuated by a monocle, the distinctive element of Tzara’s persona since he was nineteen-years-old. Though Man Ray and Tzara corresponded while Man Ray was in America, their collaborative friendship was cemented in 1922 when the duo resided briefly at the Hotel des Ecoles in Montparnasse. During this time, Man Ray published Les Champs Délicieux (The Delightful Fields) a portfolio of twelve prints made from his rayographs, for which Tzara wrote the preface: “When everything that people call art had got the rheumatics all over, the photographer lit the thousands of candles in his lamp, and the sensitive paper gradually absorbed the darkness between the shapes of certain everyday objects. He had invented the force of a fresh and tender flash of lightning which was more important than all the constellations destined for our visual pleasures.” While the French Surrealists fully embraced Man Ray and his rayographs for their transformation of ordinary objects into poetic images of the unconscious, Tzara was publicly denounced by the Surrealist leader André Breton It was not until 1929 that Tzara reconciled with Breton. That he was integrated into the Surrealist movement is fully demonstrated by Man Ray’s re-use of this portrait in his famous 1934 Surrealist Chessboard. Read More