Getting into the exhibition Man Ray: When Objects Dream at The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork seems like coming into the bellows of an outdated digital camera. By means of an oblong body reduce into the entry, the darkened partitions unfold, accordion-like, to disclose a visible feast of the artist’s work, as Man Ray’s earliest movie, “Retour à la raison (Return to Reason)” (1923), sparkles throughout the display reverse. Though the exhibition brings collectively roughly 160 works from a powerful array of lenders, it reveals itself regularly, taking the viewer via a number of turns earlier than one can grasp its sheer enormity. When Objects Dream proves, thrillingly, that anybody left feeling jaded from the various, many latest exhibitions surrounding Surrealism’s centennial in 2024 can nonetheless see the motion’s key photographer with a contemporary set of eyes.
The exhibition opens and closes with Man Ray’s photographic undertaking Champs Délicieux (Scrumptious Fields) (1922–59) and, vulnerable to being corny, the prints are certainly très délicieux. Although the “rayographs” — pictures taken with no digital camera by immediately exposing objects on light-sensitive paper — dematerialize their objects, turning them into ghostly desires, seeing the works in individual permits one to get better the great materiality of the prints themselves — splashes of darkroom chemistry, whorls of fingerprints, the uneven software of airbrushed paint. Even the creases on the prime of “La femme (Woman)” (1918–20) remind us that these works live objects. This was as Man Ray himself supposed, because the Surrealists continually performed with tactility of their work; the extra interactive options of the exhibition, just like the spinning print turnstile of “Facsimile of Revolving Doors” (1919), likewise honor this precept.
Left: Man Ray, “L’homme (Man)” (1918–20), gelatin silver print; proper: Man Ray, “La femme (Woman)” (1918–20), gelatin silver print
Whereas the exhibition facilities Man Ray’s Twenties rayographs, it exhibits that the Surrealist was a lot greater than a photographer. That is demonstrated not simply by the huge array of media on view — from movie to portray to printmaking to stereography to sculpture to chess and again once more — but additionally via the way in which these works are organized and described by the wall textual content. Man Ray’s cleverly phallic portrait of an egg beater, “L’Homme (Man)” (1918), hangs throughout from his cliché-verre “The Egg Beater” (1923), which seems to be just like the technical drawing for some type of Rube Goldberg machine. The sample of a cheese grater seems in a portray, and reappears as an impression on a rayograph, whereas the movies animate the nonetheless photographic impressions. Man Ray thus comes throughout much less as a photographer — although this stays his best legacy — and extra as an artist-inventor, tinkering away with gentle and objects and having a very good snort all of the whereas.
My one quibble is with the museum’s curious choice to fully omit the phrase “photogram” from the exhibition. (The press launch explains this distinction, although I didn’t see it written anyplace within the wall textual content of the bodily present.) Although “photogram” is the first time period for a picture taken by putting objects on light-sensitive paper, most informal guests will go away the exhibition below the misguided impression that Man Ray’s neologism “rayograph” is the phrase for this apply — although the artist was just about the one one that known as it that. Whereas it is smart to make use of this little bit of self-branding to explain Man Ray’s personal course of, one would suppose that it is perhaps price giving such context for the central physique of labor within the exhibition (Man Ray was not the one individual making photograms within the Twenties, in any case). These sorts of entrepreneurial self-stylings have a protracted historical past in pictures, together with Louis Daguerre’s daguerreotype and Henry Fox Talbot’s talbotype. Man Ray’s work stands up tremendously effectively towards the historical past of pictures writ massive — he doesn’t want The Met to bolster his model.
Man Ray, “Chess Set” (1920), wooden
Man Ray, “Aerograph” (1919), gouache on paperboard
Element of uneven airbrush software in Man Ray, “Aerograph” (1919), gouache on paperboard
Man Ray, “The Egg Beater” (1923), cliché verre (photographic replica)
Element of Man Ray, “La femme (Woman)” (1918–1920), gelatin silver print
Man Ray, “Facsimile of Revolving Doors” (1926), portfolio of 10 pochoirs.
Man Ray, Champs délicieux (Scrumptious Fields) (1922), portfolio of 12 gelatin silver prints
Set up view of Man Ray: When Objects Dream
Man Ray: When Objects Dream continues on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork (5000 Fifth Avenue, Higher East Facet, Manhattan) via February 1, 2026. The exhibition was curated by Stephanie D’Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson.
