click destroyer...

#objectotbedestroyed #eye #paperclip #metronome #manray #animatedgif

We’re Still Living in Man Ray’s Shadow

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-art-world/were-still-living-in-man-rays-shadow

Man Ray (American, 1890-1976)
Portrait of Dora Maar
1936
Gelatin silver print (22,9 x 17,1cm)
Private collection

The myth of Dora Maar is one of the more enduring legends of the Surrealist legacy persisting to this day. A personage of wild reputation, she was until recently better known as Picasso's lover than as an artist in her own right.
Today, Dora Maar's artistic career has been resurrected to some degree but she is still more a product of myth than of fact. The popular characterization of her as an intelligent, creative, attractive and emotionally unstable woman stems significantly from her involvement with Picasso.
Dora Maar met Picasso for the first time at the Café Deux Magots, one of the centers of Surrealist café life, in 1935. It was an event that would cement Dora Maar's reputation in Surrealist circles and may very well be the impetus behind Man Ray's portrait of her.
"Pablo told me that one of the first times he saw Dora she was sitting at the Deux Magots. She was wearing black gloves with little pink flowers appliquéed on them. She took off the gloves and picked up a long, pointed knife, which she began to drive into the table between her outstretched fingers to see how close she could come to each finger without actually cutting herself. From time to time she missed by a tiny fraction of an inch and before she stopped playing with the knife, her hand was covered with blood. Pablo told me that was what made up his mind to interest himself in her. He was fascinated. He asked her to give him the gloves and he used to keep them in a vitrine at the Rue des Grands-Augustins, along with other mementos." (Gilot, Life With Picasso, pp. 85-6).
While the Surrealist lexicon was replete with references to hands and gloves, only Man Ray, upon learning of Maar's exploits with the blade, could concoct a composition employing seemingly separate hands and fingers while adding to the allure of this fantastic persona.

#ManRay #DoraMaar #Picasso #art #photography