Man Ray
1930 (ca)
L'énigme d'Isidore Ducasse, 1920

Tirage argentique
21,9 x 29 cm (8 5/8 x 11 3/8 ins)
 
Baron Ribeyre & Associes
Gerard Levy Photographies de Collection L'Excellence d'un Regard, 20 December 2016, Lot: 93
 
For an explanation - TateGallery, London
(Accessed: 14 November 2016)
Man Ray: L'Enigme d'Isidore Ducasse 1920, remade 1972
 
"A photograph of the original version of the work was reproduced on the first page of the first issue of the surrealist periodical La Révolution surréaliste in December 1924. The accompanying text was a manifesto statement about the importance of dreams within surrealism. It would seem that the photograph of this mysterious object had been selected to encapsulate the surrealists' vision of what lay beyond rational apprehension and the norms of daily reality. In 1932 the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) recalled this particular image when he wrote about the early days of the movement: 'The semi-darkness of the first phase of surrealist experiment would disclose some headless dummies and a shape wrapped up and tied with string, the latter, being unidentifiable, having seemed very disturbing in one of Man Ray's photographs (already, then, this suggested other wrapped-up objects which one wanted to identify by touch but finally found could not be identified; their invention, however, came later).'"
 
('The Object as Revealed in Surrealist Experimentation', in Haim Finkelstein, ed. and trans., The Collected Writings of Salvador Dalí, Cambridge 1998, p.237.)
 
LL/70495