Posted By BillHeise on June 11, 2010

Steiglitz was one of the innovators of the Photo-Secession Group, which gave rise to a school of its own. Affected by the found object, cubist painting style, and other modern art developments, he replaced the ‘objective’ experience with a ‘subjective’ experience at the center of photography.

But he was an innovator. And just like most innovators we judge him for his initial contributions to the new genre of photography. The process of being an innovator means that things that weren’t obvious at all to others. The innovator can make things once obscure, not only obvious, but capable of being imitated and expanded upon. So, just like most innovators, we judge his art for his profound initial insights into the medium. But to find the ultimate expression of the nascent insights of Steiglitz, we need to travel further into the future to a world the Steiglitz intimated the outlines of but never fully grasped in his photography.

We nee to look at the work of Man Ray.

In 1999, ARTnews magazine named him one of the 25 most influential artists of the 20th century, citing his groundbreaking photography as well as “his explorations of film, painting, sculpture, collage, assemblage, and prototypes of what would eventually be called performance art and conceptual art” and saying “Man Ray offered artists in all media an example of a creative intelligence that, in its ‘pursuit of pleasure and liberty,’”—Man Ray’s stated guiding principles—”unlocked every door it came to and walked freely where it would.” (Wikipedia)

His Artistic Career

He was a fan of Steiglitz’s 291, but he was a painter when he attended the avant-garde Armory Show.

The Armory Show was the first exhibition mounted by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors and was run by their president, Arthur B. Davies, Walt Kuhn the secretary and Walter Pach. It displayed some 1,250 paintings, sculptures, and decorative works by over 300 avant-garde European and American artists. Impressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist works were represented.

News reports and reviews were filled with accusations of quackery, insanity, immorality, and anarchy, as well as parodies, caricatures, doggerels and mock exhibitions. About the modern works, President Theodore Roosevelt declared, “That’s not art!” The civil authorities did not, however, close down, or otherwise interfere with, the show.

Among the scandalously radical works of art, pride of place goes to Marcel Duchamp’s Cubist/Futurist style Nude Descending a Staircase, painted the year before, in which he expressed motion with successive superimposed images, as in motion pictures. Julian Street an art critic wrote that the work resembled “an explosion in a shingle factory,” (this quote is also attributed to Joel Spingarn) and cartoonists satirized the piece.

For a look at his overwhelmingly creative career, watch this video. See my comments on some (not all) of his photographs. They are put in order in which they appear, and not by theme. I hope you don’t mind, my readers.

• Artificial tears: this is one of those ‘artificial’-in-’nature’ moments that came to define Man Ray. The ‘objective portion of artistic experience made way for the ‘subjective’ experience, which is in so many ways ‘unnatural’ (0:06).
• Face with parallel native art. This is one of those moments influenced by Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon and the work of primitivist work of Paul Gaugin (0:16).
• Gyroscope with frames of film. This breaks film down from the image on a page to looking at film ‘as it is,’ in frames all at once and not discrete frames that catch our attention (0:22).
• Nudes in negative. This is, once again, the power of subjective representation competing with the objective image. The negative surrounds the nude and isolates in in our vision for special contemplation (0:26).
• This close up of a face plays with the Greek ideal, decentering our attention from the perfect, symmetrical beauty to an ‘new’ perspective on an old subject. (0:38).
• A bubble in a mounted pipe is still, captured in time. This is also a staple of the modernist’s flight from the objective world, with its objects in motion, to the static world created by art (see my post on Seventies music in which I reference Yeat’s Sailing to Byzantium) (0:48).
• A nude with an artificial face, This is a deliberatere-imagining of the classical statue. Like the classic work of art, the woman is missing her head and arms. She is also missing a leg. What classic art cannot supply, the resourceful Man Ray will supply. Only he is not committed to realistic representation, so he paints an imagined face and arms, turning her realistic body into a caricature of the ‘whole’ human experience. I love this (0:51).
• Photographer’s ability to impose images. Two nudes with the photographer’s sprinkling of light. This is another thing that the photographer can do in a darkroom that cannot be captured in real life (0:57).
• The captured moment of a frenzied dance, stopping time, which is something only a photographer can do (1:04).
• Found object: an iron made useless by having nails attached to it. (1:16)
• Nude dancer with head attached, but she is made up garishly. This, too, puts art between natural beauty and the reality that we experience (1:22).
• Decentering of expression. Hand over mouth, but centering on the hand, not on the expression of shame or surprise. We are not sure of the underlying expression, but the whole had makes the picture comlete (1:26).
• Decentering of the face, an image for which human beings have a separate section of the brain for processing. Here the human eye is put on a metronome, a mechanism devised to keep time. This emphasizes the difference between humanity and nature. Nature keeps time and order; human beings seldom do (1:32).
• Lips nearly kissing (?), but not. Too close for normal human contact. Begs the question of why they are so close together. But ours is not to wonder why when it comes to art (1:45).
• A ball reminiscent of Escher against a white background. All the room is in the sphere (1:51).
• Perhaps his most famous work: Muse. The musical woman made out of nude woman and cello parts (1:56).
• Imitation of line drawing in portraiture. So important that there is a feature in Photoshop that does this for you. But back then it was harder to accomplish (2:14).
• Artificial hand using iron. The whole conceit here is artificial.The hand, on closer inspection, may not even be a real hand. Yet the action may still be recognized for what it is (2:22).
• The man himself, Man Ray at home. (2:28).
• Dali moment. The decomposed face, the body of a woman, a chess board. And I like to think that Man Ray has placed a picture of Monument Valley in the background (2:56).
• Pure abstraction of recognizable manmade shapes. The careful observer can see a music stand in front of…what? (3:21).
• Early abstract painting motif of circles. Geometric form abstracted out of life is more important that what the artist is actually photographing (3:28).
• In this picture we get more balance between a headless, armless nude and the shadow of the curtain (3:34).
• Portrait of Salvador Dali (3:40)
• A portrait of Louise Brooks or a Louise Brooks look-alike. More on her tommorrow (3:56).
• Self portrait, not as before, but through the imagery of his life. One of his most famous photographs in the background, a bust of himself, the sphere, the hand photographed at 2:22 now seen for what it is. All these were archetypal images of Man Ray’s life, and they tell the whole story of his life much more effectively than a simple photograph of him at home (4:01).
• Woman seen through a screen (a la Gloria Swanson) (4:21)

The fact is that I am not sure that Man Ray was an innovator in his field. We can find others who have invented each of these developments in modern art. Picasso invents the found object. Dali invents the Dali moment. But Man Ray brings all these expressions into one artist. And of course he was not alone. Other artists had done more with the design of models. Take this guy, for instance, who prefaces his video with warning about this being fine art (in case you didn’t get that) on top of a soundtrack some saying (menacingly, no doubt) “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party?”:

When we look at a modern photographer, we can see the legacy of Man Ray. In this instance, we see the play of more nudes with more and more elaborate shadows. But I still put my money on innovation rather that more elaborate repetition of tired old themes (like artists being threatening like communists, as well as reworking Man Ray’s exploration of themes). The innovator Man Ray garners more of our respect, I think. He is less derivative. This shows (me) that being first counts.

Anyway, here is one last look at one of my favorite photographers.

Categories: Art, History
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