Man Ray experimented with photographic techniques throughout his artistic career. In this image, the delineation of a man’s muscular torso appears outlined by a bold black line, separating the precisely rendered details of his body from the flat background. Man Ray achieved this effect through a process called solarization, in which an image recorded on a negative or photographic print is wholly or partially reversed in tone. Thus, the photograph possesses the peculiar union of otherworldliness and realism characteristic of Surrealist photography.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Male Torso
Artist:Man Ray (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1890–1976 Paris)
Date:1930
Medium:Gelatin silver print
Dimensions:34.7 x 27.1 cm (13 11/16 x 10 11/16 in.)
Classification:Photographs
Credit Line:Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
Inscription: Signed and inscribed in pencil on print, recto LL: "Man Ray 1930";
Juliet Man Ray; [Prakapas Gallery, Bronxville, New York]; John C. Waddell, New York (January 12, 1980)
Variant reproduced: Man Ray, Photographe, Philippe Sers, Paris, 1981, plate 121, p.113.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 23–December 31, 1989.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 28–April 22, 1990.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," May 10–July 15, 1990.
High Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 5–April 28, 1991.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 8–August 4, 1991.
IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia. "The New Vision, IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia," January 20, 1995–March 26, 1995.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840–1940," June 3–September 1, 2008.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Naked before the Camera," March 27–September 9, 2012.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Modern and Contemporary Art. "Reimagining Modernism - Photographs Rotation 1," July 21–November 16, 2014.
See also: Getty Museum 84.XM.839.4 [Solarized Study of French actor Jean-Louis Barrault]; Baltimore Museum of Art 1988.431 [Untitled]; Elton John Collection
Man Ray (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1890–1976 Paris)
1925
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