Mime belongs to a series of early experimental compositions that anticipate Man Ray’s contributions to the international Dada movement in the late 1910s and the 1920s. While the composition looks deceptively like a collage of cut-and-pasted papers, the artist rendered it entirely in oil paint that he manipulated with a variety of tools. Man Ray used a palette knife to build up the paint, a comb to make the crosshatched lines in fanlike shapes, and a fork to produce the surface in the green form. The overall effect of the composition is deliberately ambiguous, neither mechanical nor organic.
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Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): Man Ray / 1916
the artist (1916–at least 1941; in 1940s to Cadby); Patti Cadby (née Granell) and Peter Cadby, Beverly Hills (in 1946); Patti Cadby, later Patti Cadby Birch and Everett B. Birch, New York and St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (by 1952–1982; their gift to MMA)
New York. Daniel Gallery. "Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Man Ray," end December 1916–January 16, 1917, no. 4.
Hollywood. Frank Perls Gallery. "Man Ray: Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Photographic Compositions," March 1–26, 1941, no. 7.
Pasadena Art Institute. "Retrospective Exhibition 1913–1944: Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors, Photographs by Man Ray," September 19–October 29, 1944, no. 12.
New York. Julien Levy Gallery. "Exhibition: Man Ray," April 10–30, 1945, no. 2.
New York. Whitney Museum of American Art. "Pioneers of Modern Art in America," April 9–May 19, 1946, no. 126 [noted in typed checklist as lent by Mr. Peter Cadfy (sic)].
New York Cultural Center. "Man Ray: Inventor/Painter/Poet," December 19, 1974–March 2, 1975, no. 21 (as "The Mime," lent by Mr. and Mrs. Everett Birch, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands).
London. Institute of Contemporary Arts. "Man Ray," April 11–June 1, 1975, no. 19 (as "The Mime," lent by Mr. and Mrs. Everett Birch, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Recent Gifts: 1982," February 16–March 27, 1983, no catalogue.
Berlin. Martin-Gropius-Bau. "Amerikanische Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert: Malerei und Plastik; 1913–1993," May 8–July 25, 1993, no. 6 (as "The Mime").
London. Royal Academy of Arts. "American Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1913–1993," September 16–December 12, 1993, no. 6.
London. Serpentine Gallery. "Man Ray," January 8–March 12, 1995, unnumbered cat. (as "The Mime").
Montclair, N. J. Montclair Art Museum. "Conversion to Modernism: The Early Work of Man Ray," February 16–August 3, 2003, no. 168.
New York. Jewish Museum. "Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention," November 15, 2009–March 14, 2010, unnumbered cat. (fig. 20; as "The Mime").
Peyton Boswell. "Motives and Meanings of the Modernists." Harper's Bazaar 55 (March 1920), ill. p. 83.
G[eorges]. Ribemont-Dessaignes. Peintres nouveaux, Man Ray. [Paris], [1929], ill. p. 23.
Arturo Schwarz. Man Ray: The Rigour of Imagination. New York, 1977, p. 37.
Lisa M. Messinger. "Twentieth Century Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Notable Acquisitions, 1982–1983. New York, 1983, p. 63, ill.
Francis M. Naumann. "Man Ray and America: The New York and Ridgefield Years: 1907–1921." PhD diss., City University of New York, 1988, vol. 2, pp. 250–55, 257–58, 589, no. 265, ill. p. 780.
Neil Baldwin. Man Ray: American Artist. New York, 1988, p. 60.
Francis M. Naumann. Conversion to Modernism: The Early Work of Man Ray. Exh. cat., Montclair Art Museum. New Brunswick, N.J., 2003, pp. 166–69, 171, fig. 168.
Beth Gates Warren and Marie Difilippantonio. Julien Levy: The Man, His Gallery, His Legacy. [Newtown, Conn.], 2023, p. 492.
Micayla Bransfield in Stephanie D'Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson. Man Ray: When Objects Dream. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2025, pp. 290–91, 296.
Stephen C. Pinson in Stephanie D'Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson. Man Ray: When Objects Dream. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2025, pp. 52–53, 299, colorpl. 17.
Man Ray (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1890–1976 Paris)
1948
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