Man Ray's (1890-1976) fury for life and creativity, his taste for freedom, his touch of madness and his fundamental originality blew a wind of modernity into the Paris of the inter-war period, a bubbling melting pot of ardent youth, eager for new heroes and new pleasures, recovering from the wounds of war. At a crossroads, in search of elsewhere and emancipation, a defector like many Americans such as Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Gershwin, Henry Miller and Josephine Baker, Man Ray was attracted to France and its capital, whose vibrant artistic life fascinated people far beyond Europe. In 1921, he joined Marcel Duchamp in Paris, having met him in New York in a circle open to the avant-garde and the Dada adventure.
Man Ray quickly set the capital ablaze and befriended Desnos, Tzara, Breton, Picabia, Eluard... A unique vibrancy, an exceptional alchemy between him, Paris and the 1920s and 1930s broadened his perception, ideas and affects relating to art. Man Ray exercised his thinking in new ways, proposing other models and thinking about the very matter of the artistic experience, inventing new forms of expression between cinema, photography, objects, painting..., practising the arts without exclusion, like so many metaphors for his identity.
An early-watcher, open to all possibilities, he invented other artistic realities and participated intensely in the cultural and poetic effervescence, while joining Surrealism, whose centenary we are celebrating this year.
Violon d'Ingres, Noire et Blanche, Larmes de verre, Elevage de poussières, his rayographies or his solarisation processes with their mysterious and intense presence have become iconic, as have his shots of Kiki de Montparnasse, Lee Miller, Ady or Juliet, Picasso, Picabia, Cocteau, Giacometti, Brancusi, Aragon, Matisse and Stravinsky. For the first time, the creative process was reversed: drawings inspired poems, not the other way round. Paul Eluard illustrated Man Ray's drawings with his pen in Les Mains Libres. A must-see!
From 20/06/24 to 22/10/24
From 20 June to 22 October.
Guided tours of the Man Ray exhibition at 3pm on 28/06, 8/07, 25/07, 7/08, 23/08, 2/09, 18/09 and 5/10
- Base rate : 7€
- Reduced rate : 6€
- Sonderpreis : 3€
Brochures Bourgogne Tourisme
Consult our brochures online or order them to receive at home