Ray, Man

Ray, Man (1890-1976), American painter, photographer, and leading figure in the artistic avant-garde in Paris of the 1920s. He was born in Philadelphia, studied at the National Academy of Design in New York, and held his first one-man show of paintings in 1912. With his friend, the French painter Marcel Duchamp, he helped to found the New York Dada group in 1917. Under Duchamp's influence, he began to work with new materials and techniques, for example, painting with an airbrush on glass and other surfaces. His “ready-mades”—such as The Gift (1921, Museum of Modern Art, New York), an iron with tacks projecting from the bottom—were made from everyday mass-produced objects. He also pioneered kinetic art, works of art with moving parts. He went to Paris in 1921, and developed “Rayographs”, abstract images made by placing objects on light-sensitive surfaces. He also became involved in Surrealism and made art films, including L'Étoile de Mer (1928). The expressive possibilities of photography interested him increasingly, and in California from 1940 to 1946 he taught the subject. In later years in France, he experimented with new ways of making colour prints, and he published an autobiography, Self Portrait (1963).