{"id":69736,"date":"2020-11-23T20:31:26","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T01:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=69736"},"modified":"2021-02-01T10:52:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T15:52:47","slug":"surrealist-women-man-ray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2020\/11\/23\/surrealist-women-man-ray\/","title":{"rendered":"Surrealist Women & Man Ray"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The recent exhibition catalog wo\/man ray: The Seductions of Photography<\/em><\/a> from the Centro Italiano per la Fotografia in Turin, presents a new study on Man Ray’s photography and the role of women as a central figure throughout his art and life. In the opening essay, curator Walter Guadagnini identifies the ambiguous duality of Man Ray’s nature as being the same type of duality found in photography itself; a union of poetry and the document. “Man Ray’s history indissolubly interweaves with a large number of women,” writes Guadagnini, “Woman who almost always have an equally fascinating story of their own to tell–again from a biographical and artistic standpoint.”<\/p>\n

The dichotomy of the “female figure” in the art of Man Ray (1890-1976) is a poetic study of desire, fantasy and sexuality amid known historical documentation, while some figures still remain excluded or too “fringe” to bother with. Wo\/man ray<\/em>, is filled with over 200 portraits, nudes and abstractions, many unpublished before — an inventory mixing the model-muse with extraordinary public figures and woman artists crossing paths with Man Ray in this important era of experimentation and upheaval. Illuminating the female intersections in Man Ray’s circle is an area ripe for investigation and is hinted at in the visual evidence. However the essays of wo\/man ray<\/em> don’t live up to the idea–which was perhaps too grandiose a project to manage.<\/p>\n

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Man Ray, Adrienne Fidelin in Harper\u2019s Bazaar, 1937<\/p><\/div>\n

Rarely seen images of Guadeloupean dancer and black model Adriennne Fidelin (1915-2004), are a delight to see printed in wo\/man ray<\/em>. “More than a muse, Fidelin was one of many individuals and entities who\u2014in a newfound confluence of African diasporic cultures in the interwar period\u2014changed the face of modernism,” wrote historian and Man Ray expert Wendy A. Grossman, in her groundbreaking essay “Unmasking Adrienne Fidelin: Picasso, Man Ray, and the (In)Visibility of Racial Difference<\/a>,” where lost narratives are uncovered — including Fidelin’s attribution as the model for a long forgotten painting by Picasso — a portrait inspired by Man Ray’s photo. Fidelin’s name and history disappeared after the war. “Her relationship with Man Ray failed to survive the separation precipitated by the occupation of Paris by German troops on June 14, 1940, and the artist\u2019s subsequent flight back to the United States to escape the war,” notes Grossman, who is also author of Man Ray: Human Equations<\/em><\/a> and is currently working on a book about Fidelin.<\/p>\n

The subject of nearly 400 Man Ray photographs, Fidelin was also the first Black women to be featured in an American fashion magazine<\/a>,  (Harper’s Bazaar<\/em>) modeling exotic garb and a Belgian Congo hat, at a time when William Randolph Hearst’s racist policy forbid Black women to be a featured magazine subject. Fidelin was also  featured in Black Models: From G\u00e9ricault to Matisse<\/a><\/em>, a 2019 exhibition at the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay, introduced to the curator by Grossman. The exhibition catalog Posing Modernity<\/a> written by Denise Murrell, brought this new context into viewing works of art. “The more you know about the socio-historical context, the more you are able to imagine a variety of interpretations and conclusions,” said Murrell.<\/p>\n