Page 135 - B-ALL 35 ENG

In 1929, his muse and assistant Lee Miller became his mistress. Their loving and creative relationship allows them to develop the aesthetic potential of solarisation. Meret Oppenheim posed for him in 1934 for a series of nudes that remains one of his most famous. Adrienne Fidelin, in 1936, became his muse under the name of Ady Fidelin and this new love story was closely interwoven with her social and artistic life in the talented environment of Montparnasse at the time. Fashion and its universe will be for him a commercial windfall that will allow him to live comfortably for more than eighteen years.
However, after France’s defeat in 1940, Man Ray of Jewish origin fled the Occupa- tion and joined Lisbon. He sailed for the United States with Salvador Dali and his wife, Gala, as well as the filmmaker, René Clair.
Man Ray stays in New York for a few days before moving to Hollywood where he meets his second wife Juliet. He then abandons his desire to settle in Tahiti to follow in Gauguin’s footsteps and starts painting. He chose as models the mathematical sculptures he had photographed at the Henri Poincaré Institute and gave each of his paintings the title of a book by Shakespeare.
It was in 1951 that Man Ray returned to Paris and, twelve years later, became satrap of the Collège de Pataphysique. The glorious 1930s era, bathed in party and glitter, is well over. It is in the dark humidity of an old garage that he moves in with his wife.
His bubbling genius died out on November 18, 1976 and his tomb bears the epitaph «Unconcerned but not indifferent».
Eye of fashion, insatiable inventor and forever the creator, Man Ray remains in the pantheon of this fabulous Paris of the pre-war years. Timeless ...
Man ray
Hands painted by Pablo Picasso 1935
gelatin silver print 8.3 x 11.1 cm
Paris, Center Pompidou, National Museum of Modern Art / Center for industrial creation, donation in 1994 © Center Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, dist. Rmn-Grand Palais / Guy Carrard
© Man Ray 2015 Trust / Adagp, Paris 2020