News / Art Market June - August 2022
FAMOUS MAN RAY PHOTOGRAPH SELLS FOR RECORD $12.4 MILLION AT AUCTION
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Man Ray’s famous photographic print Le Violon d’Ingres (1924), has sold for an unprecedented $12.4 million, setting a record for the most expensive photographic artwork ever sold at auction.
he surrealist print depicts the slender nude back of French femme fatale Kiki de Montparnasse, Ray’s artistic muse and longtime lover, which he overlaid with a violin’s f-holes. It sold at a Christie’s New York auction dedicated to Surrealist art on Saturday 14th May, after 10 minutes of intense bidding.
It would also characterize his value of the concept and idea behind an artwork over the artwork itself. Inspired by Dada’s detachment from traditional perceptions of art, Ray experimented with “camera-less” pictures which he called rayographs. They were made by placing objects directly onto photo-sensitive paper which he exposed and developed. His works turned everyday objects like scissors and coil into dramatic dream-like visions. He turned the mundane into the ethereal.
This print of Le Violon d’Ingres, one of Man Ray’s most recognizable works, is highly treasured because it is an original photographic copy, likely made around the same time as the photo negative. Andreas Gursky’s 1999 landscape photo, Rhein II, was the previous auction record holder. It sold for $4.3 million, a third of the price of Le Violon d’Ingres. WHO WAS MAN RAY? Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 in Pennsylvania, Man Ray was a pioneer of avant-garde art, specifically surrealist photography, which exploded in the 20th century. His long-spanning career saw him float and experiment with different media, starting as a painter and moving towards the mechanical: film, photography and object-making. His
MAN RAY, wikicommons
Le Violin D’Ingres, wikicommons
photographs are most valued by art collectors, signaling his undeniable mark on art photography.
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 215.
“I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint, and am working directly with light itself.” Quote: Man Ray to Ferdinand Howard, April 5, 1922; quoted in Francis M. Naumann, Conversion to Modernism: The Early Work of Man Ray
Man Ray as a young painter was highly influenced by cubism and expressionism, two movements which dominated the art scene in the early years of the 1900s. His move to Paris in 1921 and meeting with conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp would see him become synonymous with Parisian Dada and artists and writers of the Surrealist scene.
Ray did exceptionally well in the commercial art world during his lifetime, eventually becoming a prestigious fashion photographer. His work is still exhibited and celebrated in Europe and the US, where he made his claim to fame. While Man Ray is most remembered for his photographs like Le Violin d’Ingres, he always regarded himself first and foremost as a painter.
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