Paris exhibition shows Man Ray’s versatility

PARIS -- Portraits of such cultural luminaries as Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway are on display with such bizarre objects as a blue baguette and a pair of golden lips.

They’re all the work of American-born artist Man Ray, a father of both Dadaism and Surrealism whose taste in art embraced the ridiculous and the sublime. Best known for his striking black-and-white photographs, Man Ray was an all-around artist who dabbled in sculpture, painting and lithography, among other disciplines.

“The Workshop of Man Ray,” on display at the Pinacotheque de Paris museum through June 1, draws on the artist’s meticulously kept archives to bring together an eyebrow-raising potpourri of some of Man Ray’s best- and least-known work.

The show spans the near entirety of the artist’s seven-decade-long career, from an ink drawing he jotted off at age 18 to a pastel from 1971, five years before his death at 86.

The show’s curators say many of the objects have seldom been seen in public before now. Others, such as “Black and White,” the 1936 photo of a woman holding an African mask, are nothing short of iconic.

Much of the later work, done after Man Ray had largely given up photography, cannibalizes his earlier hits. A 1969 lithograph lends a vibrant palette to his famous black and white photo, “Ingres’ Violin,” from 1924.

Fans of Man Ray’s Modernist photographic experiments will find a number of his so-called rayographs, stark black-and-white prints obtained by placing objects directly on photographic paper and exposing them to the light. Some of the objects he used -- including a Slinky, a comb and a bottle opener -- are also on display.

The most unexpected objects in the show include designs for a magnetic travel chess set, the life-sized pair of golden lips and a tiny, sky-blue baguette that adorns the cover of a book of lithographs.

Man Ray was a pseudonym adopted by the artist, who was born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia.