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Lot 48^*

MAN RAY
(1890-1976)
Mathematical Object (Othello)

The Mind's Eye / Surrealist Sale

25 March 2021, 14:00 GMT

London, New Bond Street

Sold for £15,250 inc. premium

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MAN RAY (1890-1976)

Mathematical Object (Othello), 1936
Gelatin silver print, 'Val-de-Grâce' credit, stamped 'Éditions Cahiers d'Art' and '18 Sept 1936' on the verso.
29.1 x 23.2cm (11 1/2 x 9 1/8in)

Footnotes

Provenance
Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Exhibited
San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, A History of Photography from California Collections, 9 February - 30 April 1989.

In the 1930s, Max Ernst encouraged fellow Surrealist Man Ray to use the models of mathematical equations - objects made out of white plaster, papier mâché, string and metal, on display at the Institut Poincaré in Paris - as inspirations for his own art. Man Ray photographed the models from 1934-1936, using dramatic lighting to bring out their angles, shadows, and grooves. A dozen of the resulting images, including the present work, were published in a 1936 issue of the French artistic and literary journal Cahiers d'art, devoted to the Surrealist object.

In the late 1940s, now back in his native United States, Man Ray based paintings on these photographs which he called Human Equations and those with Shakespearean titles, his Shakespearean Equations.

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