Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
Indestructible Object (or Object to Be Destroyed)
1964 (replica of 1923 original)
Metronome with cutout photograph of eye on pendulum
Not on view
Man Ray made this work in 1923, but transformed it a decade later, following a devastating breakup with Lee Miller—a fellow photographer who had also been his assistant, muse, and model. Distraught, he replaced the original eye with a cut-out from a photograph of Miller’s eye. Though he attached only a fragmented image of Miller to the metronome, the accompanying instructions suggest that for Man Ray, the object was an emotionally evocative portrait. The instructions invite us to create our own Indestructible Object, and then, quite radically, destroy it.
>Cut out the eye from the photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow.
Gallery label from Dada , June 18–September 11, 2006.
Man Ray dated this work 1923, though it was transformed in 1932 when he substituted a photograph of the eye of Lee Miller—a photographer and the artist’s assistant, model, and lover—for the original eye he had used in what was then titled Object to Be Destroyed. At an exhibition in 1957, a group of protesting students took Man Ray at his word by destroying it; Man Ray eventually reconstructed and renamed the work Indestructible Object.
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Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
American, 1890–1976 190 works onlineSo enthused Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky) in 1922, shortly after his first experiments with camera-less photography. He remains well known for these images, commonly called photograms but which he dubbed “rayographs” in a punning combination of his own name and the word “photograph.
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Dada
An artistic and literary movement formed in response to the disasters of World War I (1914–18) and to an emerging modern media and machine culture.
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Surrealism
An artistic and literary movement led by French poet and writer André Breton from 1924 through World War II. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, the Surrealists sought to overthrow what they perceived as the oppressive rationalism of modern society by accessing the sur réalisme (superior reality) of the subconscious.
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