Displaying items by tag: Man Ray

The online retail giant eBay today launched a new section of its website dedicated to live auctions at Sotheby’s. Modern and contemporary photographs by Man Ray, Paul Strand and László Moholy-Nagy are among the works for sale in the first auction, which will be streamed live on April 1. The second sale of New York memorabilia, which includes a ten-foot-tall sign from Yankee Stadium from the collection of the basketball player Reggie Jackson (est $300,000-$600,000), takes place on April 2.

“Modern Alchemy,” a small gem of an exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, is a good reminder that experimental photography did not begin in the age of the digital camera, although technology has certainly helped it evolve. A selection of diverse images, accompanied by thorough explanations of how various photographers worked, starting with Man Ray in the 1930s, supports this idea.

“Today, with digital photography and the iPhone, we’re inundated with images all day long,” said Lisa Chalif, curator of the Heckscher, who began putting the show together about 12 months ago after pondering it for several years. The process, she said, was fun but also quite a challenge. “There’s so much experimental photography,” she said. “How do you define the term?”

"Forbidden Games” is an exhibition of 167 of the 178 photographs David Raymond donated and sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2007. The show, which runs through Jan. 11, 2015, includes works taken from 1920 through the 1940s by such major surrealist and modernist photographers as Man Ray, Bill Brandt, Brassaï and Hans Bellmer, as well as many less well known, such as Dora Maar, Marcel G. Lefrancq and George Hugnet. There are also works by photographers not ordinarily identified with either tendency who nonetheless occasionally took pictures that could be so considered. The images Mr. Raymond assembled make a grand introduction to important aspects of art photography between the end of the First World War and mid-century.

In the late 19th century, Eadweard Muybridge experimented with multiple cameras, fast shutter mechanisms, and tripwires to study animal and human motion. He produced hundreds of plates, including his famous sequence showing that a horse’s four legs all leave the ground at some point when it runs. A few decades later, Man Ray neglected the camera altogether to create his “rayographs,” creating pictures by placing objects on photographic paper and exposing the sheet to light. Taking to the streets in the mid-20th century, William Klein wielded his lens in a rapid and direct manner to capture the raw reality of everyday life. These represent some of the major innovations in the history of photography, explored in "Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century," a new exhibition that opened recently at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

A significant collection of works, never before on the market, by Man Ray will be offered at Sotheby's, Paris on 15 November. This will be the very last opportunity to acquire works by Man Ray coming directly from the studio of the artist, the artist’s estate. Following the first sale of works by Man Ray, coming from the studio of the artist held at Sotheby’s London in 1995, the auction will be the largest and most important sale of works by the ground-breaking artist in nearly 20 years.

As observed by Andrew Strauss, Vice-president of Sotheby’s France and leading authority on Man Ray: “Today’s auction presents a selection of the remaining significant works from the artist’s estate, many of which have never been seen previously.

Two and a half years ago, the Man Ray Trust hung out a shingle in the Wall Street Journal. ‘Come buy our archive,’ the story all but begged. Evidently, no buyer emerged for the 400 works because Sotheby’s has announced that the collection will be sold in 300 lots in Paris on November 15th. This will be the second largest sale of Man Ray’s works following the previous sale of estate works nearly 20 years ago:

At the core of the sale is a group of over 191 lots of  vintage photographs ranging from portraiture and fashion photography, including solarisation and gauze effects, to Surrealist compositions and iconic Man Ray photographs such as "Magnolia Flower" (1926), Starfish (1928), "Ostrich Egg" (1944) and "Mathematical Object" (1934).

This summer the Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents the critically acclaimed Real/Surreal: Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art from June 27–October 13, 2014, in the Center’s Upper-Level Galleries. Focusing on art created between the 1920s and 1950s, the exhibition traces the influence of celebrated European Surrealists on American artists ranging from Man Ray and Federico Castellón to Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth and many more.

Drawn from the Whitney Museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition features more than 60 paintings, photographs and prints. At the thematic heart of the exhibition is the meeting of realism—fidelity to a subject’s observable nature—and Surrealism—artwork that explores the imagination and subconscious in search of deeper realities. “This exhibition seeks to challenge and break down the traditional art historical categories of realism and Surrealism,” says Frist Center Curator Katie Delmez. “The two approaches, while seemingly opposite, do have points of convergence and their juxtaposition encourages new ways of looking at American art of this period.”

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) announced that in 2016, it will unveil its John and Lisa Pritzker Center for Photography. It will be the largest exhibition space for photography in the United States. The museum is in the midst of a considerable expansion, which is being helmed by Snøhetta, a firm with headquarters in Norway and New York. The $365 million project will double the size of the museum.

The Pritzker Center for Photography is being funded by a lead gift from philanthropists and photography collectors, John and Lisa Pritzker, as well as generous donations from four additional benefactors. The nearly 15,500-square-foot center will just about triple the current amount of space for photography at SFMOMA. In addition to increased exhibition space, the center will feature an upgraded photographic study center and an interpretive space that will be the first of its kind in the country.

SFMOMA’s photography holdings currently number some 17,000 objects -- its largest collection in any medium. The collection includes works by Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Man Ray, William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, and the finest holdings of Japanese photography outside Japan. SFMOMA’s photography collection will live on-site, divided between two state-of-the-art storage vault.

The museum’s director, Neal Benezra, said, ““The new center, together with the gifts to our collection, represent a transformative development for our photography program and for the entire museum. We are extremely grateful to our trustee Lisa Pritzker and her husband, John, and to our other supporters, whose vision and generosity will make SFMOMA a global destination for anyone with an interest in photography.”

The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents the exhibition Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis, an interdisciplinary show that sheds new light on the experimental decade of the 1920s in Paris. During that time, Fernand Léger, a French modernist painter, played an important role in redefining painting by engaging with the urban environment as well as mass media.

The cornerstone of the exhibition will be Léger’s The City (1919), which is also a pivotal part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection. The show will include other works by the artist that explore the city theme as well as film projections, theater designs, architectural models, and print and advertising designs by Léger as well as his contemporaries including Piet Mondrian, Le Corbusier and Many Ray.

Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis, presents over 120 works, including loans from American and European public and private collections. The exhibition will be on view through January 5, 2014.

A major step has been taken in the Menil Collection’s master plan to create a “neighborhood of art” on their 30-acre campus. The Houston museum has chosen landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh to helm the expansion, which consists of the construction of six buildings dedicated to art, an outdoor sculpture park, bungalows, and green spaces spread across several blocks. Van Valkenburgh, who has offices in Brooklyn, NY and Cambridge, MA, has redesigned Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House (Washington, D.C.), Brooklyn Bridge Park (New York), Hudson River Park (New York), and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston). The London-based firm David Chipperfield Architects is directing the Menil’s overarching expansion plan, which includes the creation of new green spaces, walkways, visitor amenities, and gallery buildings.

Renzo Piano designed the Menil, which was founded by collectors John and Dominique de Menil, in 1987. The museum houses the de Menil’s comprehensive collection of 20^th century art, which includes works by René Magritte (1898-1967), Man Ray (1890-1976), Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Mark Rothko (1903-1970). The museum also includes a separate gallery dedicated to Cy Twombly (1928-2011), which was also designed by Piano.  

The first phase of the renovation is expected to kick off in September 2013.