Man Ray: the most expensive art photo at auction ever?

While Ray’s parents expected him to go to university after Brooklyn Boy’s High School, he dreamed of being an artist. And so, much to their disappointment, he turned down an architecture sc­h­olar­ship. Nonetheless his parents helped Ray turn his bedroom into a studio.

While living in New York, Ray frequently visited Stieglitz’s 291 gallery and took classes at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York. Then, in 1915, he met the artist Marcel Duchamp. The two forged a tight bond, discovered the New York Dada movement and collab­or­ated together. But if Ray’s friendships with male colleagues were mutually supportive and a source of positivity, his relationships with women were not.

In 1921 at 30 Ray was drawn to Paris. There he met and made friends with Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Heming­way, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. He also met and loved his assis­tant Lee Mil­l­er, a talented photographer. Theirs was a tumultuous affair that inspired Ray’s readymade works of art.

Ray was showing a provocative attitude toward women in some of his art. And yet, many of the women in Ray’s life, including Miller, loved him long after their romances ended. Such was the case with the nightclub singer, actress, painter and model Alice Prin/Kiki de Montparnasse. In the portrait Le Violon d’Ingres 1924, Montparnasse had a violin’s characteristic f-holes superimposed on her back.

The artist's natural affinity for the Surrealist style. Even before the movement had coalesced in the mid 1920s, his work was influenced by Marcel Duchamp with its Surrealist undertones. He would continue to draw on the movement's ideas throughout his life and was very im­portant in popularising Surrealism with others.

Back in the U.S in 1940, Man Ray stepped off a boat in New Jersey, safe from the Nazi occupation of France. Man Ray had been a signif­icant contrib­utor to Dada, Surrealist and avant-garde move­ments.

In 1948, Ray met Juliet Browner and fell in love, marrying in a double wedding with their close friends, artists Max Ernst and Dor­o­thea Tann­ing. The couple returned to France in 1951, where they re­mained toget­h­er until Ray died from a lung infection in 1976. He was buried in Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.

The famous photograph, depicting his muse Kiki de Mont­parnasse, was rare since it was made when its corresponding negative was first produced. This made it very valuable for photographic experts.

The current record for a photograph by Man Ray was set in 2017, when an original edition of Noire et Blanche 1926 sold for $3 million in Paris Christie’s (see photo above). The Violin photograph is now the top lot to be off­­ered from the holdings of New York collectors Melvin and Rosa­lind Gersten Jacobs, fashion retailers who had deep ties to Surreal­ist circles. The Jacobs bought Le Violon d’Ingres directly from Man Ray in 1962, and kept it. The live sale will be de­dicated to the Jacobs’ Surrealist art collection at Christie’s NY.

Rosalind, a long time Macy’s executive, died in 2019 at 94. The coup­­­­le’s daughter and executor, Peggy Jacobs Bader, said that the works being sold reflected her parents’ playfulness. Highlights from the collection, including works by René Magritte and William Cop­ley, will tour London, Paris and Hong Kong before finally returning to New York. There they’ll be on view at Christie’s Rockefeller centre space, before the May auction.

Man Ray works have sold well at recent auctions. In 2021 200+ objects by Man Ray and artists in his circle was sold from the es­tate of his late assist­ant, Lucien Triellard. Held at Christie’s in Paris, the sales total­led $7.1 million, despite claims from the Man Ray Trust that some art objects were obtained illegally. 

Man Ray, Glass Tears.
1932 photography. Paris. Wiki

There is an irony here. Although Ray worked with different media, he saw himself prim­arily a painter. His American legacy was his photograph­y, which annoy­ed him – even when he died, photography was still considered a 2nd-class art form. Still Arthur Lubow, in Man Ray: The Artist and His Shadows 2021, str­uct­ur­ed his book around those who were closest to Ray i.e photo­grapher-gallerist Alfred Stieglitz and lovers Kiki de Mont­par­nas­se and Meret Oppenheim.  What a talented, well connected man Man Ray was.