Man Ray – an-other Body

Man Ray (Emmanuel Rudzitsky 1890–1976) famous american surrealist-dada painter and photographer used to employ plaster casts in his art compositions by transforming their objective meaning. Never oversimplifying, but researching into the cast a symbolic element to use as a personal media of expression. The body of Venus becomes inanimate in plaster, and returns a body bringing it closer to the real body of a Woman. It is a slight distance with which Man Ray plays with a sensitivity as a Genius of Art.



The same cast of the Torso of Venus returns like a real body in imagination of male’s desire when it is brought tied by a rope in the Venus Restauree (right) of 1936. It takes a new meaning to every re-contextualization suggesting new ways, new visions and new points of view that surprise and disorient as the Venus Head covered by a rope net in Venus of 1937. These originals were lost and then Man Ray, in collaboration with the Galleria Schwartz in Milan produced 10 replica editions. At first Man ray required that the cast was made of synthetic resin with the look of marble by the Atelier Lorenzi, rue Racine in Paris, but then Schwartz got the cast of the Venus in plaster from a n Italian workshop and Man Ray did the assembly and ties the rope.
“In whatever form it is finally presented: by a painting, by a photograph, by an arrangement of various object, or by one object itself slightly modified, each object is designed to amuse, annoy, bewilder, mystify, inspire reflection but not to arouse admiration for any technical excellence usually sought in another Works of Art.”
Man Ray

