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Lot Essay
The present collage was created as the first panel from Man Ray’s original, groundbreaking Revolving Doors series from 1916-1917. Borne out of experimentation for his 1916 masterpiece The Rope Dancer (fig. 1), he began by sketching on different sheets of spectrum-colored paper attempting to create movement, not through line, but rather through the transition of colors. As Man Ray cut out his outlined shapes with a pair of scissors, these scraps of brightly colored paper—intended for scientific diagrams—floated onto the floor of his studio. Man Ray then realized “they made an abstract pattern that might have been the shadows of the dancer or an architectural subject, according to the trend of one’s imagination if he were looking for a representational motive” (quoted in A. Schwarz, op. cit., p. 38).
With this fresh perspective, Man Ray returned to cut out the shapes from the spectrum-colored paper and pasted the individual constructions onto slats of white cardboard. Conceived as a series of ten, the collages constructed from sheets of the three primary colors yielded secondary and tertiary colors. Though physically set in the same flat plane, the eye was forced to view a third dimension created by the layering of the individual sheets of color. Man Ray completed the series in 1917 in preparation for his second one-man show at New York’s Daniel Gallery, which was originally scheduled for January 1917 but delayed to November 1919 in order to include his airbrush paintings. For the installation, he hinged the individual compositions onto a revolving stand, hence the series of Revolving Doors, and then named each work from the series with a “fanciful” title: Mime (the present lot), Long Distance, Orchestra, The Meeting, Legend, Decanter, Jeune fille, Shadows, Concrete Mixer, and Dragonfly.
“While these works did not have the finished and imposing quality of the oil paintings,” Man Ray later explained in his memoir, “I considered them equally important” (Man Ray, op. cit., p. 62). As was typical for Man Ray’s oeuvre and further demonstrates the Revolving Doors significance to the artist, this iconography went through a myriad of iterations beginning as collages (like the present work), transitioning to oil paintings shortly thereafter for a few of the panels.
The present work is from the collection of George S. Rosenthal, a prescient collector, who distinguished himself in the field of graphic design in the early 1950s. As a publisher of Portfolio, he ran one of the most influential graphic design magazines of the 20th century. Rosenthal’s family owned a printing press called S. Rosenthal and Co., and created Zebra Press to publish pictorial paperbacks and innovative, affordable photojournalist books including Weegee’s legendary Naked City. Rosenthal, who was also a photographer, attended Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s school, The Chicago School of Design, and was close to artists like Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy himself. Rosenthal conceived Portfolio as a luxurious and avant-garde publication, bringing together the finest quality paper and printing methods with his new Bauhaus aesthetic inspiration. Alexey Brodovitch, the acclaimed visionary art director of Harper’s Bazaar between 1934 and 1958, served as Portfolio’s Art Director. To maintain the publication’s aesthetic integrity, they chose to forgo advertising, which made it commercially impractical; it lasted only three issues but its impact was immediate and wide-ranging. Portfolio featured art as an essential part of its avant-garde layouts, which Brodovitch and Rosenthal oversaw, including articles on artists such as Francisco Goya and Alexander Calder, as well as a feature on graffiti art. Most famously, Hans Namuth’s cinematic photographs of Jackson Pollock flinging paint upon his canvases appeared in Portfolio’s third issue in 1951.
With this fresh perspective, Man Ray returned to cut out the shapes from the spectrum-colored paper and pasted the individual constructions onto slats of white cardboard. Conceived as a series of ten, the collages constructed from sheets of the three primary colors yielded secondary and tertiary colors. Though physically set in the same flat plane, the eye was forced to view a third dimension created by the layering of the individual sheets of color. Man Ray completed the series in 1917 in preparation for his second one-man show at New York’s Daniel Gallery, which was originally scheduled for January 1917 but delayed to November 1919 in order to include his airbrush paintings. For the installation, he hinged the individual compositions onto a revolving stand, hence the series of Revolving Doors, and then named each work from the series with a “fanciful” title: Mime (the present lot), Long Distance, Orchestra, The Meeting, Legend, Decanter, Jeune fille, Shadows, Concrete Mixer, and Dragonfly.
“While these works did not have the finished and imposing quality of the oil paintings,” Man Ray later explained in his memoir, “I considered them equally important” (Man Ray, op. cit., p. 62). As was typical for Man Ray’s oeuvre and further demonstrates the Revolving Doors significance to the artist, this iconography went through a myriad of iterations beginning as collages (like the present work), transitioning to oil paintings shortly thereafter for a few of the panels.
The present work is from the collection of George S. Rosenthal, a prescient collector, who distinguished himself in the field of graphic design in the early 1950s. As a publisher of Portfolio, he ran one of the most influential graphic design magazines of the 20th century. Rosenthal’s family owned a printing press called S. Rosenthal and Co., and created Zebra Press to publish pictorial paperbacks and innovative, affordable photojournalist books including Weegee’s legendary Naked City. Rosenthal, who was also a photographer, attended Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s school, The Chicago School of Design, and was close to artists like Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy himself. Rosenthal conceived Portfolio as a luxurious and avant-garde publication, bringing together the finest quality paper and printing methods with his new Bauhaus aesthetic inspiration. Alexey Brodovitch, the acclaimed visionary art director of Harper’s Bazaar between 1934 and 1958, served as Portfolio’s Art Director. To maintain the publication’s aesthetic integrity, they chose to forgo advertising, which made it commercially impractical; it lasted only three issues but its impact was immediate and wide-ranging. Portfolio featured art as an essential part of its avant-garde layouts, which Brodovitch and Rosenthal oversaw, including articles on artists such as Francisco Goya and Alexander Calder, as well as a feature on graffiti art. Most famously, Hans Namuth’s cinematic photographs of Jackson Pollock flinging paint upon his canvases appeared in Portfolio’s third issue in 1951.