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Lot Essay
First conceived in 1917, Decollage III is the 1947 recreation of an earlier important collage, which was destroyed. Man Ray also created a second variant in 1944, the whereabouts of which is unknown, and a fourth version in 1965, now in the collection of the Miyazaki Prefectural Art Museum. In this present version, Man Ray constructed an abstracted female portrait with varying colored paper elements: there is “an opaque greenish rectangular base (for the shoulders) on a black paper background; partially overlapping the green base he pasted a translucent, vertical pink paper rectangle (the neck); and again partially overlapping, a beautiful egg-shape of sky-blue translucent paper (the head); to the left of the head were placed three hairpins, to the right, just touching it, a lock of blonde hair” (A. Schwarz, op. cit., pp. 134 and 136).
On the subject of the work’s ironic Dada title, Francis M. Naumann explains that “the original version of this assemblage was entitled Souvenir. It was subsequently titled Décollage in order to play on the multiple meanings of the French verb décoller, which can mean either to decapitate, or, when taken literally, to unglue, as in the act of pulling something apart. Just as the removal of the head takes life from the body, Man Ray might have reasoned, the act of taking apart a collage eliminates its existence. (Precisely the fate which befell the original version of this work, which was torn apart in the 1940s)” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1988, p. 13).
Souvenir (the earlier version) was included in the notable modern collection of Louise and Walter Arensberg until it was destroyed in the 1940s. The Arensberg apartment on the Upper West Side was the center of New York Dada; the home was frequented by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia as well as Katherine Dreier among others. As Man Ray recalled, “Duchamp brought [Arensberg] around to my place one day; he bought one of my recent compositions of papers arranged in the form of a portrait but without any features” (quoted in Self Portrait, Boston, 1988, p. 62). The Jacobs version was gifted to Roz in April 1957 by the artist and personally inscribed to her like so many others in their collection, which represented decades-long friendships with the artists.
On the subject of the work’s ironic Dada title, Francis M. Naumann explains that “the original version of this assemblage was entitled Souvenir. It was subsequently titled Décollage in order to play on the multiple meanings of the French verb décoller, which can mean either to decapitate, or, when taken literally, to unglue, as in the act of pulling something apart. Just as the removal of the head takes life from the body, Man Ray might have reasoned, the act of taking apart a collage eliminates its existence. (Precisely the fate which befell the original version of this work, which was torn apart in the 1940s)” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1988, p. 13).
Souvenir (the earlier version) was included in the notable modern collection of Louise and Walter Arensberg until it was destroyed in the 1940s. The Arensberg apartment on the Upper West Side was the center of New York Dada; the home was frequented by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia as well as Katherine Dreier among others. As Man Ray recalled, “Duchamp brought [Arensberg] around to my place one day; he bought one of my recent compositions of papers arranged in the form of a portrait but without any features” (quoted in Self Portrait, Boston, 1988, p. 62). The Jacobs version was gifted to Roz in April 1957 by the artist and personally inscribed to her like so many others in their collection, which represented decades-long friendships with the artists.