In the 1923 silent short of the same title, Man Ray filmed barely discernible scenes of Paris at night along with his own enigmatic photograms and conglomerations of spiraling or gyrating objects. The resulting sequence of near-total abstractions seems devoid of sense or purpose. The “return to reason” in the film comes finally in the form of a woman’s torso—modeled by cabaret personality Kiki de Montparnasse—turning to and fro beside a rain-covered windowpane. Man Ray reproduced the seductive finale, as well as other moments from the film, as photographs, singly and in strips. A still from Man Ray’s film, this particular photograph appeared on its own in the first issue of the key avant-garde journal La Révolution surréaliste, in 1924.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Travis, David. 1976. “Photographs from the Julien Levy Collection: Starting with Atget.” The Art Institute of Chicago. Exh. cat. p. 87, cat. 118.
Ray, Man. 1982. “Man Ray, Photographs.” Exh. cat. Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou/Thames and Hudson. p. 97, pl. 95.
Krauss, Rosalind and Jane Livingston. 1985. “L’Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism.” Cross River Press, Ltd. p. 75, fig. 67
Greenough, Sarah, Joel Snyder, David Travis and Colin Westerbeck. 1989. “On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography.” Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art/The Art Institute of Chicago. p. 288, cat. 227.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Photographs from the Julien Levy Collection: Starting with Atget,” December 11, 1976–February 20, 1977; traveled to the International Center of Photography, New York, April 21-May 29, 1977; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, November 4-December 18 1977; Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 13-Ferbruary 26, 1978; Lakeview Center for the Arts and Sciences, Peoria, Illinois, March 16-April 30, 1978; and Cincinnati Art Museum, November 17-December 24, 1978. (David Travis)
Chicago, Illinois, Art Institute of Chicago, “A History of Photography from Chicago Collection,” April 24–June 6, 1982.
Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery, “L’Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism,” September 14, 1985–November 17, 1985; traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, December 13, 1985–February, 1986; Paris, France, Centre Georges Pompidou, April 15–June 16, 1985; London, England, Hayward Gallery, July 10–October 3, 1986.
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, “On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography,” May 7–July 30, 1989; traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago, September 16–November 26, 1989; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 21, 1989–February 25, 1990.
Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collections, “Americans in Paris: Man Ray, Gerald Murphy, Stuart Davis, Alexander Calder,” April 27–August 26, 1996.
Columbus, Ohio, Wexner Center for the Arts, “Staging Surrealism: A Succession of Collections 2,” September 20, 1997–January 4, 1998.
Paris, France, Centre National d’Art et Culture Georges Pomidou, Galeries du Grand Palais, “Man Ray,” April 28–June 29, 1998.
Art Institute of Chicago, “The Other Side of Light: Shadows from the Photography Collection,” December 1, 2007–February 24, 2008. (Newell G. Smith)
Art Institute of Chicago, “Photography on Display: Modern Treasures,” May 9–September 13, 2009. (Matthew S. Witkovsky, Elizabeth Siegel, and Katherine Bussard)
Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery 10 Permanent Collection Rotation, May–October, 2012.
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