MAN RAY & SHERRIE LEVINE

A Dialogue Through Objects, Images & Ideas

JABLONKA MARUANI MERCIER GALLERY


INTRODUCTION by Marion Meyer
President of the International Man Ray Association
«Man Ray : n. m. synonyme de Joie, Jouer, Jouir» Marcel Duchamp
C’est un réel bonheur de participer à la concrétisation de cette exposition à Knokke-le-Zoute. Ma première venue à Knokke remonte à la
grande exposition de Max Ernst qui fut organisée au Casino. Parmi les convives le grand collectionneur, le Baron Bertie Urvater avait émis
le souhait que Man Ray et Juliette soient présents pour l’événement. Hélas, Man Ray était à cette époque occupé par la préparation de sa
première rétrospective présentée au Musée Boijmans Van Beuningen en Hollande puis au Musée National d’Art Moderne de Paris. Néan-
moins son attachement à la culture belge était certain, notamment par le biais de sa première épouse, Adon (Donna) Lacroix qui était une
poétesse issue de Belgique.
C’est donc avec beaucoup d’amitié que je souhaite un très bon accueil à cette exposition sur le sol belge.
En contemplant les œuvres, n’oublions pas que Man Ray était un homme de « 360° de liberté » !
_____
I celebrate this exhibition in Knokke-le-Zoute with a great deal of pleasure. It brings back memories of the first time I’d been in Knokke, on
the occasion of the Max Ernst exhibition held at the Casino. The Baron Bertie Urvater, a great collector and one of the honored guests sug-
gested that Man Ray and Juliette should certainly be there. Unfortunately it was impossible as Man Ray was at that very time busy preparing
his first retrospective in Holland, at the Musée Boijmans Van Beuningen, later to travel to the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
However, his attachment to the Belgian culture was obvious, since his first wife Adon (Donna) Lacroix, was a Belgian poetess.
Therefore with great happiness I welcome this exhibition held in Belgium.
While looking at the art works, we will remember that Man Ray was for 100% total liberty !
Marion Meyer
President of the International Man Ray Association
 A Dialogue Through Objects, Images & Ideas

In 1918,
Man Ray scandalized the art world when he created his first “…isn’t it amazing that some painters still persist, a century
readymade sculptures: an egg beater and an assemblage of after the invention of photography, in doing what a Kodak can
metal light reflectors and clothes pins, which he presented do faster and better?”1

as photographs entitled Man and Woman. In 2005 Sherrie

Levine re-photographed Man Ray’s Man and Woman pho- Forty years later, when minimal abstract art dominated the
tos, called them her own art works, and re-scandalized the art world, Sherrie Levine “began to use photography as a way
art world of a new millennium. At the beginning of the 20th of introducing representational imagery” back into art. Man
2

century, as a vocabulary of abstraction was being developed, Ray’s career was drawing to a close just as Levine’s career
Man Ray produced a new order of images using the new me- was beginning, but a lively dialogue between this Man (Ray)
dium of photography, and challenged the world to accept and Woman (Levine) exists through the sensibilities they
them as art. share in their relationships with objects, images, and ideas.

ESSAY by Larry List

Guest Curator

Sherrie Levine
After Man Ray: Man and Woman, 2005
Iris print (2 parts)
2 x 48,3 x 33 cm
Edition of 12
LA FORTUNE SHARED FOUNDATIONS

The dialogue between Man Ray and Sherrie Levine was
sparked by chance or, literally, La Fortune, the 1938 oil
painting by Man Ray that Levine “had seen a million times at
the Whitney.” When she saw the painting again, by chance in
Los Angeles in the traveling Perpetual Motif: the Art of Man
Ray exhibition, and yet again in Philadelphia in 1989, she
thought, "wouldn't it be incredible to build this table?" 3
“This table” was a drastically narrowed, elongated carom bil-
liards table ramping up at a precipitous diagonal from the
foreground of Man Ray’s painting. It was supported by only
one visible ornately-turned bulbous, yet spindly, wooden leg.
Set against a grisaille seaside background with a sky full of
brightly colored clouds, Man Ray pictured this deluxe billiards
table as the intersection of “la fortune” – wealth, fortune, luck,
and chance. Like his art, it was a creative game at which one
played, but like chess, it was a game of skill, demanding deep
rational thinking and complex spatial calculations, with suc-
cess depending on creative solutions. Colored the same green
baize as casino tables, it also suggested that even careful
strategy was still subject to a stroke of luck or chance.
Though separated by decades, both Man Ray and Sherrie
Levine had a thorough early education in the latest mechani-
cal and technological means of image-making.
Born in Philadelphia in 1890 and raised in Brooklyn, Man Ray
mastered technical rendering, mechanical drawing and cya-
notype blue-printing while at Boy’s High School in Brooklyn
(1904 -1908). His ability to render enabled him to make his
ideas “real,” long before he had the means to produce them.
His mechanical drawing skills gave him the power to draw
plans for his ideas accurately enough to have them fabricat-
ed by others.
While working in advertising and for McGraw Hill Book Compa-
ny from 1912 through 1918 he learned cartographic drafting,
photo-mechanical reproduction, air brush, and printing pro-
cesses. He taught himself still photography and filmmaking.
With his embrace of the Dada machine aesthetic, Man Ray
made the machine a subject of his art, and made machines
central to his art-making processes.

Perhaps aware of artist Donald Judd’s observation that “ac-

tual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than
paint on a flat surface,” Levine transmuted the image from
4

Man Ray’s small easel painting into a life-size object existing Man Ray
Early Unrealized Chess Piece Profiles, Rendering (Flatheaded Knight), 1914 - 1920
in the uncanny valley midway between traditional sculpture
5

Graphite on paper. 21 X 39 cm © Man Ray Trust

and everyday life. While Man Ray made his table too long,
too narrow, and too tall, Levine did the opposite, making her
1990 edition of six La Fortune (After Man Ray: 1 - 6) tables
identically too short, both in length and height. Just as the
late Kirk Varnedoe had once described Jasper Johns’ encaus-
tic paintings as “Duchampian gestures executed in the style
of Cezanne,” Levine presented her whole edition of six ta-
6

bles in 1999 at the San Francisco Museum of Art in a single

straight row, as if executing the Minimalist serial gesture of
7

Donald Judd’s Untitled (Six boxes) of 1974 but in a Surreal

8

style. From this ambitious initial exercise Levine realized she

had found in Man Ray a lively co-conspirator with whom to
collaborate across the generations.

Sherrie Levine
La Fortune (after Man Ray), 1990
Felt, mahogany, resin
Each: 83.8 x 279.4 x 152.4 cm
Edition of 6 and 1 AP.
Installation view,
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1991 © Sherrie Levine
Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

Man Ray
La Fortune, 1938
Oil on linen
60.2 × 73.2 cm
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Purchase, Man Ray. Early Unrealized Chess Piece Profiles, (Flatheaded Knight), 1914 - 1920
with funds from the Simon Foundation, Inc. Unique contact printed line drawing on commercial cyanotype (blueprint) paper - 23,5 X 39 cm
Accession number: 72.129 © Man Ray Trust MRT21719.17 © Man Ray Trust
Sherrie Levine was born in Hazelton, Pennsylvania in 1947
and grew up in Saint Louis. As an undergraduate and grad-
uate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1965
- 1973), she majored in printmaking.

At that time, Wisconsin had the most technologically ad-

vanced graphics program in the United States. She was ex-
posed to papermaking, bookbinding, letterpress and offset
lithographic printing, B &W photography, and use of a commer-
cial copy camera to make photo negatives and positives for
use in photo-lithography, photo-silkscreen and photo-etching.
Like Man Ray, she too, did commercial art work early in her
career. From school and work she grew familiar with both
9

the processes and the idea that any “artwork” – a drawing,

painting, color illustration, or object, could readily be altered,
re-photographed, re-sized and converted to many different
print media for final display. ”I was really interested in how
10

they dealt with the idea of originality. If they wanted an im-

age, they’d just take it. It was never an issue of morality; it
was always an issue of utility. There was no sense that imag-
es belonged to anybody; all images were in the public domain
and as an artist I found that very liberating.” 11

Seeing the natural, commonplace ebb and flow of images

from one medium to another led each artist, to work in a wide
variety of media: painting, drawing, prints, photography, and
sculpture and to regard themselves simply as “artists” not
identified with any one medium or tradition.

MAKING A GAME OF ART – MAKING A GAME INTO ART Man Ray

1962 Silver Chess Set and Table, 1962-1966
Silver-plated and patinated cast bronze pieces with enamel
This potential for images or objects to be transmuted from and gilt inlaid board, on exotic hardwood table with storage
one form to another led Man Ray, along with his closest artist drawers for 32 chess pieces
collaborator, Marcel Duchamp, to introduce the objects and 60,3 x 141,6 x 9,8 cm
images associated with the game of chess as a new realm of Edition of 5
© Man Ray Trust
subjects for art, equal to the figure, still-life, or landscape.

Further, they considered game-playing to be a performa-

tive art form. Duchamp devoted a decade of his life (1923
– 1933) almost completely to this conceptual, perfomative
expression, while throughout his career Man Ray produced
dozens of advanced Modernist chess sets, each of which he
regarded as a “whole unit, a work of art… a sculpture of many
parts,” and explicitly demanded that they be displayed on
12

their boards or in the presentation cases he carefully com-

posed and designed. 13

He made sets ranging in size from 5 to almost 27cm high

and experimented with affordable editions in wood, plas-
tics, and aluminum as well as deluxe designs executed in
exotic woods, bronze, ivory, silver and gold. In every instance
though, he succeeded in producing designs that were both
pleasing to the eye and to the touch.
Sherrie Levine
Large Check : 7-12, 1999
Duo oil on oak
51,4 x 16,5 x 1,9 cm each
 Still not yet fully understood and appreciated are the beau- Man Ray
tiful mechanical drawings Man Ray made of his designs. He 1962 Chess Set Design Profiles 4445. “Jeu d’Echecs Dessin 4445”
Circa 1960 – 1962
regarded them as finished art works expressing his machine Ink and graphite on paper
aesthetic. Many made during WW II, when good paper was 3 sheets joined with tape
scarce, have the relic-like look of Leonardo DaVinci’s sketch- 20.3 x 68.5 cm
book drawings of fantastic machines. © Man Ray Trust

With the same intensity he devoted to composing a portrait,

still-life, or Rayogram, Man Ray took dozens of photos of his
chess sets arrayed on chess boards, just as his friend Con-
stantin Brancusi photographed arrangements of his sculp-
tures in his studio.

Man Ray’s numerous photos of people playing chess were

intended to document their cerebral creative collaborations,
just as photographs were later used as a form of documen-
tation by the conceptual and performance artists of the late
1960s and the 1970s.

Like Man Ray, Levine felt “…it’s more useful to think of

art-making as play rather than work. Fantasies of aggression
and control have an interesting place there. I think that’s one
of the reasons that I’ve been so attracted to games as sub-
ject matter.”
14

Man Ray
1943 Series I Wood Chess Set and Board on Wood-grain Circular Tabletop, 1943
One of the six gelatin silver prints, three mounted
10,1 x 16,4 cm
© Man Ray Trust
 Man Ray
1943 – 47 Chess Piece Profiles, 1943-47
Vintage gelatin silver print of a drawing
25,8 x 20,2 cm
© Man Ray Trust

Man Ray
1926 Silver Chess Set on Board
with White Circular Tabletop, 1940-45
One of the five silver prints, three mounted
11,7 x 16,5 cm
© Man Ray Trust

Man Ray
1946 Wood Chess Set
on Board and Table, 1947 Man Ray Man Ray
One of the six silver prints, three mounted 1946 Chess Piece Profiles, Circa 1943-47 Chess Set Design with Shaded Profiles, 1946-59
Vintage gelatin silver print Red & black pencil on paper Black & red ink and pencil on paper
5,7 x 10 cm A: 22,1 x 30,4 cm - B: 23,6 x 30,4 cm 27,1 x 34,5 cm
© Man Ray Trust MRT 21719.16 © Man Ray Trust MRT21719.14 © Man Ray Trust
THE ETHNOGRAPHIC BECOMES THE MODERN
THE MODERN BECOMES THE POST-MODERN

Man Ray also participated with a wider group of avant garde

artists in the transmutation of ethnographic artifacts from
Africa, the Americas and the Pacific cultures into the vocab-
ulary of Modernist images and forms. He made many pho-
tos of these ethnographic artifacts for himself and collectors
Paul Guillaume, Carl Kjersmeier and Nancy Cunard, among
others. He posed them in isolation offset by shadows, but
15

also in provocative visual counterpoint with European figure

models, most famously his Noir et Banche, 1926, in which
his model Kiki echoed the form and posture of Brancusi’s
1910 sculpture Sleeping Muse.

Sherrie Levine once said that she liked to “…think of art-mak-

ing as a game… [that] you can control in a way that you can’t
control your daily life.” Starting with her After Walker Ev-
16

ans: 1 -22 series of 1981 and other drawn and painted se-
ries of Modernist subjects, she embarked on the ambitious
“art-making game”. Her goal was to introduce entirety of
Modernist art and Modernist-adapted ethnographic imagery
into the purview of Post-Modernist subject matter.

She continued in this vein with her After Edward Curtis series Sherrie Levine
of 2005, her polished bronze casts of face and body masks After Edward Curtis, 2005
Giclee inkjet prints
(2007-2014), and her African Masks After Walker Evans: 5 x 48 x 33 cm
1 -24 series of 2014. While Man Ray most often pictured Edition of 12
freestanding figural artifacts, Levine, in her ethnographic
subjects, drawn from Walker Evans’ images, has focused on
masks, either worn by their makers or in isolation.

Levine and Man Ray also each share a personal interest in

costumes, disguises, masks and maskenfreiheit, the free-
dom conferred by wearing masks. They each collected and
17

made masks and costumes and photographed themselves,

models, and friends wearing them. 18

Sherrie Levine
Lega Mask, 2010
Cast bronze
33.7 x 20.3 x8.3 cm
Edition of 12
Man Ray
Ady with Bangwa Queen Sculpture, 1934
Vintage gelatin silver print
28,8 x 20,9 cm
Unique work © Man Ray Trust
Man Ray
Simone Kahn, Ca 1927
Vintage gelatin silver print
8,2 x 5,9 cm
Unique work © Man Ray Trust
 Sherrie Levine
African Masks After Walker Evans: 1 - 24, 2014
Giclee inkjet prints (images sizes vary)
24 x 48,3 x 33 cm
Edition of 12
FIGURATION & GRIDS
EROTIC SUBJECTS & SENSUOUS MATERIALS
In order to lend greater visual weight and impact to her series
of relatively small-scale images (scaled to the size of their
color plate reproductions in art books, or actual “found” post-
cards) such as After da Vinci (2013), Levine often presents
them identically framed and arrayed in grids - usurping the
19
format that the Minimalists had painstakingly emptied of all
outside references and filling it back up with historical, rep-
resentational images.
In the creation of her 1996 nine-part Cathedral series, based
on Impressionist Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral façades
dematerialized into daubs of color, and her 2007 After
Sherrie Levine
After da Vinci, 2013
Giclee inkjet prints
18 x 25,5 x 20,3 cm
Edition of 6
Cézanne, of his landscapes paintings built of blunt, chiseled
prismatic brushstrokes, Levine generated the doubled effect
of a grid-within-a-grid. With a digital pixel averaging algorithm,
she broke down each grid square of Monet’s and Cezanne’s
images to its one average color and digitally "stitched" it to-
gether with its surrounding squares.
Levine arrived at a figural image embedded almost imper-
ceptibly in an abstract color grid pattern. She has described
much of her work as the desire to “put a picture on top of a
picture so that there are times when both pictures disappear
and other times when they’re both manifest; that vibration
is basically what the work’s about for me – that space in
the middle where there’s no picture, rather an emptiness, an
oblivion.”20 21
Sherrie Levine
Cathedral (9 parts), 1996
Iris print
9 x 86,4 x 71 cm
Edition of 10
 Sherrie Levine
After Cézanne, 2007
Iris print
18 x 22,3 x 28 cm
Edition of 12

Interestingly, these post-modern digital works of Levine’s

bear a striking resemblance to one of Man Ray’s earliest
known artworks, Tapestry of 1911.

This patchwork had figural origins too - as clothing scraps

from the artist’s father’s tailor shop which Man Ray broke
down into arbitrary abstract squares and literally “stitched”
into an abstract grid pattern.

Man Ray regarded the chessboard grid as the “the original

goal of all graphic art…a field for clear thinking, impromp-
tu imagination, surprise, planning for the abstract” and the
22

“basis of all painting…”

He intended his chess sets and chessboards to be sepa-

rate works of art, even when they happened to be the same
scale and could be photographed or played with in combina-
tion. Many of his chessboard grid inspired works, such as
23

Tapestry, Knights of the Square Table (1961), and the Giant

Chess Board Painting were made of non-traditional materi-
als - cloth, silkscreened plastic, framed hard woods, plastic
contact paper and/or painted plywood.

Man Ray
Giant Chess Board Painting - Jeu d'échecs géant, 1961
Contact Paper™ and oil paint on plywood panel
98 x 98 cm
© Man Ray Trust

Man Ray
Tapestry, 1911
Cloth patchwork sewn onto canvas
210 × 151.8 cm
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris France
© Man Ray Trust
Levine, too, has “… always been attracted to grids. The Da-
daists and Surrealists were very interested in games... for
the same reasons I am. And they were also interested in the
language around play. The chessboard was a classic icon for
them… that was another thing that attracted me.” 24
Levine rivals Man Ray in the number of game-board-like grid
paintings she has made of eccentric materials. Just as the
early Christian icon painters painted on wooden panels, not
canvas, Levine has always painted her chessboard icons on
actual boards. She makes a pun of “game board” by con-
flating her subject, an actual game board, with the material
“board” on which the image is painted. With odd formats and
half squares, they are boards for un-playable games. Their
identities hover between being “useless” art images and the
useful objects they allude to in real-life. They are boards, and
“not boards,” just as her plywood Knot Series are. Untitled
(Lead Checks…) with the 8 x 8 grid of chess, and Untitled
(Lead Chervon…), suggesting backgammon patterns, both
1985 series were painted with casein on lead plates. A pair
of series, the Large Check: 1-6, and Large Check: 7-12, each
of 1999, consist of 6 panels 13 ½ squares tall x 4 ½ squares
painted with Duo Oil paint on solid oak panels in dazzling
pairs of colors. Still others are executed on mahogany.
The eccentric proportions and half squares across their bot-
toms and right sides imply that they are cropped portions
of limitless color grid fields of an unidentified, but infinite
game. A Red and Grey Check series, 2000, are 12 square by
6 ½ square units in oil paint on aluminum. The cropping on
these too suggest that they are not so much complete indi-
vidual paintings but, that they represent the entire genre of
all possible grid paintings.
It is significant that Levine, with her professed view of art- mak-
ing as a game, entitled these works “Checks.” In chess, the
process of “checking” one’s opponent is a climactic, critical
point of the game, but is not necessarily the end of the game.
Man Ray loved chess as a subject because, as the game of
war and love, it enabled him to contrast the rational and ab-
stract with the erotic and representational. His Giant Chess
Board Painting is another “picture on top of a picture.” Half
buried by the central white grid squares is what appears to
be a dancing female figure, naked from the waist down. How-
ever, if the work is rotated 90 degrees, with a white square at
the bottom right, as chess players would view a chess board,
the figure is no longer dancing but supine, her spread legs
and naked pelvis occupying exactly the central squares most
crucial to achieving a “conquest” when playing chess, adding
a tantalizing distraction to any players trying to calmly plot
their next moves. Levine strikingly expanded this contrast
25
of the rational and abstract with the erotic and representa-
tional in her 1984 show, entitled 1917 at Nature Morte Gal-
lery, in New York, when she generated considerable frisson
by exhibiting her versions of Kazimir Malevich Suprematist
abstractions juxtaposed with her copies of Egon Schiele’s
masturbatory self-portraits.
Man Ray made the eroticism that is implicit in the naked
dancing figure in the Giant Chess Board Painting explicit
with his Mr. and Mrs. Woodman mannequins of 1947. The
coupling wooden male and female figures trapped in a box Man Ray
accompany a bound folio of twenty-seven gelatin silver pho- Mr. and Mrs Woodman
tographs of the duo in suggestive Kama Sutra poses. The Wooden mannequins in a bound, signed box
with 27 gelatin silver prints, 1970
1970 re-presentation of the 1947 photos as an edition of a 30,5 x 25 x 6,5 cm
subject addressed earlier is yet another example of the Man Edition N°A.P.
Ray’s attitude “to create is divine; to reproduce is human.”
26
© Man Ray Trust
 Man Ray
Mr. and Mrs Woodman
27 gelatin silver prints
in a bound volume, 1970
30,5 x 25 x 6,5 cm
Edition N°A.P.
© Man Ray Trust
 Man Ray
Le Cadeau / Gift - series II, 1921 - 70
Patinated bronze
17 x 10 x 10 cm
Edition N°A.P. Schwartz 11 ex
© Man Ray Trust
“…MORE THAN ONE FACTOR, AT LEAST TWO…”
Man Ray and Sherrie Levine also have a shared sensibility
in their use of objects in the creation of three-dimensional
artworks. Almost a decade before the Surrealists, Man Ray
adopted the strategies of the readymade and the found ob-
ject, regarding everyday articles as a new source of “raw ma-
terials” from which to make new art.
Levine then adopted and modified this approach under her
rubric of appropriation. As with chess, ethnographic images,
and the pantheon of Modernism, objects from the outside
world, originally made by others, could be re-cast into works of
art by changing their context and presentation. The art-mak-
ing process became a form of connoisseurship, transforming
the artist from being a “maker” into a “chooser” - drawing the
artist closer to the role of the curator or collector.
Man Ray posited that his “…attitude toward the object was
different from Duchamp’s for whom retitling an object suf-
ficed. I need more than one factor, [I need] at least two.
Two factors that are not related in any way. The creative act
for me rests in the coupling of these two different factors
in order to produce something new, which might be called
a plastic poem.” Levine acknowledges that though her
27
"…art comes out of the Dada tradition…there's no such
thing as a neutral material that's devoid of association.” 28
Her works, though “…very complicated…, can be read icono- But does this enigmatic work issue a threat of violence to women or a warning to men of the dan- Sherrie Levine
graphically.29
ger of women? Man Ray had relationships with many strong, independent-minded women, among Cadeau, 2006
Polished bronze (2 parts)
them Adon Lacroix, Kiki of Montparnasse, Meret Oppenheim, and Lee Miller. If viewed through A: 15,2 x 10,8 x 8,9 cm
And so, one might try to read an icon of Dada, Man Ray’s the rearview mirror of a millennial feminist sensibility one might wonder if Man Ray, as if an idiot B: 14 x 12 x 5 cm
found object sculpture Cadeau (or Gift), originally designed savant, may have prophetically crafted an icon that even offers an alternate reading of feminist Edition of 12
in 1921 and editioned in 1970, along with Levine’s 2006 rebellion, resistance, and rejection of men.
Cadeau. Duchamp asserted that designating a useful object
a readymade or a found object made it useless. Man Ray Levine’s Cadeau has two factors as well – the retriever and the flat iron. However, the two factors
“...made useless objects with useful titles,” and their use-
30
actually become three: the iron, the retriever, and the bird offered by the retriever. How do the el-
lessness then became one of their defining characteristics ements relate? Does the dog represent an artist? Are both seekers, “choosers?” Each has chosen
as art. Man Ray’s Cadeau is an ultimate expression of this an object from daily life, retrieved it, rendered it "useless" and offered it for approval.
“utility/futility” dynamic.
The artwork becomes the gift/cadeau. The iron stands blank, mute, and immovable. Its mir-
A flat iron and a handful of tacks are Man Ray’s two factors, ror-like surface reflects the artist’s gift with no hint of appreciation, suggesting a tableau of de-
“not related in any way,” though both are domestic objects and
31
sire for acceptance met with rejection, not unlike the initial responses both Man Ray and Sherrie
both are used to hold things down. The vertical line of tacks re- Levine experienced when they offered their radical new art forms as gifts to the art world.
lates to the similar line of clothespins (also used to hold things)
that appear in his the photo of the first found object sculptures,
Woman, of 1918 that Levine re-presented in 2006.
With the application of the tacks, Man Ray turned the do-
mestic female tool for smoothing things out into a menacing
weapon with which to tear things up. Author Janine Mileaf
points out that “the arched or cavelike shape, presumed
weightiness, and projecting teeth echo the derogatory motif
of the female sex as vagina dentata, a dark cavern with a
harmful threshold.” 32
Another work that evidences Levine’s ties to the Dada tra-
dition is her 1996 cast aluminum and rubber edition of a
tricycle. It is entitled Hobbyhorse, an English translation for
the French word “Dada” that was chosen at random from a
dictionary to be the art movement’s name. 33
Dada replaced the natural with the mechanical as art, just
as the tricycle supplanted the hobbyhorse in the realm of
play and as the motor car replaced the horse in the realm
of work. Though tricycles offer children their first real free-
34
dom of movement, Levine's mechanical Hobbyhorses, with
their elegant brushed aluminium finishes, often exhibited
on a series of small plinths, generate ghostly hall-of-mir-
ror reflections of each other yet assume an air of arrested
movement. 35
Levine’s The Three Muses and The Three Furies, each in-
with energy, manically animate and expressionistically gro-
tesque. A play between subject and form, each work presents
exactly the same subject three times but without repeat-
ing exactly the same form. Though each group suggests a
father-mother-child family, origins contradict appearances
since both the Muses and the Furies were groups of sister
figures.
With her interest in the implication of expansion in any re-
peated form, Levine may have chosen The Three Muses as
a subject, because in subsequent re-writings of mythology
they multiply to eventually become as many as nine muses.
With her concern in representation and re-representation,
The Three Furies may have been attractive because their
initial mythological role was to police the mis-representa-
tion of facts, stories, and the natural order of things. 37

spired by objects found at Santa Fe antiques markets, 36

were presented in 2006, at the same time as her Cadeau. Initially, the Furies did not have well-defined visual appear-
A study in contrasts, The Three Muses are dense, concentrat- ances, which would explain the metamorphic look of these
ed masses - stolid and static, while The Three Furies, explode objects Levine has fashioned.

Sherrie Levine Sherrie Levine Sherrie Levine

Hobbyhorse, 1996 The Three Furies, 2006 The Three Muses, 2006
Cast aluminium, rubber Cast bronze Cast bronze (3 parts)
69 x 89 x 48 cm A: 23.5 x 31.7 x 12.7 cm A 13 x 23,5 x 12 cm
Edition of 12 B: 36.2 x 20.3 x 24.1 cm B 12 x 17,8 x 10,8 cm
C: 30.5 x 35.5 x 21.7 cm C 10,4 x 17,8 x 8,2 cm
Edition of 12 Edition of 12
 Man Ray
Le Fou, 1970
Silver-plated bronze
20,5 x 14 cm
Edition of 9
© Man Ray Trust
Man Ray did so in his 1947 Eccentric Chessboard, composed
of a grid of rectangles, not squares; as did Levine with her
1999 Large Check series of vertically stretched and cropped
game board paintings mentioned above.
ENLARGED, ELONGATED AND RELATED
In the realm of objects, Man Ray exploited this “stretch/com-
In their commercial art work, both Man Ray and Sherrie press” technique to great advantage in his enlarged, elegant
Levine became familiar with the practice of systematically silver chess piece Bishop, Le Fou, of 1970, which is based
compressing or stretching an image on its horizontal or ver- on the 1962 chess set design discussed earlier, and Proverb,
tical axis to fit it into a layout or exaggerate it for effect. They which was originally conceived of in 1944 then produced as
both later used this effectively in their art. an edition in 1973.
Man Ray
Proverb, 1944-73
Silver and wood
32 x 15 x 14,5 cm
Edition N°A.P.
© Man Ray Trust
Proverb has a rigid, silent pendulum blade frozen in an obe-
lisk form that is a horizontally compressed version of the
metronome in the artist’s 1922 Object to be Destroyed. Prov-
erb also echoes the pyramid form of the King piece of Man
Ray’s 1920 and 1926 chess sets. In the fashioning of his
“plastic poems,” puns and acrobatic wordplay were often cru-
cial additional “factors.”
In this case, possibly finding this object more expensive than
he’d like, the artist commented that “choosers can’t be beg-
gars,” reversing the standard maxim, identifying the artist as
38
a “chooser,” and creating his own new Proverb in the process.
Permanent Attraction, first created in 1948, is pictured, ti-
tled and signed in this rare photograph along with Man Ray’s
Alphabet for Adults, 1948, and To Be Continued Unnoticed,
the catalog for his 1948 exhibition at the Copley Galleries in
Hollywood. The Permanent Attraction, editioned in 1971, fea-
tures vastly enlarged and elongated chess pawns and Queen,
and at first suggests a simple, trophy-like tribute to the art-
ist’s life-long love of chess.

However, as a combination of the abstract grid and the figur-

al/erotic, the pieces may also suggest female breasts and an
enlarged male member, or every chess-player’s dream, the
chess achievement of pawn promotion, the gender and role
transformation of a lowly pawn into an all-powerful Queen if
the pawn successfully penetrates the hindmost rank of the
opponent’s domain on the chessboard. One could consider
Levine’s entire œuvre as a meta-gesture of “pawn promotion”
is that she pushes her ideas to their extreme endpoint in or-
der to re-gender the works of dead male artists into those of
a living female artist, Levine, herself.

SIMPLE, SWEEPING GESTURES

Man Ray and Sherrie Levine have each produced other works
by adeptly employing the “choosing” and manipulation strat-
egies of the Readymade and the found object.

Arturo Schwarz cites Sculpture by Itself II as one Man Ray’s

“first ‘interpreted Found objects’ …where we find Man Ray’s
creative method at its most economical: a slight modification
of a mundane object is sufficient to transmute it into a poeti-
cal creation.” Man Ray anticipated his future photos of Afri-
39

can sculptures by displaying this abandoned wooden assem-

bly template as a totemic abstract figural form. He executed
a precise mechanical drawing of it on the wall of his studio,
in white lines on a dark wall, like the commercial blueprint
he made of his early chess set drawing. 40

He also laid the original wooden piece down flat onto a piece
of illustration board, along with drafting curves and hand
tools, and used it as a stencil to spray paint around with a41

commercial art airbrush - creating a drawing with “...a pho-

tographic quality...” presaging his future development of the
42

Rayogram photo technique. Hence, he made this "useless"

object assume three roles, that of: a sculpture; a model; and
a drawing tool.

Man Ray

Sculpture By Itself II, 1918-1966

Vermeil
59 cm height
The model - Unique piece
© Man Ray Trust

Permanent Attraction, 1948

Gelatin silver print
24,6 x 19,7 cm
MRT 20629.39 © Man Ray Trust
Levine has also produced work that Schwarz might term an
‘interpreted Found object’ as he described Man Ray’s Sculp-
ture By Itself II, above. Levine once explained that “the pic-
tures I make are really ghosts of ghosts; their relationship to
the original images is…three or four times removed.” 43

Among these ghosts are related series of 2-D works Levine

has made since 1985, among them: her Large Gold Knots;
her Lead Knots; and her Large Pink Knots. These works may
indeed be ghosts of paintings. All are typical sizes of paint-
ings and are simply framed as if they were paintings. How-
ever, like Man Ray’s works, they function as visual puns and
present a number of paradoxes or contradictions.

Instead of being traditional stretched canvases covered with

painted images, patterns, or gestures they are a non-tradi-
tional material for art – plywood panels. Though uncommon
44

as art material, this plywood made from fir trees is the most
common utility grade building material in the United States.
It is as common to building and everyday-life as canvas is
to painting. In fact, in her Large Pink Knots Series, Levine
adopts the uncut 244 x 122 cm, or 96 x 48 inch size panels
that are the standard “sheet size” used in all construction
in the United States. Proportion-wise, it is the everyday-life
building equivalent to the “golden section” in design and
painting composition. In its unaltered 96 x 48 inch size sheet,
it indeed becomes a found object or Readymade. In building
houses, plywood is used for “framing” and for “closing in” –
cladding a building structure, but in Levine’s case, it is the
plywood itself that is framed and closed in, instead. Framing
the plywood prevents it from being built into anything useful,
hence further defining it with the “utile/futile” characteristic
of the Readymade.

This plywood is produced by peeling thin, consistent veneer

layers off of a length of a tree trunk with a machine. Wherev-
er there were branches, knots appear. These are cut out of
the veneers and in-filled with a generic abstract pointy-end-
ed ovoid shape of the same veneer. Levine allows this nat-
ural chance operation process to pre-determine the layout
of these shapes which she then clads with the alchemical
elements – either gold or lead metallic paint, or she replaces
the organic wood with the inorganic - acrylic plastic paint.
Instead of painting an elaborate image or abstract design
on the panel, Levine again allows chance to pre-determine
the vivid, endlessly varied wood grain patterns as her com-
positions. Just as Man Ray’s contemporary, the Belgium Sur-
realist Magritte created a painting that declared “Ceci n’est
ne pas une pipe,” Levine presents a ghost that is “knot” a
painting and both is fir and is not fur.
45

Sherrie Levine
Large Pink Knot 5, 1985/2003
Acrylic paint on plywood
244 x 122 cm
Man Ray’s Square Dumbbells or Haltères is another work
predicated upon contradictory wordplay, and manipulation
of a found object to arrive at the “utility/futility” dynamic dis-
cussed above in regard to Cadeau.

The artist seized upon the contradiction inherent in the word

“dumbbell”: dumb, meaning mute, or silent; and bell, a hollow
metal form that creates a musical note when shaken. When
originally conceived of in 1944, the artist found a pair of wood-
en dumbbells, which typically had a round ball-form at each
end of their handles. A clear pattern of saw cut marks on the
1944 solid ebony originals indicate that the artist had the ball-
forms cut off so they could not reproduce (a sound), then nest-
ed them into individual form-fit pockets inside a velvet-lined
wooden box so they “wooden/wouldn’t” ring.

Man Ray freezes Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase by

photographing it in black and white while Levine brings the work
back to life again by the simple gesture of assembling a grid of
color postcard reproductions of the Duchamp piece, each with
minute differences of color and focus.

The repeated images flicker across the wall suggesting film

frames animating the subtle shifts in motion that Duchamp cap-
tured in his painting and creating a rich chromatic chord of what
the artist refers to as “the almost same.”
46

Man Ray
Square Dumbbells/Haltères, 1944-66
Silver dumbells presented
in a wooden box lined with velvet
22,8 x 4,4 x 4,4 cm
Edition of 18
© Man Ray Trust

Man Ray
Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp, ca.1920
Gelatin silver print
29,1 x 17,2 cm
© Man Ray Trust
Sherrie Levine
After Duchamp: Nude Descending a Staircase, 2012
Original color postcards
Each: 50.8 x 40.6 cm
Overall: 152.5 x 244 cm
Man Ray
Obstruction, 1920/1964
65 wooden coat hangers with original suitcase
110 x 120 x 120 cm
Master before Arturo Schwarz Edition
Unique piece with 65 coat hangers
© Man Ray Trust
Right page :
Installation view of
"Le Surréalisme et l'Objet", 2013-14
Centre George Pompidou, Paris FRANCE
© Centre Pompidou-Mnam-Bibliothèque
Kandinsky-Georges Meguerditchian
In the 1920 found object work Obstruction Man Ray turns
repetition into a chain reaction.
Originally made eleven years before Alexander Calder’s first
documented Mobiles, the work is formed by the repetitive
action of linking one coat hanger to another, but it expands
rather than simply repeats, implying a potential progression
to infinity. Obstruction is fixed at points, yet constantly shift-
ing in its relationships, one part to another. Originally intend-
ed to be hung in a doorway, it is an airborne kinetic counter-
point to Marcel Duchamp’s Trebuchet, (a name derived from
the French chess term for trap) also a coat rack obstruction,
but one immovably mounted to the floor.
Each of these works exerts a strong sense of Dada absurdi-
ty, since hanging up a guest’s coat is a gesture of hospital-
ity contradicted by the imagined coat either being hung in
the doorway, preventing the visitor’s entrance, in Man Ray’s
case; or flat in the middle of a messy studio floor, in Du-
champ’s case. Made during a period when Man Ray was ac-
tively playing chess, Obstruction can also suggest a chart of
the trajectories of a chess game slaloming from side to side
toward an eventual endgame checkmate.
It is a repetition, it is a series, yet not at all a grid.
The fetishistic nature of much of Man Ray’s art is widely ac-
knowledged and Levine readily concedes that her work too
“…has always been very self-consciously about fetishism.”
Her first New York gallery event, held in 1976, was not an
exhibition but a sale of what she acknowledged as “the ul-
timate fetish object,” shoes. Levine has covered fetishes
48 49
Though Sigmund Freud is said to have stated that “some-
times a cigar is just a cigar,” Levine’s Fedora, transposed
47
from soft warm felt to cold hard bronze, is not just a hat, even
though slavishly accurate in its details. In fact, the ultimate
sleight-of-hand illusion Levine performs is convincing us to
believe the hat is a fedora when the perfectly rolled up edge
of its brim defines it as a homburg, the style of hat that
51

almost literally from head to toe, finally producing a life-size Freud himself was most often often pictured wearing. 52

cast bronze edition Fedora, in 2011. Man Ray had photo-

graphed women’s hats as soft and suggestive as a woman’s
sex while Levine hardened her man’s hat into a shiny helmet
but left the traditional deep cleft in its crown.

Levine’s Fedora is similar to her description of her 1991 Foun-

tain (After Marcel Duchamp) cast bronze urinal “…an object
that has a function so closely identified with men, but the
form is so feminine…” Like a magician performing hat tricks,
50

Levine uses the work to offer a light, bright counterpoint to the

iconic dark, matte black bowler hats in the works of Magritte
and to the signature grey felt hat always worn by artist/sha-
man Joseph Beuys (a man wearing a Beuys/boy’s hat!).

Sherrie Levine
Fedora, 2011
Cast bronze
12,7 x 29,2 x 25,4 cm
Edition of 12
Sherrie Levine Sherrie Levine
Green Skull, 2012 Phrenology Cranium, 2006
Crystal glass Plated bronze
14 x 18 x 11 cm 25,4 x 15,2 x 17,8 cm
Edition of 12 Edition of 12
In 1993 Levine presented her work, Newborn, frosted glass
casts of Constantin Brancusi’s sculpture of the same name
depicting a highly abstracted baby’s head. Brancusi produced
his first version in marble, in 1915 followed by a bronze re-in-
terpretation in 1920. Brancusi’s Newborn was the same size
and shape as the large ostrich egg that Man Ray kept in his
studio and repeatedly photographed. In a cradle to grave
counterpoint to her Newborn, Levine has more recently of-
fered Jawbone, Phrenology Cranium, a series of frosted cast
glass Skulls and series of animal skulls and skeletons.
Levine has professed her love of grids as universal systems
of geometric. She has stated that her work is a “commingling
of the anthropomorphic and the geometric” so, her skulls
53
and skeletons express a countervailing fascination with uni-
versal systems of anthropomorphic structuring.
With concern for both the cerebral and the sensory, Levine
may have chosen these subjects because the head is both
the center of our higher abstract reasoning and the center of
our direct sensory experiences – sight, smell, taste, hearing
and touch.
The skull is the head devoid of life and emptied of its sensory
processing faculties, however. It can be read as the symbol-
ic transition point from life and time as we know it, to an
unknown and possibly unknowable eternity - a limitless grid
writ large? The artist sets up a tension between the worldly
opulence that the polished bronze and cast glass suggest
and the references to the ascetic tone of classical memento
mori, which encourage giving up worldly luxuries since death
is assured. The pieces may also refer to skull and skeleton
pieces by her fellow artists Damien Hirst and Gabriel Orozco.
Jawbone, 2005, is the powerful remnant of the skull still able
to consume, but without the powers to reason or perceive,
while the Phrenology Cranium, 2006 is modeled after the
cast plaster and ceramic busts by mid-nineteenth century in-
ventor Lorenzo Niles Fowler, whose pseudo-science of phre-
nology promoted the idea that a person’s thoughts, passions
and aptitudes were directly reflected in their facial and skel-
etal structure.
Levine's 2008 bronze cast of a two-headed calf, entitled
False God pointedly asks when is something unique? When
is it a copy? When is it a reproduction? When is it one of a
series? Where is the original? Since Levine has divided her
time between New York and New Mexico for the past several
years, the emergence of animal skulls, especially those of
cattle, allude to such skull images as subjects in New Mexico
by 20 th century American Modernist Georgia O’Keefe.
This would represent the first time Levine has made work
inspired by the imagery by another woman artist.
Sherrie Levine
Jawbone, 2005
Bronze with patina
22,9 x 15,2 x 10,2 cm
Edition of 12
False God, 2008
Cast bronze
62,2 x 62,2 x 24,8 cm
Edition of 12

Man Ray
A l’heure de l’Observatoire - Les Amoureux
Observatory Time – The Lovers, 1970
Color lithograph on wove paper, signed and numbered in pencil.
Printed by Chave, Venice, published by Jean Petithory, Paris
67,5 x 103,7 cm
Edition of 150
© Man Ray Trust
In terms of the body and body parts as imagery Man Ray and
Sherrie Levine are a study in contrasts. Man Ray focused the
majority of his attention on the bodies of live, often nude, fe-
male artists’ models while Levine has chosen as her models
the bodies of artwork by deceased male artists.
Paradoxically, it was one of the saddest events of Man Ray’s
life, the break-up with his paramour Lee Miller, that inspired
two of his most well-known works, each based on a sensory
organ: Object to be Destroyed, 1932, the metronome with a
cropped photo of Miller’s eye affixed to it; and A l’heure de
l’observatoire – Les Amoureux, Observatory Time – The Lov-
ers, 1932 – 1934.
The artist depicted Miller’s lips enlarged to monumental
scale to suggest the bodies of supine lovers pressed togeth-
er, silhouetted floating in an eternal twilight above the sky-
line of the Luxembourg Gardens, near the studio they shared,
with the twin domes of the Paris Observatory, distant on the
horizon. The image has both an arresting, immediate impact
and an expansive, meditative timelessness.
It is both one of the most Surreal and one of the most en-
duringly romantic images of the 20 th century. The number of
times and ways in which this image has been reproduced
is a tribute to its endless appeal. Aside from the original oil
painting, which resides in a private collection, perhaps the
grandest version of this image is the large-scale, limited edi-
tion color lithograph the artist produced in 1970.
THE PLEASURES OF REPETITION & REPRODUCTION
The many references to early unique Man Ray works later
issued in new versions, multiples or editions touches upon
the concerns about originals, repetitions, reproductions,
editions, and series which he shares with Sherrie Levine.
Regarding art-making, Levine has stated that “…desire comes
first… for me, art’s basically about pleasure” while Man
54
Ray admitted that “the pursuit of pleasure [is] my guiding
motive… desire, not necessity is the stimulant,” and went
55
on to describe his art works as “objets de mon affection.” 56
These pleasures and affections are discovered and revisited
throughout a career via repetition of images and themes, of-
ten with changes of scale or medium.
In his book objets de mon affection Man Ray included a sec-
tion entitled “Originals Graphics Multiples” which read:
An original is a creation
motivated by a desire.
Any reproduction of an original
Is motivated by necessity.
The original is the result of
an automatic mental process,
the reproduction, of a mechanical
process. In other words:
Inspiration then information;
Each validates the other.
All other considerations are
Beyond the scope of these
Statements.
It is marvelous that we are
The only species that creates
Gratuitous forms.
To create is divine, to reproduce
Is human.”57
Man Ray began re-producing his earlier works of the 1920s
and 30s during WWII in the 1940s when he feared all his
life work, left behind in Paris might have been destroyed.
In the mid-1980s Levine began to produce generic versions
of modernist abstract styles that she had theoretically aban-
doned in the 1970s… One dilemma that each artist faced
58
was that when museums and collectors would finally come
to understand and value of their work, earlier work would
always be in greatest demand. Late in his life buyers seeking
“vintage” copies of certain images, rather than more recent
prints, led Man Ray to respond “Vintage? I am not a wine.” 59
Man Ray felt all of his work had equal value as ideas.
He felt past and present existed as one. He entitled a 1966
retrospective catalog essay “I Have Never Painted a Recent
Picture.” and explained “as far as I am concerned, every-
60
thing happened simultaneously – like scenery seen from a
fast train.” 61
In his Hollywood Album of 1940 - 1948 Man Ray wrote “it is
permitted to repeat oneself as much as possible …nothing
is more legitimate and more satisfactory,” and Levine has
62
explained that to her, “repetition is implicit in the notion of
the readymade. I think that's one of the reasons I'm drawn to
this tradition.” “I like repetition, because it implies an end-
63
less succession of substitutes and missed encounters… [and
helps] maximize the historical references and the metaphor-
ical possibilities.” “There's a compulsion to repeat. In other
64
words, the game is never won.” 65
TRICKS & TRUTHS
The work of Sherrie Levine and Man Ray both evidence a
tenacious commitment to the pursuit of radical experimen-
tation with or without wide appreciation or support. Man Ray
once lamented that “the world really hates new ideas; [but] it
loves tricks. And under the guise of tricks it is possible some-
times to put over new and valid ideas… the tricks of today are
the truths of tomorrow.” 66
Many shared experiences and concerns influenced and in-
spired the work of Man Ray and Sherrie Levine: a thorough
grounding in the most advanced visual technology of their
eras; commercial art experience; work with a wide variety of
media, including experimental materials; an interest in games
and play as creative strategies; introduction of new realms of
subject matter; a fascination with masks and fetishes; pio-
neering use of the found object and the readymade; willing-
ness to transpose and repeat images across time and media;
and employment of simple, profound gestures to re-define
art-making.
Each re-examination of their work leads us to a new appre-
ciation of their contributions and to eagerly anticipate what
further developments they may inspire in generations to come.
Larry List
New York, May 2015

BIBLIOGRAPHY & REFERENCES
Larry List is a New York-based scholar and curator of 20th and 21st cen-
tury art. His many essays include contributions to Duchamp Man Ray Pi-
cabia (Tate Modern), Transformer: The Work of Glenn Kaino (The Warhol
Museum), and ViralNet, (California Institute of Art). He curated exhibitions
for the Isamu Noguchi Museum, New York; The Menil Collection, Houston;
the Rekjavik Art Museum; DOX Center for Contemporary Art, Prague and oth-
er institutions. List’s book on chess, Surrealism, and the New York School,
The Imagery of Chess Revisited, was nominated for the College Art Associa-
tion’s Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Award.
The author would like to acknowledge the valuable input and support offered
by Sherrie Levine and the staff of the Jablonka Maruani Mercier Gallery as
well as by fellow artists and scholars Jack Damer, Wendy Grossman, Kathy
Grove, Cody Hartley, Laura Hunt, Timothy Baum, Victor Kord, Lisa Mackie,
Steven Manford, Courtney Malick, Dana Martin-Strebel, Francis Naumann,
Mary Panzer, Edouard Sebline and Andrew Strauss along with The Man Ray
Trust, the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, and the Georgia O'Keefe Museum,
Santa Fe, New Mexico.
All photographs are reproduced courtesy of The Man Ray Trust, the Jablonka
Maruani Mercier Gallery, Paula Cooper Gallery, the artist Sherrie Levine, The
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Centre George Pompidou.
1Man Ray. Interview, “Deceiving Appearances,” Paris-Soir. 1926. As cited by Lauren Schell Dickens in
“Man Ray: A Cultural Timeline, 1890 – 1976.” Alias Man Ray. ed. Mason Klein. (New York: The Jewish
Museum; New Haven: Yale University Press) 2009. p. 188.
2 Siegel ,Jeanne. “After Sherrie Levine: interview with Sherrie Levine.” Arts Magazine. 59, no. 10 (Sum-
mer,1985). p. 143.
Art Talk, The Early 80’s, reprinted in Da Capo Press, New York 1988. pp. 245–255. Interview conducted
in March 1985 at the artist's studio in New York.
3 Constance Lewallen . “Sherrie Levine.” Interview in Journal Of Contemporary Art. http://www.jca-on-
line.com/slevine.html
4 Donald Judd, "Specific Objects," 1964. Arts Yearbook 8 [1965], p. 94; reprinted in Thomas Kellein,
Donald Judd: Early Works 1955–1968 (exh. cat. New York: D.A.P., 2002) Levine refers to Judd’s work
frequently in her interviews and often draws parallels between their work.
5 The “uncanny valley” is a term coined by Masahiro Mori in 1970 and refers to the nadir of humans’
comfort level with replicas that look almost, but not perfectly real and that trigger alternating waves
of attraction and repulsion. Originally applied primarily in robotics but now also referred to in relation
to computer animations and other forms of simulacra. Rob Schwarz.
http://www.strangerdimensions.com/2013/11/25/10-creepy-examples-uncanny-valley/
6 Kirk Varnedoe, “An Hour with Art Historian Kirk Varnedoe,” interview with by Charlie Rose,
The Charlie Rose Show Show, Public Broadcasting System, February 1, 2002.
7 Sherrie Levine: New Work, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. January 17 – March 10, 1991.
8Donald Judd. Untitled (Six boxes). 1974. 6 mirror polished brass cube units, each 101.6 h x 101.6
w x 101.6 d cm. Installation: 101.6 h x 736.6 w x 101.6 d cm. Acquired by the Australian National
Gallery, September 1975.
9Background provided in letter of March 18, 2015, to the author from Jack Damer, Levine’s lithogra­
phy professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
10 Ibid.
11 Siegel ,Jeanne. “After Sherrie Levine: interview with Sherrie Levine.” Arts Magazine. 59, no. 10
(Sum­mer,1985). p. 143.
Art Talk, The Early 80’s, reprinted in Da Capo Press, New York 1988. pp. 245–255. Interview conducted
in March 1985 at the artist's studio in New York.
12Man Ray, Museum of Modern Art Archive, New York, (letter to the Museum of Modern Art, 10 July
1961). The author would like to thank Steven Manford for bringing this letter to his attention.
13 Ibid.
14Siegel, Jeanne, “The Anxiety of Influence,” interview with Sherrie Levine Angeles/New York. Sherrie
Levine, Deitcher, David. “Sherrie Levine: The Rules of the Game,” Los (Kunsthalle Zürich. 1991). p. 17.
15 ManRay photographed artifacts from the collections of Paul Guillaume, Carl Kjersmeier, and Nancy
Cunard during the 1920s and 1930s, according to labelled examples at The Man Ray Trust.
16Lewallen, Constance. “Sherrie Levine,” Interview in Journal of Contemporary Art 6, no. 2. (1993)
http://www.jca-online.com/slevine.html
17Maskenfreiheit is the German term for the freedom conferred by masks. In letters to the author, Jack
Damer (March 18, 2015), Levine’s lithography professor and in a phone interview (March 26, 2015)
with her classmate and friend, the artist Lisa Mackie, each described Levine’s interest in using photos 45 A reference to Object, 1936, another Surrealist icon, this one made by a woman, Man Ray’s friend,
of herself and others in Halloween-style masks, gauze head-wrappings, and other costumes and dis- Meret Oppenheim. It is comprised of a fur-clad tea cup, saucer and spoon and is in the collection of
guises as imagery for photo-lithographs while at University of Wisconsin-Madison. he Museum of Modern Art, New York.
18 Man Ray, Self Portrait, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1979, p. 257. Man Ray photographed Lee Miller wear- 46 “Interviews with Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, and Fred Wilson.” The Duchamp Effect. Ed. Martha
ing an open metal mesh mask as early as 1930. Between 1941 and 1960 he decorated numerous Buskirk and Mignon Nixon. Massachussetts Institute of Technology and October Magazine, Ltd. 1996.
paper mâche masks to be worn at parties and in photo sessions. Also an advocate of maskenfreiheit, From May 13, 1994 interview material originally published in October 70 (Fall 1994).p. 178.
on page 275 the artist explained, “I painted paper mâche masks for the girls who put them on and
danced weirdly, with complete abandon, secure in their anonymity.” 47 Constance Lewallen . “Sherrie Levine.” Interview in Journal Of Contemporary Art. http://www.jca-on-
line.com/slevine.html
19 This approach relates to the printmaking tradition of producing titled “suites” of thematically relat-
ed individual images all printed in the same medium on the same size paper and collected as loose 48 “Interviews with Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, and Fred Wilson.” The Duchamp Effect. Ed. Martha
leaves in a folio. Buskirk and Mignon Nixon. Massachussetts Institute of Technology and October Magazine, Ltd. 1996.
From May 13, 1994 interview material originally published in October 70 (Fall 1994).p. 178.
20McShine, Kynaston, The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
1999, p. 40. 49 This event, entitled Shoe Sale was held in “The 3 Mercer Street Store,” an alternative space run
by Stefan Eins. It is described in many sources, including ”Sherrie Levine: Rules of the Game,” David
21In a phone interview of March 31, 2015, Victor Kord, Levine’s introductory painting teacher, said that Deitcher. Sherrie Levine, Kunsthalle Zürich . Los Angeles/New York, 1991. p. 8.
the first painting assignment he gave was to have each student copy another painting, then compare
their copy with the original. In identifying the gaps and differences between the two, the student could 50Siegel, Jeanne, “The Anxiety of Influence,” interview with Sherrie Levine Angeles/New York. Sherrie
begin to discover their own personal style. This assignment has been done by generations of art stu- Levine, Deitcher, David. “Sherrie Levine: The Rules of the Game,” Los (Kunsthalle Zürich. 1991). p. 17.
dents but only Levine discovered an element in it that she could later use to profound effect.
51Flusser, Allan, “Hat Styles,” Clothes and the Man: Principles of Fine Men’s Dress. New York, Villard
22Man Ray, unpublished notes, “Painting and Photography,” Hollywood Album 1940 -1948, n.p. (Man Books, 1991. P. 138 – 139.
Ray Letters and Album 1922 - 76, boxes 3 -4, Special Collections, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles).
52 http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/
23 Man Ray’s intention that the Giant Chess Board Painting be identified as a painting is made clear austrian-psychologist-sigmund-freud-arrives-in-paris-after-news-photo/56818109
from his inscription on the back complete with description, dimensions, and the kind and color of
frame he wanted it presented in. 53 “Interviews with Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, and Fred Wilson.” The Duchamp Effect. Ed. Martha
Buskirk and Mignon Nixon. Massachussetts Institute of Technology and October Magazine, Ltd. 1996.
24Siegel, Jeanne, “The Anxiety of Influence,” interview with Sherrie Levine Angeles/New York. Sherrie From May 13, 1994 interview material originally published in October 70 (Fall 1994).p. 181.
Levine, Deitcher, David. “Sherrie Levine: The Rules of the Game,” Los (Kunsthalle Zürich. 1991). p. 17.
54 Siegel, Jeanne. “After Sherrie Levine.” Arts Magazine, 59, no. 10 (Summer, 1985). 85.
25 Other drawings from 1960, Couple (recto/verso). Ink on paper. 17.7 x 23.8 cm 7 x 9 3/8 inches; Interview conducted in March 1985 at the artist's studio in New York. pp. 248 – 249.
1961, Untitled, pencil, and Bon Soir Man Ray, 1972, drawn in the exactly the same linear style of nude
couples untitled making love reinforce this interpretation along with Photo of a Drawing of Woman 55 Man Ray. Objets de mon affection. (Paris: Philippe Sers Editeur, 1983) p. 158.
Dancing (n.d.), 7 x 5 1/16 inches, a vintage silver gelatin print with pen markings and a grid in red pen,
“Scale 1/6”” written in black. Verso: “for chessboard 1m x 1m.” The grid is laid out from an emphatic 56 Ibid.
red dot at the exact point where the dancer’s bare legs meet, indicating the artist’s intention to use
it as the central compositional focus and point from which to spread the grid layout in all directions. 57 Ibid.
The corresponding point is also physically scored into both the front and the back sides of the plywood
painting surface. 58Siegel, Jeanne, “The Anxiety of Influence,” interview with Sherrie Levine Angeles/New York. Sherrie
Levine, Deitcher, David. “Sherrie Levine: The Rules of the Game,” Los (Kunsthalle Zürich. 1991). p. 17.
26Man Ray and Jacobs, Rosalind. Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde, Mel Stuart, PBS American
Masters Series, September 17, 2005. 59Man Ray quoted in Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde, Mel Stuart, PBS American Masters Series,
September 17, 2005.
Schwarz, Arturo. Man Ray: The Rigour of the Imagination, Rizzoli, New York, 1977, p. 158.
27
60Man Ray. “I Have Never Painted a Recent Picture.” In Jules Langsner, ed., Man Ray. (Los Angeles
28McKenna, Kristine. “Sherrie Levine and the Art of the Remake.” Los Angeles Times. November 17, County Museum of Art. 1966). pp. 28 – 31.
1996. http://articles.latimes.com/1996-11-17/entertainment/ca-65436_1_sherrie-levine
61Man Ray. Interview with Man Ray. 1964. As cited by Lauren Schell Dickens in “Man Ray: A Cultural
29Siegel, Jeanne. “After Sherrie Levine.” Arts Magazine, June 1985. Interview conducted in March Timeline, 1890 – 1976.” Alias Man Ray. ed. Mason Klein. (New York: The Jewish Museum; New Haven:
1985 at the artist's studio in New York. p. 253. Yale University Press) 2009. p. 162.
30Man Ray. “I Have Never Painted a Recent Picture,” In Jules Langsner, ed., Man Ray. (Los Angeles 62Man Ray, unpublished notes, Hollywood Album, 1940 -1948, n.p. Man Ray Letters and Album 1922-
County Museum of Art. 1966). p. 28. 76, boxes 3 -4, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
31Siegel, Jeanne. “After Sherrie Levine.” Arts Magazine, June 1985. Interview conducted in March 63 “Interviews with Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, and Fred Wilson.” The Duchamp Effect. Ed. Martha
1985 at the artist's studio in New York. p. 253. Buskirk and Mignon Nixon. Massachussetts Institute of Technology and October Magazine, Ltd. 1996.
From May 13, 1994 interview material originally published in October 70 (Fall 1994). pp 180 – 181.
32Mileaf, Janine. Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist Objects After the Readymade, Dartmouth College
Press, Hanover, New Hampshire, 2010, p. 56. (Mileaf offers this interpretation and makes further ref- 64 Levine, Sherrie. “After Brancusi,” Sherrie Levine: Newborn. Ed. Ann Temkin. Philadelphia: Philadel-
erence to Gauthier, Xavière. Surréalisime et sexualité, Editions Gaullimard, Paris, 1971, pp. 162 – 73). phia Museum of Art; Frankfurt: Portikus, 1993.
33 Budd, Dona, The Language of Art Knowledge Cards, Pomegranate Communications, Inc. cites the 65Taylor, Paul. “Sherrie Levine Plays with Paul Taylor, interview with Sherrie Levine,” Flash Art, June
name "Dada" came during a meeting of the group when a paper knife stuck into a French-German 1987, pp. 116.
dictionary happened to point to 'dada', a French word for 'hobbyhorse'.
66 Man Ray. untitled text (March 1951), unpublished. As cited in Arturo Schwarz. Man Ray: The Rigour
34 Hobbyhorse may also refer to an image and event that was an important precursor to Levine’s of the Imagination (New York): Rizzoli, 1977), p. 307.
use of photography - an iconic photograph of a tricycle taken by the American photographer William
Eggleston around 1972. That image was used on the cover of William Eggleston’s Guide, the catalog
of Eggleston’s retrospective held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1976, just shortly after Levine moved
to New York. This exhibition of color photos contributed significantly to the acceptance of photography
as a legitimate art medium. Pictured from a child’s point of view, Eggleston’s tricycle looks unique,
monumental in size; bright, colorful, and alive in contrast to Levine’s version which, exhibited in series,
with their elegant brushed aluminum finishes, look like ghostly hall-of-mirror reflections of each other.
35 In her manner of using each work to reflect or contrast her past work, in 2008 Levine produced a pol-
ished bronze cast of a worn wooden hobbyhorse found in a flea market and entitled it Dada. The black,
white and grey Hobbyhorse reads as a 3-D parallel to all of her mechanically produced black and white
photographs when considered in relation to the bright, shiny, handmade Arp-like, Calder-ish abstract
form of Dada, which echoes the high abstraction of her Malevich, Duchamp and Brancusi-inspired works.
36 “Sherrie Levine: Stalker,” Santa Fe Trend, Spring 2007, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 44. illus (interview)
37 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. "Furies". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
38 Man Ray. Objets de mon affection. (Paris: Philippe Sers Editeur, 1983) p. 151.
39 Schwarz, Arturo. Man Ray: The Rigour of the Imagination, Rizzoli, New York, 1977, pp. 154-155.
40Man Ray. Sculpture by Itself II. Gelatin silver print. 1917. 9.8 x 7.5 cm (3 7/8 x 2 15/16 in.) Signed &
dated vo. print in pencil; signed on wall, left. Getty Museum Art Collection 86.XM.626.6.
41 Harking back to the technique of some of the earliest cave painters who pressed their hands, like
stencils, against the cave walls and dusted powdered ochre around them to leave ghostly negative
silhouettes.
42 Man Ray. Self Portrait. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, New York, Toronto, London, 1963. p. 67.
43Siegel, Jeanne. “After Sherrie Levine.” Arts Magazine, 59, no. 10 (Summer, 1985). 85. Interview
conducted in March 1985 at the artist's studio in New York. p. 248.
44In a phone interview of March 31, 2015, Victor Kord, Levine’s introductory painting teacher, said
that one characteristic of Levine’s work throughout her undergraduate and graduate work at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison was her use of non-traditional materials, such as painting on ply-
wood….
MAN RAY & SHERRIE LEVINE
A Dialogue Through Objects, Images & Ideas

AUGUST 2015 - FIRST EDITION

Exhibition & Catalogue

JABLONKA MARUANI MERCIER GALLERY

BRUSSELS - KNOKKE

© MAN RAY TRUST / ADAGP, Paris - SABAM Belgium 2015

CATALOGUE © 2015 JMMGALLERY
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