Art: Rayograms

Before a U. S. tourist can consume more than three saucers’ worth of refreshment* at a Montparnasse cafe nowadays he is sure to hear something about Man Ray, a kinky-haired photographer who has become a leader of Paris’s left bank intelligentsia. The first one-man showing of his prints opened at Manhattan’s Julien Levy Gallery last week.

What Man Ray’s real name is was hard to discover last week. Art dealers racked their memory, decided that it was Emanuel something, probably Raveninsky. As Man Ray he has been known since he came from Philadelphia over 20 years ago. His first exhibition of paintings was held at the Daniel Gallery in 1915. At that time he was an ardent cubist and bewildered conservative critics with his angularities. In 1921 he went to Paris, where he has remained. He gave up Cubism for Dadaism, Dadaism for Surrealism, finally gave up painting almost entirely for photography. His Surrealist shots of bits of landscape, nudes, egg beaters and pieces of wire have caught the fancy of French advertisers. Besides portraits of his friends, he has become financially success ful as a commercial photographer. Last week he wrote from Paris :

“I love to do portraits of smart women, beautiful women, babies when I must. Men are very difficult to please. I also do much still life like boats, autos, instruments, nuts, nudes; publicity photos when allowed to use my own ideas. It’s all the same button-pushing process, bringing things to light. . . .”

Among the instruments, nuts and nudes on view last week were portraits of Sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Painters Andre Derain, Joseph Stella. Pablo Picasso, Novelist Sinclair Lewis, Negrophile Nancy Cunard, Torch-Singer Yvonne George, Cinemactress Lois Moran (when she was a child ballerina in the Paris opera). Also exhibited were views of assorted sections of his favorite model, Miss Lee Miller, known as “Lee-Girl” to her intimates, widely celebrated as the possessor of the most beautiful navel in Paris. She too is a photographer, has taken many pictures of Man Ray (see cut).

Critics found Man Ray’s photographs not quite worth all the furor that friends have raised. Most interesting were a series of black & grey abstractions known as rayograms which are made without a camera, simply by placing various objects on sensitized paper in a dark room, ex-posing them briefly to a single ray of light.

Lie v. Sloan

In a burst of enthusiasm sparse, spry Jonas Lie (pronounced Lee; confessed to his good friend Director Juliana Force of the Whitney Museum several months ago, “I feel as though my life was starting all over again.” Critics who went to his exhibition at the Macbeth Gallerys last week knew what he meant. Wrote the New York Times:

“The new landscapes may well be considered superior to anything Mr. Lie has done in the past.”

He has done plenty. Jonas Lie is a National Academician, painter member of New York’s City Art Commission, and a director of the Art Students’ League. He was born in Norway in 1880, in his own words “by accident of a Norwegian father and an American mother of Scotch ancestry from Massachusetts.” A thoroughly academic training gave him great technical dexterity with paint, no very revolutionary ideas to express on canvas. He is famed for pleasant, decorative landscapes and pictures of sailboats off rocky shores. He invariably wears the purple and gold rosette of the National Institute of Arts and Letters; a boutonniere which bears a marked resemblance to France’s Palme Academique. His pictures hang in such reputable repositories as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery, Luxembourg.

If he has not been an exciting painter, Jonas Lie has always been an exciting talker. He dearly loves an argument. Striking strange postures, striding nervously back & forth, he will argue with anyone about anything. Reporters love him for it. For the first time, some of this vitality was apparent in his painting last week. Commented Critic Royal Cortissoz:

“. . . The chief interest of the occasion lies in the new note which he strikes in such pictures as ‘Midsummer,’ ‘Old Wharves,’ ‘Fog’ and ‘The Inlet.’ He paints with increased breadth and force, without forgetting the sound composition to which we have become accustomed in his work. He leaves the impression of an artist who has taken a decisive step forward. . . .”

Jonas Lie still mistrusts too much force in other men’s painting. At the Art Students’ League he lately fought a wordy battle with grey-thatched President John Sloan, another painter who can argue, over the propriety of inviting George Grosz, potent German modernist, to teach at the League. George Grosz has had quite as sound academic training as Jonas Lie, but since the War he has lost interest in fishing boats, cows, rocks. An embittered critic of the bourgeoisie, he does biting caricatures on canvas of bloated politicians, policemen, militarists, —subjects appalling to genteel Jonas Lie. The upshot of the argument was that George Grosz was not invited to the League, that both President Sloan and Director Lie resigned. Jonas Lie’s resignation was not accepted. Mollified, he withdrew it. The Board had another wordy meeting trying to decide whether to accept President Sloan’s resignation “with deepest regret,” “with regret,” or with no regret at all. They accepted it “with re-gret.” Explained President Sloan:

“. . . This culmination of a series of sentimental and financial timidities seemed to me to indicate that the Board was not acting fearlessly for the best interests of the students.

“. . . The question may arise—when there is so much talk of American art for America—why a foreign teacher? My answer is that a teacher is artists’ material. Just as all American artists use foreign canvas because it is best, so we may use good foreign instruction.”

Check

Grave, goat-bearded Nicholas Konstantin Roerich has been more fortunate than most Russian emigres since the days when he was official scene painter for the Moscow Art Theatre. He went to the U. S. in 1920 with a mystical manner and a shipload of paintings, explored Thibet, gave lectures on the Higher Life, acquired a circle of adoring acolytes who refer to him as The Marster, designed an international peace flag, and had a 24-story apartment house-museum put up in Manhattan in his honor. Last week came a check. Because of failure to meet interest on mortgages totalling $2,075,000, Roerich Museum Inc. went into receivership. A committee hastily explained that this would affect only the building; the museum’s work would continue.

*In France, cafe accounting is done by the printed prices of drinks on the saucers in which the drinks are served. The sum total of his saucer pile is the imbiber’s bill.