1913, Man Ray, Rooftops Ridgefield -- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge)
From the museum label: Man Ray, known primarily for his surrealist photographs, moved to Ridgefield, New Jersey, in the fall of 1912. In his memoir he described the town’s valley and blue hills as “a continual source of inspiration for landscape work.” The twenty-three-year-old artist was deeply influenced by the 1913 Armory Show, which presented the most recent developments in European art. The minimal, planar buildings depicted here owe an obvious debt to Cézanne, whose View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph, shown at the Armory, is similar in composition and style. The difference in texture and coloration in the horizontal registers of Rooftops Ridgefield, previously thought to be signs of an inferior restoration or poor condition, is now interpreted as evidence of Ray’s reworking of the painting after seeing the Armory Show. The young artist, who quickly assimilated what he observed, soon became a leader of the avant-garde.
1913, Man Ray, Rooftops Ridgefield -- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge)
From the museum label: Man Ray, known primarily for his surrealist photographs, moved to Ridgefield, New Jersey, in the fall of 1912. In his memoir he described the town’s valley and blue hills as “a continual source of inspiration for landscape work.” The twenty-three-year-old artist was deeply influenced by the 1913 Armory Show, which presented the most recent developments in European art. The minimal, planar buildings depicted here owe an obvious debt to Cézanne, whose View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph, shown at the Armory, is similar in composition and style. The difference in texture and coloration in the horizontal registers of Rooftops Ridgefield, previously thought to be signs of an inferior restoration or poor condition, is now interpreted as evidence of Ray’s reworking of the painting after seeing the Armory Show. The young artist, who quickly assimilated what he observed, soon became a leader of the avant-garde.