Obstruction TheMET(9s)
Week 9 In Montparnasse The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dalí Part 1 (1341-1345) 4/2/ – 4/6/2023
ID 1344
Man Ray American 1890-1976
Obstruction , original 1920, Moderna Museet edition 1961 (13/15)
Sixty-three wood coat hangers
Man Ray worked in a wide range of media, including photography, painting, and sculpture, often blurring the boundaries between these practices. Obstruction, an assemblage of sixty-three wood coat hangers, is an example of a type of artwork that Dada artist Marcel Duchamp called a readymade, a term that suggests Man Ray’s appropriation and manipulation of pre-existing, common objects. The sculpture playfully mimics a chandelier, but, as the hangers seemingly divide and multiply, Obstruction quickly evolves into a dense tangle of overlapping forms. Cast shadows serve as distorted, immaterial extensions of its physical presence. Man Ray first created Obstruction in 1920, but the present work belongs to an edition of fifteen reproductions he created in 1961 for an important exhibition of Kinetic art.
Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2015 (2015.242.1-63)
From the Placard: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Still in New York, Duchamp was being pulled further into the American art scene. Kathering Dreier had decided to establish a museum to house and exhibit modern art and was hoping he would help her. When he visited her to discuss the idea he took along a friend, Man Ray, in those days still a struggling young painter. When they met at Stieglitz’s 291 gallery they had struck up an instant rapport: Man Ray had immediately seen the point of Duchamp’s readymades and even come up with some of his own. He suggested a name for the new museum, “Société anonyme;” he assumed it meant ‘anonymous society’. In fact, the French expression means ‘public limited company’ or ‘corporation’, but Dreier liked it as a name , too, so they used it anyway. At 19 East 47th Street they rented a suite and set about creating a substantial venue for the exhibition of contemporary art in New York. Duchamp decorated the rooms and made a banner for the outside of the building, pointing out that, when they judged the works within and if they wanted modern art to come into its own, Americans should be encouraged to refer to their ‘farfamed sense of humour’ rather than listening to the critics. He and Man Ray had already begun working collaboratively, after Man Ray visited Duchamp’s studio one day while he was out of town and found “La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, méme (The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even)), the work Duchamp had begun in Paris but which was still uncompleted, left beside an open window and covered with dust. Man Ray was fascinated by the coating of dust and the patterns it made on the glass; this time, Duchamp had managed to make art without even being in the room. When he came back the two of them set up a camera and went out for an hour, leaving the lens open the glass illuminated by a naked bulb overhead. As Man Ray put it, “While the bride lay on her face decked out in her bridal finery of dust and debris, I exposed her to my sixteen-candle camera!.”
Sue Roe In Montparnasse The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dalí Penguin Books, 2000 pgs. 81-82
Obstruction TheMET(9s)
Week 9 In Montparnasse The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dalí Part 1 (1341-1345) 4/2/ – 4/6/2023
ID 1344
Man Ray American 1890-1976
Obstruction , original 1920, Moderna Museet edition 1961 (13/15)
Sixty-three wood coat hangers
Man Ray worked in a wide range of media, including photography, painting, and sculpture, often blurring the boundaries between these practices. Obstruction, an assemblage of sixty-three wood coat hangers, is an example of a type of artwork that Dada artist Marcel Duchamp called a readymade, a term that suggests Man Ray’s appropriation and manipulation of pre-existing, common objects. The sculpture playfully mimics a chandelier, but, as the hangers seemingly divide and multiply, Obstruction quickly evolves into a dense tangle of overlapping forms. Cast shadows serve as distorted, immaterial extensions of its physical presence. Man Ray first created Obstruction in 1920, but the present work belongs to an edition of fifteen reproductions he created in 1961 for an important exhibition of Kinetic art.
Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2015 (2015.242.1-63)
From the Placard: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Still in New York, Duchamp was being pulled further into the American art scene. Kathering Dreier had decided to establish a museum to house and exhibit modern art and was hoping he would help her. When he visited her to discuss the idea he took along a friend, Man Ray, in those days still a struggling young painter. When they met at Stieglitz’s 291 gallery they had struck up an instant rapport: Man Ray had immediately seen the point of Duchamp’s readymades and even come up with some of his own. He suggested a name for the new museum, “Société anonyme;” he assumed it meant ‘anonymous society’. In fact, the French expression means ‘public limited company’ or ‘corporation’, but Dreier liked it as a name , too, so they used it anyway. At 19 East 47th Street they rented a suite and set about creating a substantial venue for the exhibition of contemporary art in New York. Duchamp decorated the rooms and made a banner for the outside of the building, pointing out that, when they judged the works within and if they wanted modern art to come into its own, Americans should be encouraged to refer to their ‘farfamed sense of humour’ rather than listening to the critics. He and Man Ray had already begun working collaboratively, after Man Ray visited Duchamp’s studio one day while he was out of town and found “La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, méme (The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even)), the work Duchamp had begun in Paris but which was still uncompleted, left beside an open window and covered with dust. Man Ray was fascinated by the coating of dust and the patterns it made on the glass; this time, Duchamp had managed to make art without even being in the room. When he came back the two of them set up a camera and went out for an hour, leaving the lens open the glass illuminated by a naked bulb overhead. As Man Ray put it, “While the bride lay on her face decked out in her bridal finery of dust and debris, I exposed her to my sixteen-candle camera!.”
Sue Roe In Montparnasse The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dalí Penguin Books, 2000 pgs. 81-82