Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
Elevage de Poussière, New York

Elevage de Poussière, New York

© Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris

Elevage de Poussière, New York
Elevage de Poussière, New York
ArtistFrench, 1887–1968
PrinterFrench, born Germany, 1914–2004
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Elevage de Poussière, New York
  • Dust Breeding
Date1920, printed 1970
PlaceNew York, New York, United States
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 7 11/16 x 10 in. (19.6 x 25.4 cm)
Sheet: 7 11/16 x 10 in. (19.6 x 25.4 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund, The Manfred Heiting Collection
Object number2002.2882
Non exposé

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

A collaboration between two voraciously innovative artists and friends, this photograph was made on a visit by Man Ray to Marcel Duchamp’s studio. Duchamp had been in Paris for a number of months, leaving the sheet of glass that was his opus, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915–23), lying on sawhorses to accumulate dust. After the photograph was made, Duchamp cleaned the surface of the artwork, leaving a section covered with dust that he permanently affixed to the glass. The exposure lasted over an hour in the dim light of the studio, slowly rendering the texture of the various and uncertain materials in exquisite detail. Man Ray cropped the negative on a portion of the glass appearing “like some strange landscape from a bird’s-eye view,” emphasizing spatial uncertainty.


Taken in the studio but almost anti-studio in nature, the image hovers somewhere between artwork in its own right and a document of a stage of creation in a masterpiece of ambiguity. The ultimate expression of no real subject, it speaks to an ambivalence toward the hand of the artist in the act of creation, on the part of the two artists largely responsible for the spread of Dadaism and Surrealism in New York and the development of the readymade art object.


ProvenanceAtelier Man Ray, Paris; [Galerie Octant, Paris]; purchased by Manfred Heiting, April 24, 1987.

Exhibition History"Man Ray," Kunsthaus Wien, Vienna, 1996.

"The Surreal House," Barbican Centre, London, June 10–September 19, 2010.

"Utopia/Dystopia: Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 11–June 10, 2012.

"A Handful of Dust: From the Cosmic to the Domestic," Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, January 22–April 5, 2020.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
verso a stamp " Epreuve Originale, Atelier Man Ray, Paris. Reproduction interdit, sans autorisation écrite de l' ADAGP, 9 et 11, rue Berryer, Paris-8e, 924-03-87 "
in pencil right of stamp " 1/8 "

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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Elevage de Poussière, New York
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
1919–1920, printed 1970
Gelatin silver print
2002.2883
Élevage de poussierè
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
c. 1919–1920
Gelatin silver contact print
2001.644
Marcel Duchamp, New York
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
1916
Gelatin silver print
2004.585
uncropped recto of sheet
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
1971
Etching on paper
84.392
The Maharaja of Indore
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
c. 1930
Gelatin silver print
2023.229
Flexible Mirror
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
1944
Gelatin silver print
2023.1110
Georges Braque
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
1932
Gelatin silver print
2023.1109
Rayograph
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
1925
Gelatin silver print, photogram
2002.1574
Mathematical Object
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
1936, printed 1938
Gelatin silver print
91.866
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
2002.2881
Nancy Cunard
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
1926
Gelatin silver print
2002.1579
Vue d'Atelier
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
1923
Gelatin silver print
2002.235