Man Ray once referred to California as a "beautiful prison," and indeed the decade he spent in Los Angeles--the subject of a fine exhibition co-organized by Track 16 and Robert Berman Gallery--was a strange one. It was marked on the one hand by anxiety (Man Ray spent much of the early 1940s repainting the masterpieces he left behind as he fled war-ravaged Paris).

On the other, it was marked by a grudging acceptance of his self-willed anonymity in this, the land of show biz (the catalog Man Ray designed for his last show here, in 1948 at the William Copley Gallery, was titled "To Be Continued Unnoticed").

The exhibition is filled with works produced before and after his stay in the United States--some of them major, more of them less so--as well as drawings, photographs, objects, chess sets, letters and other ephemera produced during and related to his time here. It attempts to create a fresh context for understanding the life and work of one of the premier Surrealists while also proposing a centrality for Southern California within the canon of modernism, specifically Surrealism.

Indeed, Man Ray wryly noted that there was "more Surrealism rampant in Hollywood than all the Surrealists could invent in a lifetime." Yet to judge from this exhibition, California didn't necessarily inspire him in that direction. While Dali took the opportunity to collaborate with the movie industry--lampooning it in the same breath--Man Ray turned inward here; thus, the most interesting developments for him were personal.
It was in L.A., for example, that he met Juliet Browner, who was to become his wife and muse for the remainder of his life. He also formed bonds with the writer Henry Miller, the collector and art world figure Gloria de Herrera, and the artist Knud Merrild, whose work was to be an inspiration for the artist's later "natural paintings."

On this count, then, what becomes most interesting here are the letters, homages, memorabilia, literary endeavors and photographs. These include a tiny painting of a butterfly made for De Herrera; a wonderfully cynical book of drawings called "Alphabets for Adults"; a snapshot of Juliet stretched out like an odalisque on a couch in Man Ray's Vine Street studio; and a photo of the artist and Marcel Duchamp sitting beneath a Parisian street sign, "Rue de la Vieille Lanterne," which just happened to have been taken on a Hollywood stage set.

See the full article from the LA Times here

Track 16 Gallery and Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, California, solo show ["Concrete and Buckshot. William S. Burroughs Paintings 1987-1996"][18 July – 6 October, 1996]