Man Ray - The Lovers 1936

 
The above painting is one of Man Ray's most recognized and remembered works. Artist Man Ray was a Dadaist, a surrealist, and portrait-artist, and a fashion photographer. Eroticism was a common theme in some of his portraits, but they focused more on beauty. In his fashion photographs he did too. He very much liked to show the beauty in people, especially women. I believe that most of these photos were taken to give an artistic message and to go against the norm, as both Dada and Surrealism do. Some of the fashion photographs he took were no doubt commissioned, but they are an exception in terms of the purpose only. However, his fashion photographs do often go against the norm. He rediscovered the technique for making cameraless pictures (photograms), which he called rayographs, by placing objects on light-sensitive paper; he also experimented with the technique of solarization, which renders part of the image negative and part positive by exposing a print or negative to a flash of light during development.  

I chose this piece by Man Ray because I found it really interesting how it was made. The Model below is actually a real person taken in one of Man Ray's photographs for a fashion magazine. After taking the photo of the model he combined his photography skills with his skills of painting by creating a surrealist landscape with a giant pair of lips floating in the distant sky. They are perhaps the most famous lips in the history of art. The lips belonged to Man Ray's muse and lover, Lee Miller. I chose this painting because I have always been a huge fan of surrealism. Surrealism is the great because it allows you to imagine what the world would be like if things were jumbled and different. This photo/ painting is great because it shows surrealism at is finest. The way man ray painted the lips truly pops out at the audience, and the model laying below gives and elegant, lushes, and sensual feel to a great, yet bizzare world of imagination that is created in Observatory Time The Lovers. Art work such as this also set a precedent for more art similar to this combining photo's and paintings such as many artists in modern art such as Andy Warhol.