Man Ray American Artist
“Every subsequent study of the artist is going to have to depend upon this book.”
– The Boston Globe
“A model biography – judicious, compulsively readable, rooting its subject in his cultural milieu. A remarkable feat of sleuthing.”
– Publishers Weekly
Man Ray is the quintessential modernist figure – painter, sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, poet, and philosopher. One of the most fascinating of the Surrealists who transformed the Paris art world during the 1920s, Man Ray was an enigma – a Dadaist who revered the Old Masters, an anarchist pursued by wealthy patrons. Driven to make his mark in as many art forms as possible, he struggled bitterly to win acceptance as a painter even as his skill as a photographer brought him worldwide fame. Man Ray came to know personalities such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, Max Ernst, and Coco Chanel, and he photographed virtually every important figure in the arts on both sides of the Atlantic.
Written with the close cooperation of his widow, Juliet, Man Ray is the definitive story of the life and times of one of the greatest modern artists, a man whose influence on culture resonates today.