MAN RAY - His Lover and Muse
MAN RAY AND KIKI - AFFAIR AND COLLABORATION
Iconic images in Surrealism
Together they created his most famous works Le violon d'Ingres and Noire et blanche.
Her collaborations with Man produced some of Surrealism's most iconic images, including Noire et blanche and Le Violon d'Ingres
From 1921 to 1929,
MAN RAY'S NOTORIOUS EROTIC BOOK, 'entirely representative of the surrealist book' and 'extremely rare'
43 MAN RAY & Louis ARAGON & Benjamin PÉRET 1929 [Éditions de la revue Variété | Brussels 1929]
1929 is a rare compilation of erotic poems by the French surrealist writers Benjamin Péret and Louis Aragon, punctuated by four sexually explicit and little-known tipped-in photographs taken by Man Ray. The book was published anonymously in 1929 in an edition of 215, most of which were seized by French customs and destroyed for their subversive content.
Famous erotic book illustrated with 4 photolithographs of a pornographic nature by Man Ray putting on a performance with Kiki, the inescapable Montparnasse muse of the Roaring Twenties.
Famous erotic book illustrated with 4 photolithographs of a pornographic nature by Man Ray putting on a performance with Kiki, the inescapable Montparnasse muse of the Roaring Twenties. Each of these photographs is accompanied with erotic poems by Benjamin Péret for the first semester and Louis Aragon for the second. Very rare copy of this scandalous pornographic-poetic booklet produced by the Belgian magazine Variété by Paul-Gustave Van Hecke and almost the entire print of which was seized and destroyed by French customs. Indeed, this libertine «almanac» divided into two semesters and four seasons, remains today one of the most licentious surrealist productions. Even more than the Bourgeois society, it is the surrealist aesthetic itself that is mangled here. The four photographs taken by Man Ray at the request of Aragon and Péret to illustrate their crude poems are indeed very «far from the veiled eroticism dear to Breton» (cf. L’Enfer de la Bibliothèque. Eros au secret, Bibliothèque Nationale de France). On one of the photographs, «the woman is clearly identifiable: it is Kiki from Montparnasse, Man Ray’s occasional lover and muse. Her lips, with makeup to form the shape of Cupid’s bow, tightly grip a penis that, judging by the angle of the shot, is probably that of the photographer. [...] Many books by surrealist artists are the product of a pornographic imagination, but never in such a scandalous and crude manner as in this publication. (Parr and Badger, The Photobook : A History Volume II, p. 138). Light, minor foxing on the boards. Very rare copy.
Underground publication of erotic poetry written by Louis Aragon and Benjamin Péret, along with 4 pornographic images by Man Ray. 4 season represented
Printed in Belgium, 215 copies were seized by French Customs and banned.
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