The Guardian Bookshop makes over 180,000 books available with up to 40% discount, as well as highlighting some of our favourite publications in each genre.
Find out more.
The classic autobiography of the American Modernist artist, Man Ray, with a new introduction by Judith Thurman. A sensational account of the early 20th century cultural world.
Synopsis
An autobiography, in which the author - painter, photographer, sculptor, film maker and writer - relates the story of his life, from his childhood determination to be an artist and his technical drawing classes in a Brooklyn high school, to the glamorous and heady days of Paris in the 1940s.
Book Details
Publisher:
PENGUIN GROUP
Publication Date:
05-Apr-2012
ISBN:
9780141195506
Guardian review
Self-Portrait by Man Ray review
the guardian Tue 12 June 2012
Born in Philadelphia in 1890, the sculptor, painter, film-maker and photographer Emmanuel Radnitzky is better known by the name he used from about the age of 15: Man Ray. This evocative autobiography was first published in 1963. Today, Ray is chiefly remembered for his photography, particularly the strikingly beautiful nudes and portraits of the many women in his life, such as Lee Miller. But his first and enduring love was painting. He began as a young boy, pilfering paints from a local shop: "Fagin would have been proud of me." In New York, he became friends with gallery owner and photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Ray never "shared the contempt shown by other painters for photography". The medium enthralled him and provided a means of supporting his painting. He photographed many famous artists and authors, including Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, first in Manhattan and then from 1921 in Paris. He admits: "I am not a historian," and this memoir is impressionistic, weak on chronology and sometimes self-serving. But it offers a wonderfully intimate portrait of a life dedicated to art.
