Wood and parchment
Man Ray enjoyed chess, a game that by design requires both strategy and spontaneity to play. The artist considered himself “a third-rate player”; “My interest was directed towards designing new forms for chess pieces,” he explained. His chess set converts the familiar forms into abstract sculptural shapes that rely on association. The king is a pyramid, the queen a cone, the bishop a vessel, the rook a cube, the pawn a sphere, and the knight is represented by the scroll-shaped finial of a violin.
Man Ray and Jean-Michel Frank, a designer and interior decorator, collaborated on this chess table designed specifically for the chess set.
2025
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Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
American, 1890–1976 190 works onlineSo enthused Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky) in 1922, shortly after his first experiments with camera-less photography. He remains well known for these images, commonly called photograms but which he dubbed “rayographs” in a punning combination of his own name and the word “photograph.
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The New Spirit in Paris
Gallery 513This wide-ranging list, which appeared on the cover of the inaugural issue of the journal L’Esprit nouveau, in 1920, summarizes the energetic, boundary-crossing spirit of Paris between the two world wars.
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