Man Ray

MAN RAY

When I first heard his name, my initial response was, “Who is this artist with weird name? Where is he from?” After watching the video for few minutes I realized he was one of the most influential artist of modern art. I felt a little embarrassed fact that I didn’t know him but later on I did actually recognized few of his photographs such as Le violon d'Ingres (1924) and Tears (1930).

Viewing his early Dadaistic paintings, Readymade sculptures to experimental photographs I felt he was an artist who really enjoyed his life – humorous personality, art, fame, and sharing romance with one of the beautiful women in his time.

Indeed Ray was a humours person. He loved to share his personality through art. Such as The Gift (1921) that is an iron with tacks glued on to shows his comical idea of useful useless objects. Also photographs of photographs of Dadaist Parisians and Ray took, all dressed up in funny costumes reveals his funny personality. Ray's way of approaching art impressed me, frankly saying. To me, art was very a serious subject. I expressed my burst of emotions such as anger, anxiety, sadness on canvases or papers because art was the only output. But when I think about it, expressing humour can also be sincere and serious because it is part of human nature. Man Ray inspired me to respect humours parts of myself. I wasn't just aware of it.
Still majority of people argue that art should be sacred and serious. Man Ray did a great job breaking that old tradition and many contemporary artist like Bansky's various graffiti works on public places in London and Robert  Rauschenberg's Erased De Kooning artwork..

I don't think I'm not good at expressing humour, it is definately one thing in art that I want to try as a contemporary artist and share, and laugh with other people.