Man Ray

Luciano Anselmino, Galleria Il Fauno, Turin (acquired directly from the artist)
Acquired from the above by the present owner circa 1975

Man Ray, Oggetti d’affezione, Milan, 1970, no. 32, illustration of the 1935 example
Arturo Schwarz, Man Ray, The Rigour of Imagination, London, 1977, no. 341, p. 219, illustration of the 1936 example
Jean-Hubert Martin, Rosalind Krauss & Brigitte Hermann, Man Ray: Objets de mon affection, Sculptures et Objets, Catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1983, no. 39, illustration of another example on the cover and p. 42

There are handling marks and the lettering is faded. There is a very fine crack visible in the clay, totally stable.This work is in good condition.
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"What we all lack is imagination."
Man Ray

Originally conceived in 1927, examples of this iconic Surrealist object were made in 1935 and 1936, the latter presented at the seminal Surrealist exhibition of objects organised by André Breton and held at the Galerie Charles Ratton in Paris in 1936. Two years later, Man Ray incorporated two versions of this object as a prop in the wig of the life-size mannequin his contributed to the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme held in Paris. The object was later published in editions in 1963 and in 1972, the latter by Luciano Anselmino.

Composed of an item found in everyday life, Man Ray rectified a painted clay pipe by attaching a blown-glass shape in the form of a bubble. The unlikely combination of such objects, possibly a fortuitous encounter, displays much of the playful humour present in Surrealist objects, particularly those by Man Ray. Here he creates the illusion of a pipe billowing smoke as portrayed by the bubble. It exemplifies the Surrealist object which frequently comprised taking an everyday object and transforming it through a change of function. Any attempt to use the pipe for its original purpose would be futile, just as drawing air through it to smoke is impossible. The title ("What we all lack") derives from a quotation by Engels, "What these gentlemen lack is dialectic", that appeared on the cover of La Révolution surréaliste (no. 8, 1st December 1926), which, in typical Surrealist fashion, Man Ray subverts, for he later said that "Actually I had in mind 'imagination', not dialectics, what we all lack is imagination." (Arturo Schwarz, Man Ray, The Rigour of Imagination, London, 1977, p. 209)

Man Ray's experiments with object-making as early as the late 1910s in New York were crucial to the development and acceptance of the object as a work of art. While his fellow artists were also creating a wide range of objects, as a truly multimedia artist, Man Ray was adept at expressing a concept in a variety of media, from objects and painting to photography and film. Many of his early objects did not survive (either they were lost, fell apart or dismantled), yet they continue to live through his own photographs of them, in which the three-dimensional forms are immortalised by dynamic two-dimensional images. Man Ray's objects, later classified by him as "Objects of My Affection", are among the most revered of all Dada and Surrealist objects.