Man-Ray

Years ago I became an appreciator of Man-Ray; modernist, photographer, and painter not to mention one of the most significant contributors to the Dadaist and surrealist movement. My favorite Man-Ray story centers around a piece of work he deemed, "the object intended to be destroyed." Dada was anti-art. It was anarchistic in intention. Dadaists sought to create art, the concept, with the form and materials being inconsequential. Dada was intended to be impermanent; the creation and idea of the artwork was the only purpose. The object was not to be venerated but to be destroyed once it was completed. Fitting that on one night self proclaimed art critics broke into the studio in which this particular object was kept and destroyed it.

Here is a piece found recently that I wrote in my late teenage years, shortly after I first discovered Man-Ray.

The “object to be destroyed” was destroyed ahead of schedule. From broken bits is an inanimate ghost reincarnated in trivial fashion. Long live the indestructible object in anger and in spirit. The minute they broke it, anti-dadaists made proof of a point. The aim was destruction, didn’t matter who did it, the so called creator or those threatened by it. The fiasco fulfilled the purpose nicely, a quirky affirmation that proclaimed vitality. The purpose was to despise the common value. The outcome was an indispensable quality; a new outrage, a jolt to shatter aesthetic tradition. The movement was hysteria; a delirious disease that attacked and infected.