Man Ray's 'Tears', from makeup ad to surreal icon

The Paul Getty Museum, which has a vintage copy of '

', explains on its website that Man Ray considered it "one of his most successful photographs", compares it to

and adventure that "it may be related to the artist's break with his lover Lee Miller."

YellowKorner, where for 99 euros you can buy a copy, says that "Man Ray photographed his fantasies" and that he used "the

technique

The reality is that Man Ray made his

'

'on request and to illustrate an advertisement for Cosmécil makeup, the product of which was manufactured "in eleven shades,

.

The image of who was already in 1932 a proper name of surrealism and fashion photography was accompanied by this

: "Cry in the cinema, cry in the theater,

without fear for his eyes. "

called Lydia, the tears were made of glass glued to the skin so that they would not fall because the model was not lying down as can be deduced from the image.

Man Ray, a pseudonym, came to photography to earn a living after failing as a painter, his calling, and was not paid for his first fashion report.

of the

American, muse and lover of the artist in Paris.

All this is learned in '

, shows that it has just opened its doors in the

and that can be seen until next January 17.

He was born in Philadelphia (USA) in 1890. His father had a tailoring workshop and his mother made the family clothes.

When the family moved to Brooklyn in 1911, his father adopted the name Ray, which his son would accompany with the diminutive of his first name.

In New York,

and discover the European avant-gardes from the hand of

that introduces him to the small group of Dadaists.

It will be Duchamp who will give him a room in his house when he arrives in Paris in 1921 after the failure of his third exhibition at the Daniel Gallery in New York. He continues to be part of the Dada movement in Paris although he "gives up all hope of becoming someone in the painting".

Looking for something to live on

they suggest you reproduce their works.

However, Man Ray begins to make a reputation as a portraitist.

Your surreal friends, ladies of the Paris of the crazy 20s like

, pose for him.

Also his lover

We are in 1922, a key year.

Picabia's wife, introduces him to Paul Poiret,

and collector, whom he wants to portray.

"With a second-hand device, some blank plates and quite audaciously he tries to seduce his prestigious interlocutor by his originality", says Alain Sayag, one of the curators of the exhibition. Poiret suggests that he try fashion photography, he lends him some models and asks

.

But Man Ray "is not yet up to the challenge, technically or intellectually, and his first clichés are hideously flat," Sayag says.

And, of course, the

does not pay.

And the artist is very disappointed, but in that same summer of 22, Man Ray published in

his portraits of

It will take two years to post a fashion photo, a children's clothing in

.

The key to Man Ray was the images

, the photos of celebrities that animated the fashion magazines that were in full mutation from illustrating their pages with figurines to photographing models.The failure with a borrowed lamp in that first unpaid commission in 1934 with

, Man Ray will become thanks to his tricks (solarization, negative inversion, overprinting, ink retouching ...) in

In parallel, he takes care of his artistic career.

In it he will include "a little more than a hundred clichés among the thousands that he threw away" Alain Sayag tells us, illustrating the visit together with the curator Catherine Örmen. We are in front of a copy of '

'of 1933, kept by the National Library of France.

"There are five negatives of 'Tears' of which the artist made three copies, one with a single eye. He manipulates the image that despite its banal origin will become essential in the corpus of his creative work", Sayag says.

At the same time he strives to erase the origin of the image.

Shortly after the order, he publishes it in

, magazine dedicated to the artistic aspect of the photo.

The one-eye version appears as early as 1934 in the volume devoted to his work that '

He dedicates it to him at the initiative of James Thrall Soby. "By cutting the image, the body is deprived of its carnal nature, it disappears, only the soul and timeless beauty remain", Sayag sums up.

And this is how the eyes of Lydia, can-can dancer, photographed for an advertisement for Arlette Bernard's make-up became an icon of surrealism.

Man Ray will admit.

After erasing the tracks, yes.

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