"Man Ray - Human Equations" @ The Phillips Collection

It's been a long time since I've visited Washington D.C., so when French colleagues asked if we could go together to see the Man Ray exhibition now on at The Phillips Collection I went straight to the Amtrak website and ordered train tickets for the trip.

I've been to quite a few exhibitions where Man Ray takes center stage or at least plays a starring role, but this was a new look at the artist and his work.  "Man Ray - Human Equations:  A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare" targets a specific series of photographs, paintings and objects created by Man Ray during the 1930s and 40s that are referred to as his "Shakespearean Equations".

Born Emmanuel Radnitsky in Philadelphia in 1890, the artist who came to be known as Man Ray was a pioneer in the avant garde worlds of Dada and Surrealism.  A friend and collaborator of such legends as Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, Man Ray was a major player in the art scene first in New York and later in Paris where he lived from 1921 until his death in 1976.  But during World War II, Man Ray lived in Hollywood, California, where he met his second wife, the dancer and model Juliet Browner, and focused his attention on the Shakespearean series that is the topic of this exhibition.

I found it rather surprising that an artist best known for truly "out-of-the-box" thinking could be so inspired by two such diverse and exacting disciplines as mathematics and Shakespeare.  But evidently Man Ray was fascinated by both themes and drew upon antique mathematical models for a pictorial interpretation of Shakespeare's most famous plays.  The exhibition now on view at The Phillips Collection, displays side-by-side the original 19th century plaster, wood, papier-maché and string mathematical models from the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris - the very models that Man Ray studied and photographed in the 1930s - and the Shakespearean paintings they inspired.  The comparison was uncanny.

For example, here is a mathematical object representing the "Imaginary and Real Part of the Derivative of the Weierstrass-Function", made of plaster, circa 1900...

And here is Man Ray's 1948 oil painting "The Merry Wives of Windsor"...

I'm by no means a mathematician, nor an expert in Shakespeare, but I found the influence of science on art fascinating.  Here's another example.  Below is a mathematical object made of wood called "Algebraic Surface of Degree 4", 1900...

And this is Man Ray's interpretation of "All's Well That Ends Well", 1948...

To be perfectly honest, it took me a lot of looking and reading to figure out what was going on but in the end it was a unique and very informative look at the genius of Man Ray and added a new perspective to his always engaging œuvre.  It was also a great excuse to finally get down to D.C. and enjoy the last of the magnificent cherry blossoms!