“Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens” doesn’t just summarize the innovative efforts of early twentiethcentury photographers to popularize African culture — it recreates them. Walking through the exhibition is like experiencing the movement firsthand.
Upon entering the gallery, exhibit-goers are taken back to 1914 in the recreation of the exhibit. The exhibit first showed at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery in New York City, titled “Statuary in Wood by African Savages: The Root of Modern Art.”
UNM Art Museum Director Luanne McKinnon said Man Ray and his contemporaries drew inspiration from the works on display to use surrealistic photography to familiarize mainstream society with African art.
“That very influential exhibition which was on view in 1914 made an impression on the young Man Ray and other Cubists,” McKinnon said. “Their work became sort of a broad-based influence that we now don’t necessarily question because American culture and African culture are blended together. It’s who we are.”
Equipped with an awareness of the movement’s beginnings, exhibit-goers make their way through the displays to see how surrealist artists introduced African culture to mainstream society.
Along one wall, several Man Ray prints surround Michel Leiris’ article, “Bois Rituels des Falaises” (Ritual Wooden Objects of the Cliffs). The photographs originally ran alongside the published article, an account of African Dogon culture based on Michel Leiris’ field work in West Africa.
According to the exhibit, the photographs frame objects of the Dogon people in such a way that works against the scientific intentions of the text.
Looking at the display, exhibit-goers are faced with a juxtaposition that was at the heart of the artists’ efforts to expose African culture: the use of radical, unusual photography to expose something as grounded and real as an entire society.
Making their way up the stairs into the exhibit’s second room, visitors can see avant-garde ideals in fashionable action.
The section of the exhibition titled “Fashioning a Popular Reception” displays photographs of Nancy Cunard by Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, Walker Evans and Raoul Ubac.
Cunard was a writer, heiress, political activist and trendsetter whose frequent donning of armfuls of African bangles spearheaded a fashion craze.
Visitors that sit on one of two benches tucked in a quiet corner of the exhibition can watch a short fictional film titled “Fang: An Epic Journey,” written and directed by Susan Vogel from New York University.
Part of the film addresses the political climate during the time period of the art movement by depicting the struggles of one character’s exploration of African culture under the restrictive doctrine of Nazi Germany.
The show succeeded as a vivid adaptation of the artists’ efforts to popularize African culture in the 1920s and ’30s.
*UNM Art Museum inside Popejoy Hall
Runs thru May 30
Tuesday – Friday
10:00 A.M. – 4:00 P.M.
Free*
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