Man Ray / Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism [Hardcover]

Phillip Prodger (Author), Lynda Roscoe Harigan (Contributor), Antony Penrose (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 20, 2011

Bringing together unique and rarely seen photographs, paintings, sculpture and drawings, this exquisite book tells the story of the tumultuous relationship between the artists Man Ray (1890–1976) and Lee Miller (1907–1977). From 1929 to 1932, the two lived together in Paris, first as teacher and student, and later as lovers. Historically, Miller has been described as Man Ray’s muse, but Partners in Surrealism reveals how their brief, mercurial love affair was a key source of mutual and sustained inspiration, resulting in some of the most powerful work of each artist’s career. Featuring a candid and poignant contribution from Antony Penrose, the son of Miller and the English painter Roland Penrose, on the relationship between Man Ray and his parents in later years, this is an extraordinary exploration of the love, lust and desire that drove the art of the Surrealists.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lynda Roscoe Hartigan is Chief Curator at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.

Antony Penrose is Director of the Lee Miller Archives and the Penrose Collection.

Phillip Prodger is Curator of Photography at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Merrell Publishers; 1 edition (June 20, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1858945577
• ISBN-13: 978-1858945576
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 0.8 x 10.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #191,730 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Show of Art to Display an Artistic Collaboration September 27, 2011

By R. Hardy HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

The most famous lips in art appear as disembodied, huge, Zeppelin-like red cushions floating in a mackerel sky in "Observatory Time - The Lovers" by Man Ray from about 1931. They may be disembodied, but they are not anonymous. They belonged to his lover Lee Miller, and he was to use her lips in many other artworks, as he would do her eye and her full figure. Man Ray's artistry, and his inspiration by Lee Miller as his muse, are well known, but less well known is that the two of them were not just lovers but in many ways collaborators, and that Lee Miller was to go on to have her own artistic career. Their joint artistic lives are the subject of a current exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and a beautiful book accompanies the exhibit: _Man Ray Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism_ (Merrell). It is written by Phillip Prodger, the museum's director of photography, with contributions by art authority Lynda Roscoe Harigan and by Antony Penrose, who directs the UK-based Lee Miller Archives and is, incidentally, Miller's son. This is a handsome, large-format, coffee-table book with a useful text that increases our appreciation for both artists and the way they affected each other. Because the work and life of Lee Miller is less known than Man Ray's, however, it turns out to be (or at least it was for me) an introduction to her life.

Miller had been a photographic model, and in 1929 decided to head to Europe to become a photographer herself by apprenticing herself to Man Ray in Paris. She had never met him before, and showed up uninvited. "I don't take students," he said, and explained that he was leaving for Biarritz the next day. "So am I," she said. She was to be his collaborator and lover for three years.... She set up her own photography studio near Ray's studio. She had plenty of clients, and Ray passed work to her. The two often worked together in Ray's studio, staging photographs of Miller or other models. They invented the technique of "solarization" together. Their separation was inevitable, given Miller's need to find her own way and Ray's feelings of jealousy. When Miller left for good, Ray was devastated and the split was acrimonious. He continued to use Miller's image in different ways; the lips were to appear again and again, with the gloomiest image being their outline on a sheet of lead in a construction with rope. Things were not to remain gloomy. Ray was to work out his loss in his art. The two married others, and became close friends. When Ray visited the Penrose house in Sussex, according to the warm memoir by her son, "... the best part was that my mother, Lee Miller, was always so happy when Man Ray was around." Otherwise, she suffered from depression and alcoholism, complications of the anxiety and grief she felt as she became a war photographer, documenting the atrocities at Buchenwald and Dachau. Unfortunately the exhibit and book do not cover this work). When they resumed their friendship, it was, says her son, "closer than anything they had achieved when they were lovers." The most charming of Man Ray's works here is a cigar box with a peephole in it, sent to Miller in 1974. "For Lee - this consoler," is written on the outside, "If she needs one. Look here!" with a little arrow pointing to the peephole. I'd love to take a peep - the text does not say what is shown.

_Man Ray Lee Miller_ has many pages of photos made by the two, as well as pictures of their other work. There are also contributions from the couple's Paris circle, including Picasso, Cocteau, Ernst, and Calder, as well as Miller's pictures of Joseph Cornell and of some of his assemblages. The text is excellent, providing an understanding of some unforgettable images. The artwork is not only surprising and lovely in itself, but here serves as illustration to a love affair and a lifelong collaboration. Read more ›