MAN RAY (1890-1976) [LONDON TRANSPORT] - KEEPS LONDON GOING. 1938.
39 1/2x24 3/4 inches, 100 1/4x63 cm. Waterlow & Sons Limited, London.
Condition B+: small restored losses, repaired tears and restoration at edges; repaired tear at top edge, into image; creases at edges and in image. Mounted on Japan.
Emmanuel Radnitzky was born in Philadelphia in 1890 and his family moved to New York City shortly thereafter. It was in New York that the young man had two decisive encounters: he met Alfred Stieglitz, who introduced him to photography, and befriended Marcel Duchamp, with whom he had a life-long artistic relationship. Man Ray (the family had changed their name in 1912) moved to Paris in the 1920s and joined the Surrealist movement where he flourished as a photographer. Not only did he engage in portraiture, but he also did pioneering work with solarization and experimenting with photograms (which he referred to as rayographs, in reference to his own name). In this process, he placed objects directly on photographic paper and exposed it to light. This technique created surreal images, at the same time abstract and representational. Man Ray submitted the designs for these posters in 1936 to Frank Pick, London Transport's Chief Executive (London Transport p. 159). Pick was not averse to working with avant-garde designers, having already selected artists like Moholy-Nagy to design posters, and it was probably through Pick's relationship with McKnight Kauffer that Man Ray was contacted in the first place. The image is one of two posters with identical images. The text on the first reads, London Transport - and on the second, - Keeps London Going. The photogram image of the Underground logo - the circle and bar roundel, designed by Edward Johnson in 1913 - as a heavenly object side-by-side with Saturn in the blackness of the cosmos is startlingly unexpected, eye catching and memorable, and works brilliantly as a design even if its message is unclear. The poster's visual effect is enhanced by the asymmetric borders. Much commentary has been given to the meaning of the design, but a straightforward interpretation places the London Transport System within the larger, smoothly running, elliptical orbits of the Solar System, suggesting efficient and punctual service on a universal level. rare. Underground p. 77 (var), London Transport p. 160, Word and Image p. 85, Modern Poster 168, Mechanical Age pl. 73, Crouse p. 267, Encyclopedie de l'Affiche p. 136.