Cadeau objet man ray biography

Man Ray’s Cadeau, 1921, editioned replica 1972, known also as a ‘Gift’, is one of the famous icons of the surrealist movement. It consists of an everyday continental flat iron of the sort that had to be heated on a stove, transformed here into a non-functional, disturbing object by the addition of a single row of fourteen nails.

Man Ray loved such transitions – but he never destroys, he always modifies and enriches. In this case, he provides the flatiron with a new role, a role that we dimly guess, and the probably accounts for the object’s strange fascination.

Cadeau objet man ray biography book

The artists once said: ‘There are objects that need names”.

The Gift is a conjunction of two alien objects. One represents domesticity and possibly femininity; the other represents carpentry and hence masculinity.

In 1974, Ray made 5,000 replicas of Gift as a limited edition.

In his autobiography Man Ray recounted the story of the making of the original Cadeau.

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