Must-See Man Ray @ The Met Museum – 2025
Photos © Man Ray 2015 Trust ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Collage Helen Oppenheim
“When Objects Dream” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the first major exhibition to examine the radical experimentation of American artist Man Ray (1890-1976) through one of his most significant bodies of work, the rayograph. Man Ray coined the term rayograph to name his version of the 19th century technique of making photographs without a camera. He created them by placing objects on or near a sheet of light-sensitive paper, which he then exposed to light and developed. These photograms – as they are called – appear as reversed silhouettes, or negative versions of their subjects. They often feature recognizable items that become wonderfully mysterious in the artist’s hands.
The must-see exhibition, September 14, 2025 to February 1, 2026, explores the rayographs, Man Ray’s paintings and photographs. Included some of his most famous masterpieces – Le violon d’Ingres, Noire et blanche, Glass Tears and Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray’s lover, model, muse, with whom he worked from 1921-1929, creating some of his best-known works.
Top L-R : Man Ray rayograph with poster, Photo Ben Blackwell… Rayograph print, from Champs Délicieux 1922, one of 12 rayographs which open the exhibition … Man Ray Self Portrait in 31 bis rue Campagne-Premiere Studio, 1925 … Le violon d’Ingres, 1924, which the torso of the artist Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin) is depicted as a musical instrument. Photo: Ian Reeves
2nd Row L-R : Noire et blanche, 1926, a surrealistic image featuring Kiki de Montparnasse with an African ceremonial mask … Marchesa Luisa Casati, 1922, eccentric Italian aristocrat and muse, known for her extravagant style, photographed with three pairs of eyes, the surreal image being a portrait of her soul … Solarized portrait of Photographer/PhotoJournalist Lee Miller, 1930, a Man Ray muse and lover.
3rd Row L-R : Glass Tears, 1932, surrealistic photograph, of a fashion mannequin, with silent film influences, showing stress after his break up with Lee Miller … Marine, 1925, a rayograph … Elsa Schiaparelli photographed by Man Ray in 1931. Schiaparelli is one of the major funders for the exhibition made possible by the Barrie A and Deedee Wigmore Foundation.
Collage by Helen Oppenheim
CommentMet Museum Battle Versailles Fashion – 2022
Photos: Helen Oppenheim.
One of the stand-out rooms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” exhibition in the American Wing is the “Battle of Versailles” room – where Tom Ford has reimagined what happened in 1973, when the top French designers faced off against the top American designers. It is great fun, not captured as well as it could be with my iPhone. This is Part 2 of the Costume Institute’s exhibition exploring fashion in America and it opens for the public on Saturday, May 7. Part 1, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” will continue in the Anna Wintour Costume Center at The Met until September 5, 2022, when both exhibitions will close. To see 36 photos of the Exhibition, CLICK HERE
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Ancient Egypt @ The Met Museum – 2015/2016
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition of Masterworks from Ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (ca. 2030-1650 B.C.) is a little known period of Egyptian history. The fascinating exhibition #MiddleKingdomEgypt from October 12, 2015 to January 24, 2016, includes some monumental stone sculptures and some delicate ancient Egyptian Jewelry. Here is the Coffin of Nakhtkhnum (Detail). Late Twelfth to mid-Thirteenth Dynasty,ca (1850-1750 B.C.) For more on this exhibition and the new album just up, click HERE
Image: © Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Chic Punk – 1977
Photo: Lorraine Sylvestre
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute exhibition due May 9 to August 14, 2013 is going to make punk hot again. Not that it ever really went away. I dread to think how some punk hair cuts will ruin many a lovely face! Rooney Mara (“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”) will be one of the co-chairs. Wonder if she will cut her now long hair to a punk style again?
Fashion is another story. Punk. Chaos to Couture will examine punk’s impact from its birth In the 1970s through its continuing influence on high fashion today.
There will be approximately 100 designs for men and women, by all the usual suspects. Original punk garments from the mid-1970s will be juxtaposed with recent, directional fashion showing how pailettes were replaced by safety pins, feathers by razor blades, bugle beads by studs. Presented as an immersive multimedia, multisensory experience, the clothes will be animated with period music videos and soundscaping audio techniques.
Organized thematically, gallery sections will include Rebel Heroes, Pavillions of Anarchy and Elegance, Punk Couture, D.I.Y. Style, La Mode Destroy, all organized by my favorite Curator, Andrew Bolton. Guido Palau will design all mannequin head treatments and masks.
Hair here by Elmer Olsen, La Coupe 1977
Models: Sherry Diekrager and Elmer Olsen
Photo: Lorraine Sylvestre
For more on this chic punk-influenced hairstyle, go to HairThen, La Coupe, 70s Hair, Toronto Collection, Photo 10, on helenoppenheim.com – and watch out punk influences everywhere…
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