Gallery Talk, Dada’s Happenstance: The Rayograph and Other Playful Accidents

Man Ray, Feather and Matchboxes, 1923

Man Ray, Feather and Matchboxes, 1923. Rayograph. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of the Estate of Katherine S. Dreier

The Dada idea that everything could be used for making art had a strong impact on artist Man Ray. In this talk, Gabriella Svenningsen, Museum Assistant in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, discusses Man Ray’s “rayographs”—photographs made without a camera, in which he experimented with light, filters, and everyday objects—in relation to other surprising and humorous works by Dada artists, including his close friend Marcel Duchamp and the German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Everything Is Dada.