Man Ray

The attempt made to crystallize thoughts on the page; the thoughts of years. The language simple, the punctuation sometimes mystifying; a resemblance at times to Gertrude Stein: on lecturing and teaching (page 353): 'the goal was the same: to make people think. I [Man Ray] have made some of my listeners think, and it has sometimes made them angry, but I have also made others angry and it has made them think.' The author aware of his own contradictions in behaviour, in thought, in speech, in art; and nowhere are these contradictions more apparent than in autobiography; for in writing of oneself – one's life, one's thoughts retrospectively – it cannot be helped. Contradictions will occur whether one is aware of them or not. It is a problem of autobiography as is chronology; one snapshot leads to an earlier or later remembrance, thereby distorting, confusing time, and the reader's sense of the lived life and the experiences it contained. The author explores the finished and the unfinished areas and hopes the reader follows. The reader considers her own unfinished areas – the not seen through, the not taken up – and wonders if they are just as valid? Or even if perhaps their unfinishedness was somehow intended? A blank on her canvas.

Written April 2022.

Picture credit: Landscape, (Paysage Fauve), 1913, Smithsonian American Art Museum, (source: Wikipedia)

Reading Recommendation: Self Portrait by Man Ray.