Juan Gris (Primary Title)
Man Ray, American, 1890 - 1976 (Artist)
“In the early days Gertrude Stein brought Juan Gris to my studio,” Man Ray wrote in his autobiography. “He came prepared to be photographed with a high white stiff collar, as if for a family portrait.” Man Ray’s comments help unpack this early portrait of the Spanish Cubist artist, whose jacket, tie, and starched white shirt suggest a formality that is in stark contrast to the radical nature of his paintings. Rather than photograph Gris in front of a plain burlap backdrop, as he did for other sitters, including Havelock Ellis, Tsuguhara Fujita, and James Joyce, Man Ray positioned the Spanish artist underneath a painting, whose ornate frame is visible at the top of the image, and surrounded by decorated wallpaper, a wooden stick, and a banjo. The wallpaper helps date the portrait since it is recognizable as the wallpaper in Man Ray’s apartment-studio at the Grand Hotel des Écoles at 15, rue Delambre, where he stayed until December 1921.
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