Pierre Mac Orlan (Primary Title)
Man Ray, American, 1890 - 1976 (Artist)
The French novelist and art critic Pierre Mac Orlan (1882–1970) was an uncompromising champion of the avant-garde in Paris between the two world wars. Man Ray’s portrait captures the commanding presence and imposing character of the rugby-playing writer, who published several polemical essays on photography in the 1920s promoting the work of Man Ray and his colleagues, including Berenice Abbott and Eugène Atget. Seated in an armchair, with a clenched fist and an intense gaze, Mac Orlan gives the sense that, like a coiled spring, he could jump up and pontificate at any moment. Mac Orlan later congratulated Man Ray on his portrait, which he considered “more sensitive than countless paintings.”
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