(Philadelphia 1890–1976 Paris)
Revolving doors II long distance, 1917–1942, signed and dated 1942; titled, signed and dated 1917 on the reverse, oil on canvasboard, 76 x 50 cm, framed

The work is accompanied by a photo certificate issued by Luciano Anselmino
in 1975

Provenance:
Collection of the artist (until 1972)
Luciano Anselmino, Galleria Il Fauno, Turin
European Private Collection (acquired from the above)

Exhibited:
London, Institute of Contemporary Arts, An Exhibition Retrospective and Prospective of the works of Man Ray, 31 March–25 April 1959, no. 35
Los Angeles, Los Angeles Country Museum of Arts, Man Ray, 1966, exh.
cat. no. 55 (label on the reverse)
Turin, Man Ray, Galleria Il Fauno, October 1972, exh. cat. with ill.

Literature:
Sarane Alexandrian, Man Ray, Edition Filipacchi. Paris, 1973, p. 22 with ill.
Janus, Man Ray, Fabbri Editori, Milan 1973, no. 63, col. ill.

Note:
Man Ray remade the cycle of 10 panels Revolving Doors in 1942 after collages in coloured papers of 1916–1917, in the collection of the Galerie Rive Droite, Paris

Exhibited in New York in the Daniel Gallery in 1919, Revolving Doors is a series of collages which were first created by the artist in 1916–17 and were subsequently reproduced in oil on canvas in 1942. In them, different geometric forms combine with each other, giving life to brightly colourful machines with sometimes anthropomorphic outlines.
The exhibition layout adopted for the works’ first presentation to the public clarified the title given to the series and showed a continued interest in the optical-kinetic avant-gardes. The works were arranged on a stand in the centre of the room, free to rotate just like revolving doors, with the aim of creating an optical effect of moving shadows.

In describing the creative process of Revolving Doors, May Ray said: “I began working on the series of pseudo-scientific abstractions … I traced the forms on the spectrum-colored papers, observing a certain logic in the overlapping of primary colors into secondary ones, then cut them out carefully and pasted them down on white cardboard. [I] wrote a long rambling text to accompany the compositions, which bore fanciful titles such as The Meeting, Legend, Decanter, Shadows, Orchestra, Concrete Mixer, Dragon-fly, Mime, Jeune Fille, and Long Distance, with the general title of Revolving Doors because they were mounted upon a stand and hinged so that they could be turned and seen one at a time.” (Self Portrait, 1988, p. 62)
A versatile artist in both medium and stylistic idioms, these collages recall Man Ray’s experiments in photography and the rayographs in which he would investigate the creation of images via direct contact between objects and photographic film:

as I waited in vain a couple of minutes for an image to appear [...] I mechanically placed a small glass funnel, the graduate and the thermometer in the tray on the wetted paper. I turned on the light; before my eyes an image began to form, not quite a simple silhouette of the objects as in a straight photograph, but distorted and refracted by the glass more or less in contact with the paper and standing out against a black background, the part directly exposed to the light.

Revolving Doors is, however, also an analysis carried out by the artist into the culture of his time. He acknowledges the fact that the urban and industrial world produces a new kind of sound – machines and jazz (the new American music) being the most concrete expression. The artist offers a rhythmic sequence of shapes that follow on one after another and which, just like jazz music, require the observer to play an active role.
The rotation of the panels in Revolving Doors initiates a story that recounts various aspects of American popular culture, running from panel to panel in a sort of proto-cinema. In Mime the figure with its arms outstretched echoes the joyful spirit of the artist, Orchestra’s dazzling cut-outs call to mind the shape of musical instruments, and The Meeting seems to reproduce the vitality of a throbbing beat.
In Long Distance the artist recreates the shapes of an airship crossed with bright rays of colour, a symbol of the unstoppable energy of a continually expanding technological world and an expression of the inseparable bond between man and machine.