The Dada movement in art is without a doubt my favorite. There is no other collection of artists and artworks that manages to be simultaneously controversial, macabre, hilarious and intriguing - they first poked fun at the established art of time and redefined the role of the artist and the viewer. When Europe was still shattered from the destruction of WWI, the Dadaists were able to make the kind of art that slaps you, destroys apathy and forces you to engage in a conversation - they were so ahead of their time that even encountering a Dada work today will be an unprecedented and often shocking experience. For every high school misfit that broods over Dali's "The persistence of memory" there is someone like me wanting to whack them over the head and point out Dali's predecessors - true rebels that were not afraid to start a revolution that unquestionably set the stage for modern art.
Man Ray on the other hand is without doubt one of my favorite photographers. While he was a Dadaist, in many ways he was also unlike them - firstly he was a Brooklynite in a world full of Europeans, a cool observer in a world of political activists and a photographer who also had financial success amongst artistic martyrs and anti-establishmentarians.
One of Man Ray's most unusual achievements is the way he saw his subjects in a new light, ripping apart all sentimentality when it comes to the human form and reducing it all to an object or shape. This obsession saw him experiment with new techniques - placing objects directly on photographic film, negative exposures and compositions and collages that linked the human body and the object-machine. The resulting works are always aesthetic but also unsettling - mirrors that reflect back to us the contents of our mind and yet remain coolly silent about Man Ray, the artist. Unconcerned, but not indifferent (written on Man Ray's grave).
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