"Man Ray and fashion" at the Luxembourg Museum

The Musée du Luxembourg presents a new exhibition designed for lovers of photography, fashion and visual art in general.

The protagonist is Man Ray, a great figure of modernity, introduced to the Parisian avant-garde by Marcel Duchamp in 1921.

Upon his arrival in Paris, for economic reasons, Man Ray will at first devote himself successfully to social portraiture and gradually slide from the mundane to fashion.

Born with the XXth century, fashion photography is at the beginning utilitarian, documentary and inferred to the codes of fashion illustration. Soon, magazines, the main vectors of fashion diffusion, will devote more and more space to it. It is at this time that Man Ray begins to be noticed thanks to his strange compositions, his cropping, light sets and shadows and other technical experiments that will contribute to the creation of dreamlike, striking  and innovative images.  

His first contact in the world of fashion was Paul Poiret, but soon most of the great couturiers called upon him: Madeleine Vionnet, Coco Chanel, Augusta Bernard, Louise Boulanger, and above all, Elsa Schiaparelli. 

The exhibition highlights this permanent enrichment between "art for art's sake" and commissioned productions. You will be able to admire a wide selection of photographs, original prints as well as contemporary large-format prints and cinematographic documents evocative of the fashion of the 1920s and 1930s.

These short audiovisual excerpts give another perspective on fashion by showing that the way of filming is also becoming more emancipated. As for fashion magazines, they occupy a large place in order to underline the major role they have played in the ever-widening diffusion of a new aesthetic.

Photo ©Musée du Luxembourg