On 23 March the Marconi Foundation in Milan presents the exhibition "Man Ray - Mapplethorpe", created in conjunction with the exhibition "Robert Mapplethorpe. The perfection of form" (21.03-13.06.2010) organized by the Lugano Museum of Art directed by Bruno Corà, and in collaboration with the Mapplethorpe Foundation of New York. The exhibition will make it possible to identify similarities and differences between the works and the "points of view" of the two multifaceted American artists, distinct from each other by generation, but united by the masterful ability to render the shapes and beauty of the chosen subjects: from flowers to objects , to male and female nudes. In 1920 in Paris, Man Ray began working as a photographer for the art world and over time became a collaborator of "Harper's Bazar", "Vogue", "Vu", "Vanity Fair" and other famous magazines. Man Ray, known above all for portraits, was then recognized as a photography artist thanks to his rayographs and solarization. His assistant, Lucien Treillard said of Man Ray “Man Ray photographer? No, he used photography as well as other means of expression: gouache pencil, oil painting, etc. He created works of art with the help of the photographic medium. Man Ray is an artist and claims this label. Of course, he has made commercial works for fashion or for occasional clients. But often these photographs become works of art thanks to him. " His assistant, Lucien Treillard said of Man Ray “Man Ray photographer? No, he used photography as well as other means of expression: gouache pencil, oil painting, etc. He created works of art with the help of the photographic medium. Man Ray is an artist and claims this label. Of course, he has made commercial works for fashion or for occasional clients. But often these photographs become works of art thanks to him. " His assistant, Lucien Treillard said of Man Ray “Man Ray photographer? No, he used photography as well as other means of expression: gouache pencil, oil painting, etc. He created works of art with the help of the photographic medium. Man Ray is an artist and claims this label. Of course, he has made commercial works for fashion or for occasional clients. But often these photographs become works of art thanks to him. "
Like Man Ray, Robert Mapplethorpe too, in his short career, after initially devoting himself to painting, turns his attention to photography, through which he researches and enhances the beauty and sensuality of form, in a complementary balance between black and white. angular and non-angular lines, classicism and contemporaneity. In an interview with Janet Kardon from 1988, Robert Mapplethorpe states: "I think one could flip through a lot of my photographs and say, 'Well, this one looks like the artist just like that, and this one looks like the artist like that.' to think that the influences are not too strong ". Many modern and contemporary artists have in fact partly influenced the work of Mapplethorpe, among these the figure of Man Ray certainly fits,
On this occasion, on the first and second floors of the Foundation, photographs, paintings and objects by Man Ray made between the early 1920s and the early 1970s will be exhibited, in comparison with a selection of 25 works from 1975 to 1986, by Robert Mapplethorpe. These include one of the numerous early 1980s portraits of Lisa Lyon, an athletic muse and collaborator of Mapplethorpe, as opposed to Man Ray's "Woman in Bondage" of 1928-29; Mapplethorpe's iconic "Calle" in 1983 and Man Ray's represented through the solarization technique in 1931; the nude "Ken, Lydia, Tyler" of 1985 compared with the photography of the assembly of objects, in which Man Ray juxtaposes classical art with "Target" geometry from 1933;
The exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual catalog (it./ingl.) With text by Bruno Corà, published by the Marconi Foundation.