Cadeau

In July 1921, Man Ray left New York for Paris with 100 dollars, and a suitcase full of art. The artist Marcel Duchamp, with whom he was friends, was waiting for him there. Duchamp would go on to help him build a network, for instance by introducing him to André Breton and Louis Aragon, two well-known Dadaist writers.

A few months after his arrival in Paris, Man Ray exhibited his New York work at Librairie Six. And so, as if by accident, one of his most famous assemblages was created. The afternoon before the opening of the exhibition, Man Ray went to a café with the composer Erik Satie, whose acquaintance he had just made. Having left the café for the vernissage, they stopped off at a hardware shop along the way. There, Man Ray bought an iron, a tube of glue and some nails, which he then glued to the iron. He called the work Cadeau and added it to the exhibition. He did not sell a single artwork, but by the end of the evening the ‘cadeau’ had disappeared. It would never be recovered.

Fortunately, Man Ray had photographed the work. Many years later, in 1963, 5000 signed replicas could be made, based on this photograph. Man Ray liked to emphasize that anyone could make an iron with a row of nails attached to it, but that only one person could come up with the original idea.