Dragon Fly Possibly 1926

Man Ray made "Dragon Fly" with colored paper, collage, and airbrush, though when, I’m not exactly sure. I love imagining him in his studio, arranging and rearranging these shapes. That smooth, grey square looks like a cloud, or maybe a building. And the cascade of colorful diamonds? Well, they're a dragonfly of course, but they also read like a falling deck of cards, or a geometric waterfall. Then there’s that one skinny line holding everything up. It's whimsical, like a Calder mobile, but also solid and still. I wonder if Man Ray was thinking about the connections between abstraction and figuration, or maybe he just liked playing with shapes and colours. Either way, he was part of a big conversation about what painting could be, a conversation that we're still having today.