Ying Yang

MAN RAY

Non-functional
Disturbing
Hybrids
Irrational
Nonsensical
Unsetting
Spontaneous
Readymade
Strange
Subconscious

Man Ray was one of the founders of Dadaism in the United States. He became a leading figure in the Dada movement in New York. Dadaism, which takes its name from nickname for a hobby horse in French, challenged existing notion of art and literature, and encouraged spontaneity. Man Ray got to know the Surrealists in Paris when he moved to the city in 1921. One of Ray’s famous works from this time was Cadeau, a sculpture that incorporated two found objects. He glued nails to the work surface of an iron to create the piece.
In Cadeau, Man Ray took a simple utilitarian objects, an iron, and made it evoke different qualities by attaching a row of nails. Hence the nails, which cling and hold, contrast with iron, which is meant to smoothly glide, and both are rendered useless. This arrangement transforms the object into something at once familiar and threatening. Meanwhile, the title, Cadeau(French means gift) adds the characteristically Dadaist maniacal and nihilistic edge.
Cadeau is one of the famous icons of the surrealist movement. It consists of an everyday iron transformed into a non-functional, disturbing object by the addition of a single row of fourteen nails. The transformation of such a domestic item into a strange object exemplified the power of the object with Dada to surrealism to escape the rule of logic and the