{"id":155710,"date":"2025-09-20T02:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T02:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/155710\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T02:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T02:53:09","slug":"pairing-man-ray-and-max-dupain-at-heide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/155710\/","title":{"rendered":"Pairing Man Ray and Max Dupain at Heide"},"content":{"rendered":"

For many Australians, the name Max Dupain will evoke a single image: a male figure lying on the beach, the crown of his head and his bronze muscular shoulders creating a silhouette against the bleached sand and sky. This image, Sunbaker (1937), has become an icon of Australian modernist photography and is also emblematic of a certain idea of Australian culture \u2013 the model, a friend of Dupain\u2019s, had just emerged from the surf before plopping down for a spot of tanning.<\/p>\n

Since its creation \u2013 almost a century ago \u2013 Sunbaker has been endlessly reproduced. This repetition slowly but surely reduced the image from a modernist masterpiece to something more like advertising material. Likewise, the breadth of Dupain\u2019s talent has been reduced to a single image.<\/p>\n

This makes Man Ray and Max Dupain at Heide Museum of Modern Art a welcome salve. Curated by Heide\u2019s artistic director Lesley Harding and French curator and Man Ray expert Emmanuelle de l\u2019Ecotais, the double bill exhibition offers viewers a broad cross-section of works by the American-born Paris-based modernist daddy of photography Man Ray, while also presenting an array of lesser-known Dupain works.<\/p>\n

I admit I was sceptical: double bill exhibitions have become something of a trendy curatorial methodology in recent years. We might think of Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines at the NGV (2019), which presented the works of two artists who did know each other but which was criticised for omitting Haring\u2019s pieces dealing with sexually explicit themes and homosexuality. There are wins \u2013 in 2024, commercial Melbourne gallery Neon Parc paired etchings by German surrealist Hans Bellmer with creations by contemporary Castlemaine-based sculptor Noriko Nakamura. It was a seemingly weird coupling \u2013 given the artists\u2019 different historical and geographical backdrops \u2013 that nonetheless worked.<\/p>\n

For Man Ray and Max Dupain, the curators did not try too hard to create links between the two artists. Straight off the bat, we are told they never met. It is unclear whether Man Ray even knew of Dupain\u2019s existence. Dupain was two decades younger than Man Ray and spent most of his life in Sydney making a living as a commercial photographer \u2013 some choice examples of his fashion photography are hung in the show.<\/p>\n

Man Ray was born in Philadelphia but moved to Paris in his early 30s and became quickly entrenched with dadaists and surrealists, counting artists such as Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp as friends. This exhibition features some incredible portraits of his milieu, including Salvador Dal\u00ed, Pablo Picasso and Joan Mir\u00f3. Portrait of Andr\u00e9 Breton (in Front of Giorgio Chirico\u2019s Painting The Enigma of Day), thought to have been taken shortly after Man Ray\u2019s relocation to Paris, is a who\u2019s who of Paris surrealism. The viewer is shown two pioneering modernist artists who experimented and influenced generations after them.<\/p>\n

Dupain admired Man Ray, whom he encountered through reproductions in magazines. Homage to Man Ray (1937) depicts a woman\u2019s chest covered by her hands and employs the technique of solarisation that Man Ray made famous, which involves briefly exposing the negative or print to light to produce a halo-like effect.<\/p>\n

This work is hung subtly with other Dupain and Man Ray solarisations, including a tiny, quietly arresting image of the artist Hera Roberts framed by a bunch of trumpet lilies (Hera Roberts, 1935). It would have been too easy to reinforce the direct pipeline from European modernism to Australian modernism, which so often compounds the provincialism that is the bane of Australian art. To mitigate this, the exhibition is hung according to various themes \u2013 fashion photography, nudes, portraits and so on \u2013 with the works of each artist combined in salons.<\/p>\n

The curators did not try too hard to create links between the two artists. Straight off the bat, we are told they never met.<\/p>\n

I overheard a pair of women trying to guess which work belonged to which photographer, before checking against the wall didactic and being surprised to learn they were incorrect. I did a lot of this too. Each photographer seemed to have a very keen focus on the interplay between shadow, light and rounded lines. Although, given the bulk of Man Ray and Dupain works are images of nude women, this might just be happenstance.<\/p>\n

The differences between the photographers, combined as their works are at Heide, emerge with time. Take the photographers\u2019 respective light sources. A beach-themed line-up of three images shows two featuring Man Ray\u2019s fellow surrealist Meret Oppenheim \u2013 famous for her fur teacup \u2013 in a beach bonnet (Meret Oppenheim, 1932), and\u00a0by\u00a0Dupain a third of a woman in a bathing\u00a0suit held up by a second figure and shot from below with the sky as backdrop (Beach Play, 1937).<\/p>\n

While Man Ray clearly shot these photographs in a studio, Dupain shot on a beach using natural lighting. The sun is a critical player in Dupain\u2019s oeuvre and naturally lit photographs come up time and again. Images such as Beach Play, as well as some of his still lifes \u2013 such as one that shows a\u00a0domestic kitchen vessel covered in the shadow of light filtered through a blind (Still Life, 1935) \u2013 represent the vernacular of his works. In a small gallery dedicated to the women in Man Ray and Dupain\u2019s lives \u2013 Lee Miller and Olive Cotton, respectively \u2013 we are presented with\u00a0a photograph by Cotton of Dupain after he has emerged from the surf (Max after surfing, 1939).<\/p>\n

In her catalogue essay, Helen Ennis points out that Man Ray\u2019s use of light reflects his involvement with dada and surrealism: \u201cMan Ray\u2019s concentration on light\u2019s \u2018fugitive aspects\u2019, on the oscillations between light and shadow, enabled him to create a poetic vision of reality \u2013 of surreality.\u201d These surrealist experimentations can be seen not only through light play in the studio and through techniques such as solarisation but also in subject matter.<\/p>\n

The phallus, the beloved subject matter of psychoanalysts and therefore surrealists, makes frequent appearances. Anatomies (1929), one of Man Ray\u2019s most recognisable works, shows a woman rearing her head back so that her neck and chin resemble a penis. The lesser-known \u00c9rotique Voil\u00e9e (1933), another photograph of Meret Oppenheim, stands her behind the wheel of a printing press with the handle functioning as a phallus.<\/p>\n

Although Dupain published several surrealist photographs over the years, he did not subscribe to Man Ray\u2019s strongly surrealist bent, working instead with something more like spiritualism. Move over penis envy and the subconscious, hello auras and fairies. The\u00a0Birth of Venus (1939), a double exposure of\u00a0a heavily pregnant woman flanked by identical Venus statues, has a\u00a0cultish vibe. Another portrait of a\u00a0nymph-like Hera Roberts (Hera Roberts, 1936) shows the artist gazing into a round mirror, her forehead and face reflected back in symmetry, as if she is summoning some higher being. Again, the curators\u2019 light touch means they don\u2019t try to force a surrealist framework on to Dupain\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

The works in Man Ray and Max Dupain are strong and have been arranged with great care, which is why I was perplexed by the inclusion of a soundtrack commissioned especially for the exhibition by composer Peter Corrigan. It feels like a gimmick and is a disservice to the composer.<\/p>\n

Even more spectacle-driven are the mirrors positioned around the gallery in V formations, each pane bearing a work from one of the artists in a sort of compare and contrast \u2013 a thinly veiled attempt at appealing to a social media generation. It\u2019s hard not to think this is part of an inevitable \u201cexperience-making\u201d of the contemporary art scene, where viewers expect to be able to centre themselves.<\/p>\n

But it was the images that stayed with me long after seeing Man Ray and Max Dupain \u2013 in particular, a seemingly abstract photograph by Dupain of white curved lines interspersed with black planes. A masterwork of light and shadow, the subject of this work slowly revealed itself to be a folded woollen blanket (Blanket Rhythm, circa 1934). The mood of this form and sensuality of the wool as it becomes known to the viewer could not be further from the slickness of Sunbaker.<\/p>\n

Man Ray and Max Dupain is showing at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Victoria, until November 9.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

ARTS DIARY<\/p>\n

THEATRE Whitefella Yella Tree<\/a><\/p>\n

Wharf 1 Theatre, Gadigal Country\/Sydney, until October 18<\/p>\n

VISUAL ART New Asian Art<\/a><\/p>\n

National Gallery of Australia, Ngambri\/Canberra, until April 18<\/p>\n

BALLET Prism<\/a><\/p>\n

Regent Theatre, Naarm\/Melbourne, September 25\u2013October 4<\/p>\n

CULTURE Nature Festival 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

Venues throughout South Australia, September 26\u2013October 12<\/p>\n

PHOTOGRAPHY Julien Scheffer: Architecture<\/a><\/p>\n

Studio Gallery, nipaluna\/Hobart, until September 26<\/p>\n

LAST CHANCE<\/p>\n

THEATRE Shore<\/a><\/p>\n

Home of the Arts, Yugambeh Country\/Gold Coast, until September 20<\/p>\n

\n This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on
\n September 20, 2025 as “Sun and shadow”.<\/p>\n

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