Man Ray Cadeau

Man Ray’s Cadeau (1921, Figure 1) was the artist’s first “readymade,” in addition to being the first piece he made while in Paris. The sculpture’s simple yet provocative form consists of an upright flatiron with several nails glued to its base in a single-file line. Like many of Man Ray’s works, Cadeau has a rich mythology associated with its creation. In this case, the piece was created the day of Man Ray’s first Parisian exhibition, with the help of composer Erik Satie.1 In Man Ray’s words: “We passed a shop where various household utensils were spread out in front. I picked up the flatiron, the kind used on coal stoves, asked Satie to come inside with me, where, with his help, I acquired a box of tacks and a tube of glue. Back at the gallery …show more content…
Nancy Ring raises an interesting point in her dissertation New York Dada and the Crisis of Masculinity by mentioning that “in Man Ray’s narrative, the conventionally feminine act of shopping is transformed into a scene of male bonding.”1 Through this reading, the masculinization of a traditionally feminine act extends beyond Man Ray’s subconscious into the very process of creating Cadeau. In other words, Satie played an essential part in the creation of the piece merely by bonding with Man Ray through the unconventional method of shopping. When Schrock does bring up Satie, she mentions him as a surrogate father figure for Man Ray.2 In her words: “Man Ray conceptually ‘offered’ the emotionally charged and fetishized object to Satie, for whom-as man/father-he would symbolically battle the powerful, threatening, devouring woman/mother.”3 In this interpretation, the title of Cadeau references Man Ray’s gift to Satie as a plea for recognition. However, if Erik Satie can be seen as a father figure, then it could be argued that Man Ray would seek to emulate Satie as a role model in addition to presenting him with gifts. Cadeau then can be interpreted as a synthesis of the ideas of both artists, with Man Ray drawing as much from Satie as his own childhood. In order to understand the true scope of Erik Satie’s influence on Cadeau, it …show more content…
Some of his most groundbreaking work was called “furniture music.” Furniture music pieces “are each fundamentally based on a short musical fragment, to be repeated ad lib (at one’s pleasure).”1 Furniture music is monotonous by design, with the purpose of fading into the background and creating a functional ambience for the space.2 This “functional” music runs counter to the traditional compositional goals of audience engagement and emotional journey. A more traditional composer would introduce a musical theme and then develop the melody through varied harmonic context, lending the musical material new meaning. Satie’s approach centers around taking the identical melodic phrase and repeating it ad lib, until the music becomes a texture of sound, indistinguishable from the atmosphere of the room. The titles of the pieces reference the functional events and rooms where they might be played, such as “Phonic tiling - Can be played during a lunch or civil marriage” (1917) or “A drawing room.” (1920) The fusion of mechanical monotony with domestic naming is a precursor to the angst of the mid-century American housewife: a conflation of monotony and the home. Satie’s intention, however, was more subversive. He intended to reverse “the hierarchy subduing an audience beneath the domination of the artwork” and to “expose a set of weary conventions by