Return to Reason

Man Ray was a leading figure in the Dada movement (both in New York and Paris) and later in Surrealism, exploring the concept of the “found object”—discarded materials treated as valued artifacts. Many of these objects recur in Ray’s work over a period of time. The motif of the unwinding swath of paper, for instance, first appeared in Man Ray's controversial Dada sculpture Lampshade, made in 1919, in which an unrolled paper lampshade curls around a metal shaft. He returned to the idea in four subsequent works, three of which are titled Return to Reason. This painting is the earliest. A three-minute film followed in 1923 and a larger version of this painting in 1939.