The winds of war meant Man Ray headed west, leaving his apartment and mistress in Paris in 1940 to return to the US. The Surrealist photographer par excellence decamped to Los Angeles where he took up his paintbrush again—he first bought a camera to record his works on canvas. His paintings from the late 1940s are now on show in Copenhagen's Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (until 20 September) in Man Ray: Human Equations. In the catalogue accompanying the intriguing show, which has been co-organised by the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Andrew Strauss, a Man Ray expert who is vice president of Sotheby's Paris, describes the private view of the selling show in a Beverly Hills gallery when the paintings, inspired by curious mathematical objects and Shakespearean titles, were unveiled. The Copley Gallery was transformed by Man Ray into a Parisian-soirée back in pre-war days. Hollywood's intellectual glitterati and fellow artists in sunny exile came out in force. And what a crowd: Igor Stravinsky, Harpo Marx, Henry Miller, Jean Renoir and Max Ernst to name a few. Alas, the show was a somewhat modest success: only two works found buyers.
