Born Emmanuel Radnitzky 125 years ago today, he is better known as Man Ray. While the name he coined when he became an artist as a young man in New York concealed his Russian-Jewishness, Ray's early mobile made of coat hangers has been read as an indirect reference to the fact that his family was in the rag trade. His father was a tailor. Called Obstruction (1920), a version of the mobile sculpture hangs in the exhibition Man Ray: Human Equations, now on at Copenhagen's Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek on loan from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the show heads in October. The mobile is accompanied by Ray's 1964 lithograph featuring a sketch and instructions for assembling the pioneering piece of conceptual art. You begin with one hanger, then hang two from it, and keep doubling the number of humble clothing accessories as you go. "Of course, this mathematical progression may be carried on to infinity," he wrote, adding: "The increasing confusion is apparent only to the eye and is to be desired."
