RANT!

MISATTRIBUTION ON THE INTERNET!

MAN RAY is not MARCUS LEATHERDALE

I don't like Tumblr, I particularly don't like Pinterest, I don't especially like Instagram, I don't like Flickr, I don't really care for Reddit. I have discussed with folk who care that all of these and especially Pinterest can post pictures without copyright or care images by artists and get their facts wrong. Some folk have tried their best to reassure me and help me calm down but it has got worse. It has actually got to the point where people have posted so many versions of an incorrectly attributed image that even websites of academia are getting it wrong and perpetuate the mis-nomenclature! Did they look it up on the internet?!

The picture below is listed ALL over the web as being by Man Ray of his muse and lover Kiki De Montparnasse (real name Alice Prin). Now I studied as an art student alongside the composer Gavin Bryars and the noted historian Fred Orton, the work of Marcel Duchamp and his circle and this required some extensive research into Francis Picabia and others and I became especially interested in the work of Man Ray and did a fair amount of research into his muses from Alice Prin to Adrienne 'Ady' Fidelin and his lover and partner for a time the great photographer Lee Miller (the first photographer into Auschwitz and the first woman there) This picture below is NOT by him, nor is it of Kiki de Montparnasse, it is not even taken in the same era! They are 60 years apart! This has been credited as such now in Sotheby's online sources and people have used it and posted it in academic papers they have published online!

most people credit  as Man Ray 'Kiki De Montparnasse' 1923

It is in fact a picture by the fine art photographer and famous fashion photographer and contemporary of Robert Mapplethorpe, Marcus Leatherdale of a model of his called simply "Larissa" dated 1983 and she is modelling a dress by Issy Miyake the great dress designer from a collection of his work called 'Bodyworks' in the early eighties. For whom this shot was meant to publicise and advertise his work I assume. If, as most sources online would have it, it is dated as 1923 and being of the famous French prostitute turned model, Alice Prin, it is not doing justice either to Issy Miyake, Marcus Leatherdale himself or indeed the model Larissa. It did not take too long to discover the correct attribution but in this lazy scatter culture miasma of chaos we call the internet no-one its seems can be bothered to do any homework at all!

Note Sotheby's have it listed under an article called 'Man Ray: What We Can Learn!' Not much it would seem!
Sad really were it not so inescapably ironic and hilarious! SOTHEBY'S?! FFS!

https://www.sothebysinstitute.com/news-and-events/news/may-ray-what-we-can-learn/

the online fashion (sic?) magazine has it posted as being by Man Ray under the title of an erudite article 'Reality is Elsewhere' Now ain't THAT the truth!

Of the 25,000,000,000 images it drew up on't t'internet are these who IMHO should know better (see below) and of the others posting it thusly I stopped counting at 100 entries on Pinterest but they make up the bulk of the rest . . . . . . 

http://kopenhagen.dk/magasin/magazine-single/article/reality-is-elsewhere/https://arthistoryproject.com/artists/man-ray/kiki-de-montparnasse/
 https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/kiki-de-montparnasse-2/
 http://pictify.saatchigallery.com/1111093/man-ray-kiki-de-montparnasse-1920-trivium-art-history
 https://trippinbox.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/my-muses-1920s-kiki-montparnasse/
 https://www.anatomyfilms.com/man-ray-dada/

N.B. How do I know I am right and not thoroughly mistaken myself you may ask? 

Well it's quite simple I did my research and the shot features in Marcus' book

Buy The Book Issy Miyake BODYWORKS photos by Marcus Leatherdale here

Larissa in outfit from Issey Miyake’s ‘Bodywork’ collection, A/W 1983-84 | photo Marcus Leatherdale, 1983

or you could ask him!

MARCUS LEATHERDALE WEB

( and while you're about it you might wish to apologise for the misappropriation)

or if you like you could check out his book over at BLURB and you know BUY IT!

marcus leatherdalde at BLURB

ALICE PRIN

or

KIKI DE MONTPARNASSE

“The most memorable image is Man Ray’s photograph Le Violon D'Ingres, which shows a naked Kiki, seated and viewed from behind, with two ‘f’s in her back; a celebration of her violin-curves, and a statement that she was, in effect, an instrument for the creation of art.

Kiki and Man Ray were lovers for six years, during which time he made hundreds of images of her, and was hugely influential in the creation of her persona. Kay Boyle, a Paris-based American novelist and contemporary of Kiki’s, wrote that, “Man Ray had designed Kiki’s face for her … and painted it on with his own hand. He would begin by shaving her eyebrows off … and then putting other eyebrows back, in any colour he might have selected for her mask that day … Her heavy eyelids might be done in copper one day and in royal blue another, or else in silver or jade.”

Despite their intense connection, Kiki ultimately went too far for Man Ray. When a cafe-owner in Nice called her a whore, she got into a fight, and was thrown into jail: Man Ray’s lawyer could only secure her release by producing a doctor’s certificate stating that she had a nervous disorder. Soon afterwards, Man Ray left Kiki for his photographic protege, Lee Miller. He broke the news to Kiki at one of their regular cafe haunts, and was forced to duck under a table while she hurled plates at his head.” – Anna Davis, The Guardian

(photos: man ray)

“All I need is an onion, a bit of bread, a bottle of red, and I will always find somebody to offer me that.”  – Alice Prin (Kiki de Montparnasse)

(painting: kees van dongen)

Kiki - Man Ray

Kiki De Montparnasse - Man Ray