![Chess Set by Man Ray, 1926. Silver-plated and oxidized silver-plated brass, Tallest piece: 4”. The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY.
Venn and Weinberg write:
To many Dada and Surrealist artists, the game of chess was a metaphor for the creative process. Man Ray learned the game from Marcel Duchamp and developed a lifelong appreciation for the chessboard as “a field for clear thinking, impromptu imagination, surprise…”. Chess motifs recur in Ray’s paintings, photographs, and object constructions. […] In one of his earliest sets […] the king takes the form of a pyramid, a symbol of Egyptian kingship. The scroll of a violin, resembling a horses mane, becomes the knight.1
Beth Venn and Adam D. Weinberg, ed., Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art 1900-1950, (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1999), 95. ↩](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/surrealism/7513316415/1/tumblr_lo10q8hqBq1qzse0l)
Chess Set by Man Ray, 1926. Silver-plated and oxidized silver-plated brass, Tallest piece: 4”. The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY.
Venn and Weinberg write:
To many Dada and Surrealist artists, the game of chess was a metaphor for the creative process. Man Ray learned the game from Marcel Duchamp and developed a lifelong appreciation for the chessboard as “a field for clear thinking, impromptu imagination, surprise…”. Chess motifs recur in Ray’s paintings, photographs, and object constructions. […] In one of his earliest sets […] the king takes the form of a pyramid, a symbol of Egyptian kingship. The scroll of a violin, resembling a horses mane, becomes the knight.1
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Beth Venn and Adam D. Weinberg, ed., Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art 1900-1950, (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1999), 95. ↩
