Man Ray Quotes

I have been accused of being a joker. But the most successful art to me involves humor.

All critics should be assassinated.

I do not photograph nature. I photograph my visions. Quoted in PBS episode of American Masters

You see, I try to walk the tightrope of accomplishment between the chasms of notoriety and oblivion.

I believe in the relation between photography and music; And thats my inspiration.

l paint what cannot be photographed, and l photograph what l do not wish to paint. lf it is a portrait that interests me, a face, or a nude, I will use my camera. It is quicker than making a drawing or a painting. But if it is something I cannot photograph, like a dream or a subconscious impulse I have to resort to drawing or painting. To express what I feel I use the medium best suited to express that idea, which is also always the most economical one. l am not at all interested in being consistent as a painter, and object-maker or a photographer. I can use several different techniques, like the old masters who were engineers, musicians and poets at the same time. I have never shared the contempt shown by painters for photography: there is no competition involved, painting and photography are two media engaged in different paths. There is no conflict between the two.

Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.

An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an original is motivated by necessity. The original is the result of an automatic process, the reproduction, of a mechanical process. In other words: Inspiration then information; each validates the other. All other considerations are beyond the scope of these statements. It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human.

I like contradictions. We have never attained the infinite variety and contradictions that exist in nature. Tomorrow I shall contradict myself. That is the one way I have of asserting my liberty, the real liberty one does not find as a member of society.

It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.

There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love. There are simply different ways of doing it.

The streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers.”
Man Ray

Unconcerned but not indifferent.

A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him.

Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art.