Man Ray: Rider on the Storm
Throughout the spring and summer of 1932, Lee Miller is cast by Antony Penrose’s Lives as being a victim adrift in a “Storm of Passion” through which she navigated her way among swells of love, divorce and death. This story line is difficult to believe. The divorce and death of Nimet Eloui Bey has been previously discussed and dismissed. There is also no evidence to support a passionate love between Aziz and Lee in 1932. In fact, the only thing that is certain, is that the relationship that existed between Aziz and Lee in 1932 was brief. By early spring Aziz simply sailed off to Egypt and Lee, seamlessly entered into another affair with the American art dealer and gallery owner, Julien Levy. The affair with Aziz is actually indistinguishable from other casual affairs that Lee had prior to meeting Aziz and during the time she was with Man Ray. Aziz did not see or communicate with Lee Miller for more than two years after he returned to Egypt and, but for a business trip that he made to New York in 1934, it is unlikely that he would have ever seen Lee again.
On October 11, 1932 Lee left Paris. She did not join Aziz in Egypt, but rather her lover, Julien Levy, in New York.
A significant embellishment of the narrative is the depth and extent of the despair suffered by Man Ray as he rode out the “storm” on the cusp of suicide or murder. The basis of the stories surrounding Man Ray are traceable to one source - Julien Levy and his autobiography, Memoir of an Art Gallery, which was released in 1977, the year that Lee died. In Memoir, Levy stated:
“I had met Lee briefly the year before with Man Ray, with whom she had, initially, studied photography. Now, as everyone seemed to know, Lee had left Man, who was half-dead with sorrow and jealousy. Man had gone on a liquid diet, and if he was not drinking Perrier water, then he consumed quantities of orange juice. Though purified, he was unhappy, and it was reported dangerous for anyone to be seen those days with Lee. She was engaged to a rich Egyptian, Eloui Bey, who was out of town. But Man had a revolver and, in default of the Egyptian, was threatening any other rivals who might materialize. Nevertheless, I waved to Lee and caught up with her and made a date for that evening at the Jockey Club. Sparkling and magnetic, a noted beauty and leading lady in Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet, she knew her way around all the amusing Paris circles. It promised to be a most pleasant evening if I could charm her. And so it proved. That summer we had many adventures together (1).
Lives uses this as a preamble to the “Storm of Passion”:
“Before anyone knew what was happening, Aziz was infatuated with Lee and she with him. Back in Paris, the row that followed was explosive. Man Ray let it be known that he had a pistol, but no one was quite sure if in his madness he intended to use it on himself, Lee or her new lover. He was known to have a fascination with suicide so there was concern that his threats might turn to reality. One of his self-portraits from that period shows him with an expression of utter defeat on his face, a pistol in his hand and rope around his neck” [Emphasis added] (2).
Although Penrose does not credit Levy, the language of the “pistol” being intended to be used on “himself, Lee or her new lover” is identical to Levy’s passage and, in the footnote immediately prior, he cites the same Levy narrative on this point.
Carolyn Burke states:
“According to Julien Levy, who arrived in April on a gallery scouting trip, Man, already “half-dead with sorrow and jealousy” had gone on a liquid diet to purify himself but was said to be packing a gun with which “in default of the Egyptian, [he] was threatening any other rivals” (3).
Prior to publication of his book in 1977, Levy sent the passages concerning Man Ray to her for review. She was concerned about Levy characterizing Man Ray as drinking excessively when “Man was never a boozer, even in his moments of drama he wouldn’t have been drinking away his sorrows.” Levy, somewhat ridiculously, made the change to Perrier water and orange juice. More importantly, Lee stated that her memory of events was different but not worth changing. Since she was barely mentioned in the book and, basically, only in the context of her beauty, knowledge of Paris and Levy’s summer conquest of her, it is difficult to see what Lee was questioning other than the engagement to Aziz in Paris and that Man Ray was running around Paris looking to shoot someone. Aziz was not “out of town”, he was in Egypt when Levy arrived in May of 1932. He was not at risk of being shot nor were any other known rivals lurking about other than Levy. Levy and Aziz, on the other hand, were both in New York in 1934, the year in which Aziz and Lee were quickly and unexpectedly engaged and then married.
There is a story referencing a gun and suicide told by Jacqueline Goddard (née Barsotti) (a popular model and character in Montparnasse) that Levy may have been recalling in 1977, events that occurred after Lee left Paris in 1932. Through the course of a rainy night, Man Ray and Goddard wandered around Montparnasse stopping at Lee’s now empty apartment where Man Ray could confirm that Lee was, in fact, gone. The couple then walked a few blocks to Man Ray’s studio where, according to Lives he took a “self-portrait of utter despair”. The photograph is not a “self-portrait”, but a photograph taken by Goddard. Contemporaneously to the photograph of “Utter Despair” taken by Goddard, Man Ray took a photograph of Goddard laughing and goofing with the gun to her head in the same pose as Man Ray. There is no concern in her expression that she was in the presence of a friend bent on suicide. Another photograph of Man Ray reinforces this conclusion where Man Ray appears with the gun, but this time, it has his cigarette shoved into the barrel of the gun. Goddard is reported as stating that Man Ray had no suicidal intent (4).
May Ray may have been upset over the finality of his relationship with Lee, but he could not have been surprised. Man Ray wrote a letter to Lee in 1931 clearly indicating that their relationship was on the rocks prior to the appearance of Aziz on the scene. The letter concerns her relationship with a Russian musician named Zizi Svirsky , but is more or less indicative that Man Ray was fed up with Lee’s cuckholding him surreptitiously. May Ray was somewhat pathetically doing the “pick-me dance”, but the bottom line was an ultimatum.
“What I am going to say may seem the product of an unbalanced mind, but I would rather have you think so than feel that I was accepting a situation as better than nothing. It would be the first time in my life I made such a compromise. Perhaps also, I am attaching too much importance to events that are without meaning or consequences, but that too is my reason for writing instead of having it cut in a talk which could be nothing but disagreement and antagonism. I am, as you say, exaggerating the facts, but my intention is to make them important in order to come to a final understanding” [Emphasis added].
[Man Ray then writes for the next page or so about all that he has taught Lee and how Zizi had no interest in her other than prurient intentions…]
“You know well, since the beginning I promoted every possible occasion that might be to your advantage or pleasure, even where there was danger of losing you; at least any interference on my part always came afterwards, and stopped before it could produce a break, so that we could easily come together again, because every quarrel and making-up is a step towards a final break, and I did not want to lose you.
So darling, I have explained to myself in this way your change of attitude in the last few months. If you do not accept my explanation, and say all this is too intense, we can continue our process of separation more quickly, because one thing I shall not be able to change is this intensity with you, and sustained enthusiasm, whether in work, play or love-making, or rather all three inseparably joined. You have also the material problem, which has upset you – but we have already managed together for a long enough period to convince us that, from that side it hasn’t been so bad if you are willing to adapt yourself to our limits. Your face lately, especially in sleep, has shown too much this material worry, which I believe comes simply from hopes of other help, (and a certain delicacy towards me,) but any other help coming from one person will be more confining than any help coming from one person will be more confining than any help you can get from me. I ask nothing better in the future than to pool everything with you, if you can give me the preference as I have given it to you” [Emphasis added] (5).
Aziz may have been the “straw that broke the camel’s back”, but he was not the cause of the break up.
Man Ray’s letter to Lee was to make a final attempt to strike a compromise and set some boundaries to Lee’s infidelities over the previous few months. It did not work. Carolyn Burke makes the observation that “Lee’s affair with Aziz would destabilize his marriage and her relations with Man – whose request for the truth down to the slightest detail, she failed to honor.” Burke’s observation is very insightful. Man Ray could “compromise” and accept infidelity as long as Lee provided him with the truth. It was the lying, not the infidelity that was the deal breaker.
The financial uncertainty was also, at least in Man Ray’s eyes, a contributing factor. When Lee met Man Ray he was prosperous by Montparnasse standards. He had a sports car and a beautiful studio and apartment duplex. In addition to his portrait and commercial photography income in Paris, he enjoyed Vogue fashion photography income from the United States. By 1932, the depression had taken root in France and times were difficult.
The break up would have been no surprise to Man because he was the one to have ended the relationship, not Lee. In his autobiography, Man Ray writes:
“But I had lost my original enthusiasm. It was time for a complete change in my life, as had happened about every ten years. I decided to help the transformation, whip up my disillusions with new interests. Having terminated a love affair, I felt ready for new adventures. I also had to get rid of the things that had taken up too much of my time and energy, especially mechanical things. I sold my professional movie camera and my swank car which I had been a slave to for six years. These things no longer had the romantic appeal for me as the beginning; they appeared just as prosaic to me as a sewing machine. It was a luxury to hop into a taxi and leave it forever at my destination. I no longer tried out new cameras, but did go into the darkroom now and then to make solarizations, since it was a deviation from the principles of good photography: to work in the dark. Solarizations were made comfortably with the bright lights turned on.
Walking along one day in a quiet street near the Luxembourg Gardens, I came upon a to-let sign for an apartment. I took it at once and spent a couple of months fixing it up according to my own ideas, designing the furniture, too. There was nothing in it that could have come out of a department store. It was very sober, yet a perfect love nest. And I would spend my mornings painting, away form the atmosphere of the photographic studio. My assistant, Natasha, could attend to calls, appointments and the work in the darkroom, until I came in the afternoon” [Emphasis added] (6).
Although the love interest that was terminated is not identified by name, from the context of the passage and the point in time that is referenced, it is apparent that Man Ray was referring to his termination of the relationship with Lee as he had predicted in his ultimatum. He had already referred in his autobiography of Kiki terminating her relationship with him (7). Lee was his next relationship and his references to a new “love nest” with Natasha assisting him is subsequent to Lee, but before his next relationship which was with Adrienne Fedelin in the late 1930’s. It is impossible to know exactly when Man Ray terminated his relationship with Lee, but if her affair with Aziz was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” it could have occurred as early as Lee’s return from St. Moritz in January of 1932 or earlier [see additional commentary (8) & (9)].
Julien Levy returned to New York in early September, 1932 and Lee followed him on October 11, 1932. In between those days, Lee wrote to Levy and, among other things, informed that she and Man Ray could see each other without any particular “bad feelings” and even “rather agreeably,” although more for her than for him. By that point Man Ray and Lee had been apart for at approximately six months, coinciding with Levy’s arrival but possibly as long as ten months if they had split in January after her return from St. Moritz.
May Ray was unquestionably upset at the finality of Lee’s departure, but too much has been made of his pique at the end. Wandering around in the rain, staring up at Lee’s empty apartment, play acting a suicide with Jacqueline Goddard, writing Lee’s name repeatedly in his notebook, replacing a cut out eye with Lee’s in his metronome with a poem (of sorts), and painting Lee’s lips on a painting inspired by Kiki may resemble the sullen dramatics of a teenage boy, but they are not the acts of a man in “utter defeat” on the cusp of murder or suicide (10). It is all very reminiscent of his painting a slash across Lee’s neck on a image after they fought over which of them could claim credit for a photograph (11).
Pique is not passion. After Man Ray’s betrayal by his first wife, Donna (Adon Lacroix), Man refused her request that he compromise and remain with her while she cuckhold him with a new lover. It resulted in a brutal whipping of Donna at the hand’s of Man Ray (12). When Kiki accursed Man Ray of an affair, he settled the argument by hitting her hard enough to knock her down (13). He admitted to whipping several other women in his autobiography (14). In the world of tormented love affairs and tempestuous break ups, Man Ray’s metronome and notebook with “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Lee, Elizabeth” repeatedly written on the page seems to be relatively tame by comparison.
The incorporation of the Levy story, lock, stock and barrel into the Penrose and Burke biographies is another unfortunate example of “cut and paste,” but “don’t question.” There is no evidence to support an engagement with Aziz, lurking rivals, a Man Ray half-dead with sorrow and jealously or Man on the cusp of murder or suicide.
Yet, another “footprint” which has been followed for decades.
Footnotes:
(1) Levy, Julien (1977) Memoir of an Art Gallery G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York (pages 121-122)
(2) Penrose, Antony (1985) The Lives of Lee Miller Thames & Hudson (page 40)
(3) Burke, Carolyn (2005) Lee Miller: A Life Knopf, New York (page 123)
(4) Horwell, Veronica (July 30, 2003) Jacqueline Barsotti: Free-spirited model made famous by Man Ray The Guardian Newspaper
(5) Praeger, Phillip (2011) Man Ray /Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism Merrell Publishers (pages 102-103)
(6) Ray, Man (1963) Self-Portrait Little, Brown & Company, Boston (pages 291-292)
(7) Ray, Man (1963) Self- Portrait Little, Brown & Company, Boston (page 155)
(8) Jaloux, Edmond (1952) English translation, Philosophical Library New York of La Derniere Amitie de Rainer Maria Rilke (1949) where Rilke describes an exchange between himself and Nimet at the rail station, Gare de Lyon, as she is about to embark for Villa Nimet to meet Aziz:
“One evening, I myself felt, in the most curious fashion, the summons of that mystery of which I have already spoken. Mrs. Eloui Bey was leaving for St. Moritz. I accompanied her to the Gare de Lyon. Walking with her on the station platform, I sensed in her a sadness so poignant and so unrelated to the circumstances-a departure for a hotel in St. Moritz and for tramps through the snow in bright sunlight contained nothing particularly dismal-that it communicated itself to me. A sort of glacial cold, a sudden wrench, went through all the fibres of my being. Before getting on the train, she kissed me with unexpected emotion, and I took my leave of her with a distressing feeling of apprehension. I would not write this, if I were relying solely on my memory, because memory is always corrupt, but I find exact corroboration in a notebook where I recorded, the next day, my certainty, almost my fear, of having parted forever from this Nimet. A few months later, her separation from her husband—a separation for which she was in no way responsible—put an end to the life she had been living, and condemned her to those years, not only of valiantly borne sorrow, but also of poverty and of other difficulties for which nothing in her previous life had prepared her” (pages 92-93).
[It should be noted that Nimet was maintained after her separation from Aziz in a luxury hotel near Invalides, so “poverty” is a relative term. More importantly, Jaloux’s passage indicated that the marital problems existed before St. Mortiz as reported by Penrose and Burke. It is of interest because, if the affair started in Paris in 1931, Man Ray’s separation from Lee could have occurred in Paris before Lee left for St. Moritz after receiving his ultimatum a few months before.
(9) Aziz and Nimet were in St. Moritz to visit their winter retreat at Villa Nimet (which exists to this day) and to socialize with Charlie Chaplin and the St. Moritz elite. Chaplin was on a world tour after completing his film City Life and he was acquainted with Aziz and Nimet. Lee also traveled to St. Moritz as George Hoyningen-Huene’s photographic assistant to cover Chaplin. It does not appear that she took any photographs of Chaplin or St. Moritz, but simply assisted Hoyningen-Huene. Lee liked to tell the story of Chaplin saying that she was his “favorite” surrealist photographer, but this reference seems to have actually been to a Chaplin autograph she obtained in St. Moritz for a photo she took of Chaplin in Paris. The comment in question is on the back of a photograph that Lee took in Paris for an entertainment magazine, Pour Vous, before Chaplin left for St. Moritz. Lee would have had to develop the solarized photo and the timing indicates that she brought it with her to St. Moritz so Chaplin could autograph it. Chaplin would not have known it was solarized until it was developed and thus the reference to “Surrealist Photographer”. Although it has also been suggested by Penrose, Burke and others that Chaplin and Lee had an affair, there is no evidence to suggest that this is true. Chaplin, like Picasso, has been thoroughly written about and no biographer of either man suggested an affair with Lee.
(10) Ray, Man (1963) Self- Portrait Little, Brown & Company, Boston (page 151)
(11) Penrose, Antony (1985) The Lives of Lee Miller Thames & Hudson (pages 31-32)
(12) Ray, Man (1963) Self- Portrait Little, Brown & Company, Boston (page 94)
(13) Ray, Man (1963) Self- Portrait Little, Brown & Company, Boston (page 153)
(14) Ray, Man (1963) Self- Portrait Little, Brown & Company, Boston (page 193)
Can You Help?
The “Love Nest” that Man Ray occupied after he terminated his relationship with Lee Miller present some interesting questions. The rental occurred during the time that Man Ray painted “Observatory Time – The Lovers”. Did he paint it from memory, photographs or was it painted at a place he could view it daily? It is reported that Man Ray would paint the picture every morning after he awoke for several hours between the years 1932 – 1934. According to his autobiography quoted above, he would paint in the morning and then return to his photography studio in the mid-afternoon. The view of the Observatory from the photography studio on Rue Campagne-Premiére would be non-existent, but from his “Love Nest” near Luxenberg Garden, he was close to the Observatory and may have painted the view as he saw it.
Another interesting question is whether the “Natasha” he refers to the same beautiful “Natasha” of his solarized 1931 portraits. If so, he may have had a very soft landing after Lee left Paris. It would be helpful if anyone could help with the following:
1. The address of Man Ray’s “Love Nest”
2. The date that he acquired it
3. Was Natasha his model?