LACMA Adds Man Ray, Sam Gilliam

Man Ray, New York 17, conceived 1917, fabricated 1966. LACMA, purchased with funds provided by the Robert H. Halff Endowment

LACMA has acquired a Man Ray sculpture and a Sam Gilliam drape painting. Both are now on view in the Modern galleries.

The Man Ray is a 1966 reissue of New York 17, one of the artist's first Dada objects. In 1917 the artist used a C-clamp to hold together strips of wood in a mocking homage to Manhattan's skyscrapers. The improvised sculpture loosely evokes the setbacks of Cass Gilbert's 1913 Woolworth Building, then the world's tallest. In a statement on New York 17, Man Ray wrote, "New York gives you the middle finger that will no doubt tickle the susceptibility of French artists. Hopefully this tickle will once again mark the already famous wound that characterises the closed somnolence of art."

Many of the quintessential readymades were discarded, only to be remade by the artist late in life as the 60s generation rediscovered Dada. LACMA seems to be using the late multiples to strategically fill gaps in its collection. Last year it bought a Meret Oppenheim The Squirrel. Also on view is a Duchamp With Hidden Noise acquired in 2003.

The LACMA New York 17 is identified as the artist's proof of the 1966 edition of 9 in chromed and painted bronze (plus real C-clamp). There was also an edition of 3 in silver. The original object's wood scraps subverted the heroic pretensions of sculpture. With its monumental and precious materials the 1966 edition appears to troll Dada's canonization into art history.  

Sam Gilliam was a civil rights activist whose abstract paintings were criticized for their lack of explicit political content. Gilliam drew inspiration from the Washington Color School, Hard-Edge Abstraction, and Yves Klein. In the 1960s the laundry on clotheslines that Gilliam saw from his studio window led him to create unstretched Color Field paintings that could be suspended from a line. The "drape" paintings were championed by L.A.'s Walter Hopps (then at Washington DC's Corcoran Gallery) and have become Gilliam's best-known series.

LACMA showed Gilliam as early as 1964, in "Post-Painterly Abstraction," a show curated by Clement Greenberg no less. But its new acquisition, a particularly lyrical 2018 drape, becomes the only Gilliam painting in a Los Angeles museum collection. The Hammer recently bought a Gilliam watercolor and a group of hand-colored etchings. 

Sam Gilliam, Untitled, 2018. LACMA, purchased with funds provided by the Xu & Huang Family Charitable Foundation