fire masks, whistle and cover were the only things to protect yourself from the fire, gas and strategic bombing blasts of the United Kingdom during the Nazi Germany Blitzkrieg. One of the first photographs taken Lee Miller, as a correspondent for Vogue during World War II, depicts every British and civilian woman fighting behind the lines during an air raid. It also reveals the ugliness of war, the free spirit and creative energy that enliven Lee Miller’s contributions to photography, art history and women’s empowerment, along with the breath of modernity that characterized her extraordinary personal, professional and sentimental life.
Beautiful as an angel who knows the troubles of the world, Lee Miller soon becomes a model, especially of herself, preferring to photograph and photograph herself as she inspires great artists and makes self-portraits in the liberating forms of Jean Patou, along with a new gender. roles and release. The same indomitable spirit drives her to transform the passion for photography inherited from her father Theodore, restore your imageshare and experiment with Man Ray one that is destined to also revolutionize surrealism and fashion. A brilliant synthesis of an emancipated woman and an independent artist, creator of her own many lives. Condensed Anthony Penrose, only son, photographer and director Lee Miller Archiveon biography pagesLife of Lee Miller also published by Contrasto) as well as a biopic Leestarring and producer Kate Winslet, in the spring of 2023, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of his death. At once, show Lee Miller – Man Ray. Fashion, Love, Warplaced in Franchetti Palace in Venice.
The exhibition program and catalog published by Skira, curated by Victoria Noel-Johnson, with the assistance of Anthony Penrose and invaluable loans from the Lee Miller Archives and the Marconi Foundation, opens with self-portraits of Lee Miller and Man Ray. They immediately put on the same level and in the right perspective the indefatigable personalities and talents of the main characters of an overwhelming sentimental and professional connection that continues to have a great influence on both. The beginning and fulcrum of a chronological and thematic route formulated by 140 photographs, video documents and some art objects.
The exhibition opens with new explorations and insights into the tumultuous relationship between the already respected and established Parisian avant-garde artist and the young model, highlighting her temperament more inclined to take her fate into her own hands than wait for luck. Highly capable of coming to Paris to devote herself to photography with one of her most daring experimenters, after receiving a letter of recommendation from the influential Edward Steichen, who photographed her for Vogue USA. Decided to chase/hug beam man sensitive to the energy of light to such an extent that she became its sun, with the same radiant aura that soon made her assistant, model, muse, lover, accomplice and companion in artistic experiments and worldly walks.
From 1929 to 1932, they inspire and support each other in one of the most exciting partnerships of the early twentieth century, experimenting with sunburn resulting from a darkroom accident with a rat, donning tennis uniforms to an elegant reception, and falling in love with each other. A chronological journey that began with a section on the very young e. style icon 1920s, begun in New York with the famous publisher Conde Nast and illustrator Georges Lepape, continued in Paris in the midst of the surrealist avant-garde, saturated with both, along with all the freedom of surrealism. Great friends and art season protagonists such as Max Ernst, Pablo PicassoGiorgio de Chirico or Salvador Dalienrich the timeless journey in Man Ray’s portraits along with the sublime anatomy shoulders, back of the head, neck, soul and curves of Lee Miller hairpins. Meanwhile, she also becomes the goddess of modern surreal cinema. poet’s blood Jean Cocteau, continuing to work as a photographer in his Parisian studio.
Lee Miller’s free spirit, not inclined to Man Ray’s passionate and increasingly possessive spirit, after also rejecting his repeated marriage proposals, is once again ready to leave. A huge selection of portraits and commercials continues Miller’s journey to New York, where she becomes the first woman to found and run a photography studio, and Man Ray, blinded by pain, even replaces the eye of her famous metronome. Eternal motive (Perpetuum mobile) with a lost lover.
Time may not heal everything, but it does not break the connection with Man Ray, it transforms him, as each of them lives his own life and other reactions. The famous “surreal vacation” of the summer of 1937 between Cornwall and the south of France immortalized them, along with Max Ernst, E.L.T. Leonora CarringtonPablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Eileen Agar and Roland Penrose. The British surrealist artist, destined to become the second husband of Lee Miller and the father of her child, made his first marriage to Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey very short-lived. Not a great love for the desert and Egypt, to which an entire section of the exhibition is devoted, dominated by famous Space portrait. Possibly one of Lee Miller’s most famous works and his son’s favorite, with his enigmatic tear towards the horizon, which is also a great inspiration for a kiss (Bayzers1938) from Rene Magritte. The endless space afforded by the freedom that continues to define Miller’s choices, along with the surreal attitude that also characterizes her passion for cooking.
The section on World War II drama and tragic events documented by a Vogue photojournalist and US Army war correspondent is dominated by his famous portrait bathing in Hitler’s bath in Munich. Shot to death by his Jewish associate and Time Life photographer David E. Sherman on the same day that Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in a Berlin bunker. At the end of World War II, and the first bath in three weeks, clearing the Fuhrer’s cave from the “dust” of the Dachau concentration camp and the debris of the war, not only left under the boots. In post-traumatic stress disorder, which struck her after horrors equal and perhaps even greater than childhood abuse, also overcome by the presence of Man Ray in her life. A great love transformed by Man Ray into extreme passion, violent fury and self-destructive despair, before turning into deep affection and constant presence, until the end and even after the disappearance of both.
How: Lee Miller-Man Ray. Fashion. love. war, Palazzo Franchetti, Venice (November 5, 2022 – April 10, 2023) – leemillermanray.it | www.acp-palazzofranchetti.com
Source: Elle