Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)

Chess Set

1920–1926

Silver-plated and oxidized silver-plated brass

On view MoMA, Floor 5, 513 The David Geffen Wing

Man Ray enjoyed chess, relishing that the game by design requires both strategy and spontaneity to play. Though Man Ray remained “a third-rate player,” as he put it, his interest in the game “was directed towards designing new forms for chess pieces.” Manufactured in 1926 and based on his design for an earlier turned-wood set, Man Ray’s chess set converts the familiar form of every chess piece into a more stylized shape that relies on associations—such as the connection between a king and an Egyptian pyramid—to reveal each piece’s identity.

Gallery label from

2019

Medium Silver-plated and oxidized silver-plated brass
Dimensions Tallest piece: h. 4" (10.2 cm) Case: 2 5/8 x 21 1/4 x 16 1/2" (6.7 x 54 x 41.9 cm)
Credit Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund
Object number 224.1950.a-ff
Department Architecture & Design

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Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)

Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)

American, 1890–1976 190 works online

So enthused Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky) in 1922, shortly after his first experiments with camera-less photography. He remains well known for these images, commonly called photograms but which he dubbed “rayographs” in a punning combination of his own name and the word “photograph.

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