Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens
Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens

October 10, 2009-January 10, 2010
While the influence of African art on modern painting and sculpture has been explored, Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens examines a parallel history, the role of photography in shaping international understanding of African objects as art, in the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition reveals photography’s complex engagement with African art by exploring African art in the context of American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, surrealism, and the worlds of high fashion and popular culture, at the same time as it investigates issues of race, gender, and colonialism during the modernist era.

![Image: Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces [working proof w/ additions in chalk, ink, collage], 1968, color photoscreenprint with added chalk, ink, and collage on wove paper, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2004.167.17](http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2009/editions/editions_sm.jpg)