Object to Be Destroyed
Encyclopedia
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, originally created in 1923. The work, destroyed in 1957, consisted of a metronome
Metronome
A metronome is any device that produces regular, metrical ticks — settable in beats per minute. These ticks represent a fixed, regular aural pulse; some metronomes also include synchronized visual motion...
with a photograph of an eye attached to its swinging arm. It was remade in multiple copies in later years, and renamed Indestructible Object. It is considered to be a "readymade", following in the relatively new tradition established by Marcel Duchamp
Readymades of Marcel Duchamp
The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the artist selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object and repositioning or joining, titling and signing it, the object became art...
of employing ordinary manufactured objects that usually were modified very little, if at all, in works of art.
The Original Readymade
The work consists of two elements. One element is a metronomeMetronome
A metronome is any device that produces regular, metrical ticks — settable in beats per minute. These ticks represent a fixed, regular aural pulse; some metronomes also include synchronized visual motion...
manufactured by the Qualite Excelsior company. The other element is a small cutout of a black-and-white photograph of a woman's eye. The particular metronome is a mass-produced product that might be commonly found in many homes. It was probably secondhand when Man Ray reconfigured it as an art object, as it is marred, worn, missing minor parts and stands on mismatched feet, though its mechanism is in fair working order. Its box is made of wood, but its internal elements are made of metal. (Illustration here.) Its front door was removable.
The original Object to Be Destroyed was created in 1923. (See Readymades of Marcel Duchamp
Readymades of Marcel Duchamp
The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the artist selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object and repositioning or joining, titling and signing it, the object became art...
.) According to Man Ray, the piece was originally intended as a silent witness in his studio to watch him paint. In 1932 a second version, called Object of Destruction, was published in the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
journal This Quarter, edited by André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
. This version featured an ink drawing of the Object To Be Destroyed with the following instructions;
Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow.
1932 was the year Man Ray's lover, Lee Miller
Lee Miller
Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller, Lady Penrose was an American photographer. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1907, she was a successful fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris where she became an established fashion and fine art photographer...
, left him to return to New York. To make the connection to Miller more explicit, the object's original eye was replaced with a photo of hers.
This metronome was exhibited for the first time at Galerie Pierre Colle, Paris, as Eye-Metronome in 1933.
Subsequent exhibitions called the piece Lost Object, 1945, Last Object, 1966 and Perpetual Motif, 1972. Man Ray stated that he had always intended to destroy it one day, but as a public performance.
An Indestructible Multiple
In 1957, the object was being exhibited in the Exhibition DadaDada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
in Paris when a group of protesting students, led by the French poet Jeaan-Pierre Rosnay and calling themselves the 'Jarivistes', took Man Ray at his word and actually destroyed it.
'...the show was less than a week old when something like the excitement of the '20s erupted. Storming the gallery, a band of young, self-styled "reactionary nihilist intellectuals" who call themselves the Jarivistes flung handbills riotously into the gallery. "We Jarivistes advise the Dadaists, surrealists and consorts that the reign of minus is over . . . Long live poetry!" Then, grabbing Object to Destroy, they were gone—but with Dadaist Man Ray puffing after them, crying: "They're stealing my painting!" Not far from the gallery, the Jarivistes stopped and set down the one-eyed metronome. One of them hauled out a pistol, took aim and fired, destroying Object to Destroy. At that point the police appeared, late but ardent.
The Jarivistes readily announced that they "are not surrealists but sure realists," not a movement but "motion itself, perpetual motion." To their objections to Dada, Man Ray wearily noted: "These things were done 40 years ago. You are demonstrating against history." A police official mused: "Why shoot it?" But last week, as visitors flocked to the show, Tristan Tzara, the grand old man of Dada, was delighted. "Isn't it wonderful?" he murmured nostalgically.' Time Magazine, April 1957
The artist used the resulting insurance pay-out to create an edition of 100 multiples, entitled Indestructible Object. This was an allusion to the difficulty in destroying all one hundred, as well as a reference to the indestructible nature of the original idea. The multiples were fabricated by Daniel Spoerri
Daniel Spoerri
Daniel Spoerri is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania, who has been called "the central figure of European post-war art" and "one of the most renown[ed] [artists] of the 20th century." Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures...
's Edition MAT.
Examples of the work are held in various public collections including Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
London and MOMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
, New York.
In popular culture
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' 1994 song Closer contains footage of a similar piece keeping time with the song. - They Might Be GiantsThey Might Be GiantsThey Might Be Giants is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years Flansburgh and Linnell were frequently accompanied by a drum machine. In the early 1990s, TMBG became a full band. Currently, the members of TMBG are...
released an EPExtended playAn EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
entitled Indestructible ObjectIndestructible ObjectIndestructible Object is the title of a They Might Be Giants EP, released April 6, 2004 by Barsuk Records. The title comes from a famous work by Man Ray, also known as Object to Be Destroyed. The track "Memo to Human Resources" and a different version of "Au Contraire" went on to be featured on...
in 2004. - Danny ElfmanDanny ElfmanDaniel Robert "Danny" Elfman is an American composer, best known for scoring music for television and film. Up until 1995, he was the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band Oingo Boingo, a group he formed in 1976...
uses an image of the Indestructible Object on the cover of his "Music for a Darkened Theatre, Vol. 1: Film & Television" compilation CD.