Non-Euclidian object (Found object)
1932; made 1973
- Medium
- silver, rubberised plastic, steel, wood
- Measurements
- (a-b) 49.0 × 24.0 × 18.9 cm (overall)
- Place/s of Execution
- Paris, France
- Edition
- ed. 5/9
- Inscription
- incised in rear of sphere l.r.: Man Ray
punched in rear of sphere l.r.: 5/9 (clover) / (…illeg.) (Mercury) - Accession Number
- 2013.937.a-b
- Department
- International Sculpture
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Yvonne Pettengell Bequest, 2013 - Gallery location
- Late 19th & early 20th Century Paintings & Decorative Arts Gallery
Level 2, NGV International - About this work
-
The mathematical object central to this sculpture, the twelve-sided dodecahedron, fascinated Man Ray and appears in his art from the early 1930s onwards in numerous guises. The Surrealists were especially attracted to notions of non-Euclidean geometry, which refers to the study of surfaces that are not flat. André Breton wrote cogently in Cahiers d’art in 1936: ‘Just as modern physics is increasingly based on non-Euclidean systems, so the creation of “surrealist objects” derives from the necessity to establish, in Paul Éluard’s masterful phrase, a genuine “physics of poetry”.’
