Man Ray and the Aztec Corn Goddess
The other day I was perusing (for the umpteenth time) Man Ray Portraits: Paris—Hollywood—Paris, featuring photographs from the archives of the Centre Pompidou, when suddenly this picture on page 284 jumped out at me in a new way. The subject of the photograph is the ballerina Tamara Toumanova, but behind her is the Arensbergs’ Aztec Corn Goddess! However, when the sculpture became part of the Arensberg collection it was placed outside in their garden. Therefore, Man Ray almost certainly took his photograph in the dealer Earl Stendahl’s Wilshire Boulevard gallery (the shadows and wall detail suggest that to be the case, too). In the book, the picture is dated ca. 1945, but we know from Ellen Hoobler’s research into the Earl Stendahl records at the Getty Research Institute that the Arensbergs had purchased the Corn Goddess by January 25, 1944. This perhaps puts the ca. date of the photo a little earlier (at, say, ca. 1943). Looking a little deeper into this, it seems a copy of this print and some other variations of it went on sale at a Sotheby’s auction in 2014. Some possibilities: Maybe the photos were taken in 1943 at Stendahl’s, but were not printed until 1944 when Man Ray dated them? Or maybe the photo session actually dates from January of 1944? Or maybe Man Ray knew when he took the photos that the Arensbergs had purchased the sculpture? At any rate, this has made me wonder how much more one might learn from studying the objects pictured in Man Ray’s photographs. Incidentally, Toumanova, who lived in Beverly Hills, was a muse and correspondent with another well-known artist who traveled in the Surrealist circles, Joseph Cornell. From 1940 on, she featured in Cornell’s research files, notebooks, and well-known boxes. It’s unclear whether Man Ray knew of their platonic relationship or had seen any of Cornell’s work dedicated to her at the time he took this photograph.
—Mark Nelson
Left: Tamara Toumanova and the Aztec Corn Goddess in a photograph by Man Ray. Right: The Corn Goddess in the Arensberg’s rear patio garden, in a photograph taken by Karl Bissinger on March 16, 1950.
