Portrait of René Crevel: The unique signed proof known

[Paris, circa 1950], (120 x 170 mm), signed in graphite.

The proof is signed "Man Ray" in graphite in the lower right-hand corner, and on the back is the poet Char's handwritten note "René Crevel ".

This proof is one of several that Man Ray supplied to his close friends in the 50s and 60s. A identical photo proof to this one - but unsigned - appeared in the Breton sale (2003, no. 5106).

Our proof is that of René Char, with a note on the verso in the poet's hand.

Crevel's suicide hit him hard. Years later, he would confess: "Since the death of this precious brother, I have not been able to reread a single one of his works. That's how much I miss him, the brilliance of his presence, the conquests of his thought of which he was prodigal. Of all the men I've known, he was the one who gave away the gold of his nature best and quickest. He didn't share, he gave."

The poet and literary critic Léon-Gabriel Gros castigated good society, which saw the poet's suicide as nothing more than a vulgar news item: "René Crevel's suicide was undoubtedly the only event in his life that interested the public somewhat. Broadcast by Havas, it earned the most corrosive writer of the young generation the unanimous contempt of the self-righteous, which is the best posthumous tribute a poet could hope for. That René Crevel asphyxiated himself with lighting gas after having absorbed a suitable dose of Veronal is, in the eyes of honest people, a banal news item that would be self-explanatory if it did not justify their own baseness. The despair of poets and lovers alike, suicide or death in a hospital bed, and even more banal brain haemorrhage, are after all only different ways of paying one's debt to society or avenging morality. That this society is rotten or that morality is inhuman does not even enter their narrow-minded brains".

The first critical text on Man Ray rayographs was written by Tristan Tzara in the preface to Champs délicieux in 1922. It is this power of metamorphosis that constitutes the heart of the text that René Crevel devoted to Man Ray in 1925. In "Le Miroir aux objets", he praises Man Ray, presented as the author of a miraculous hunt and as a sorcerer. The photograph is described as a "mirror of objects from which a Man Ray, for example, has obtained miracles". Crevel adds: "This hunter of mystery knew how to use his mirror of objects. [...] Man Ray, if he is a sorcerer, does not pose as a magician, and because he does not pretend to limit himself to troubling attitudes, he gives us a fern, a pretty face, to soothe us. (R. Crevel, "Le Miroir aux objets", L'Art vivant, n° 14, 15 August 1925)"

This iconic portrait was also used by Claude Courtot for the frontispiece of his "René Crevel" in Poètes d'aujourd'hui published by Seghers (1969), an image to which Marie Laurencin testified to its extraordinary accuracy, with "your hair never the same and your changing face of a laughing and unhappy adolescent".

In Man Ray's own words, he had "the pride of those who work and unload boats, precise muscles under the brown shirt that the sun weaves". Jean-Claude Vrain, in his triple-catalogue of "Portraits of writers", dated this portrait to 1932: "This very beautiful portrait contrasts with most of the photographs of René Crevel that we possess. The writer is less of a dandy in it, his attire is less elegant. He appears here in a much more 'earthy' guise", in a shirt arm, his collar unbuttoned. His face, less angelic than usual, but still with a doll-like appearance, expresses a determination and strength that we find in some of his most virulent texts, such as Le Clavecin de Diderot. (catalogue no. 307).

The Centre Pompidou conserves the negative of the photo used for this reframing, as AM 1995-281 (524).

A precious print, it is the only known signed copy of this photograph.

That it belonged to René Char is not surprising, and makes this piece all the more moving.

Provenance: René Char

Reverseau, Anne: Breton, Man Ray et l'imaginaire photographique de la magie, in Textimage, June 2010;

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