A DELIGHTFUL FEAST OF ART AT ‘CAFE MAN RAY’

“Cafe Man Ray,” which opened over the weekend at the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, illuminates three trails of local history.

First, the jampacked exhibition of photographs, lithographs and sculptural objects by the renowned Surrealist tracks a star-studded path through Man Ray’s fruitful decade in Hollywood.

An American expatriate who, in 1940, fled Nazi-occupied Paris, Man Ray landed in New York but slowly wended his way across the country, eventually settling in Hollywood and producing his wittily absurd art for an appreciative audience of creative people.

Installed in a Parisian bistro setting--with photographs covering walls and humorous objects set on little white tables--the show also treks back to the original “Cafe Man Ray,” a garden soiree following the opening of Man Ray’s 1948 exhibition at William Copley Galleries in Beverly Hills.

The artist knocked out a “Cafe Man Ray” sign from a wooden panel and a toy shovel to mark the garden door; inside, as legend has it, French spirits and onion soup flowed through the wee hours.

Finally, the present assembly of art belatedly celebrates the 10th anniversary of the gallery, which opened in 1975 (farther west on Melrose Avenue) with another Man Ray show.

Twice postponed and now finally a reality, the exhibition is sure to enchant people who think Los Angeles has no art history, as well as those who have romantic memories of the creative souls who found refuge here during World War II.

Catastrophic events brought European poets, musicians, painters--artists of all descriptions--to America during that period.

Among them was Man Ray, a native of Philadelphia who had lived in Paris since 1921 and established himself in the wake of Dada and the hub of Surrealism. He and other drifting artists mingled with the entertainment community and spawned stories of free spirits indulging in idyllic life styles.

“I had a wonderful time. This was the first time in my life when I really felt I was on vacation,” Man Ray wrote of his California sojourn, though the exhibition demonstrates that he was no layabout. Far better known in Europe and on the East Coast than in California, he nonetheless exhibited his work here and lectured at local art schools. While living in Hollywood, Man Ray took photographic portraits of such personalities as Ava Gardner and Jean Renoir, made objects from found materials (some of which he later reproduced in editions in Paris) and made drawings of cacti in the Huntington Botanical Gardens that inspired later lithographs.

He also made dozens--perhaps hundreds--of photographs of his beautiful young wife, the former Juliet Browner. A gentle, intensely devoted woman who met and married her late husband in Hollywood, Juliet Man Ray remembers their life here as a period of “sunshine” and “running across the street to the Ranch Market for fresh produce.”

Gazing around the gallery at her constantly recurring image, she said, “That girl looks very happy.”

The many faces of Juliet--exotic, sweet or hilariously clowning--offer evidence of her husband’s penchant for using the simplest means to transform everything around him. Juliet’s “costumes” were often nothing more than a scarf or an oversize, crocheted bonnet.

“I meant to make a hat,” she said of the ridiculous head gear in one small picture, “but I didn’t know how and it just kept growing.” Another artwork shows Man Ray’s experimental side by merging two negatives--one of Juliet with that of an Indian sculpture.

“My husband left Paris (in 1940) with a suitcase and a few drawings,” Juliet recalled. “When we met on a blind date, he said he was on his way to Tahiti.” She was a petite young dancer who had studied with Martha Graham and had seen Man Ray’s paintings in New York.

The charms of Juliet and the artist’s own disinclination to be a recluse swiftly persuaded him to linger in Los Angeles. The couple lived in a courtyard apartment on Vine Street and married in 1946 in a double ceremony with artists Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning.

The wedding, like Man Ray’s art, was a spontaneous affair. According to his wife, he never planned his artworks; he let found objects, chance appearances and word play inspire him. Friends would bring objects to Man Ray for his use in sculpture, but he thought them “too pretty,” Juliet said. Instead, he would take a spring from their couch, set it on a base and tag the creation “It’s Springtime.” Or he might concoct an amusing cardboard face and call it “Le Serieux.”

“Pandora’s Box,” a small object of wood and glass, has a water-filled tube magnifying the French form of the title. “Mr. and Mrs. Woodman,” a book elegantly bound in red leather, spoofs erotic coupling through the artist’s text and photographs of a pair of wooden manikins.

An exorbitant rent hike at their Hollywood apartment and the artist’s hope of salvaging works left behind in Paris convinced the couple to return to France in 1951. They settled into a spacious studio on Rue Ferou (near the Luxembourg Gardens), where they remained to his death in 1976 and where Juliet maintains a huge collection of his work and an ever-growing archive.

Currently working on a major retrospective of Man Ray’s work (set to open in 1988 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art before traveling across the country and closing in Europe), she took time out to help gallery director David Fahey organize the exhibition at Hawkins.

Juliet’s idea of concentrating on work from Man Ray’s decade in Hollywood was eventually expanded to represent a wider scope of his oeuvre, including three late sculptures (with objects trapped in bottles) and the artist’s last photograph--a self-portrait shot while his hair was being cut. About 175 pieces from Juliet’s cache in Paris are accompanied by photographs from Dennis Powers’ New York-based collection.

Throughout the show (to March 1), visitors see an inquiring, irreverent mind at work and a relentless eye for absurdity. If Man Ray was a photographer to the stars in Hollywood and Paris, he was also a sympathetic ironist. Avant-garde writer and film maker Hans Richter has characterized Man Ray as a “pessimistic optimist.” His wife remembers him best as a man with “a wonderful sense of humor.”