Indestructible object
(1965)
- Medium
- metronome and black-and-white photograph
- Measurements
- (25.0 × 13.5 × 13.5 cm)
- Department
- International Photography
- Credit Line
- Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2024
© Man Ray Trust. ADAGP/Copyright Agency - Gallery location
- Late 19th & early 20th Century Paintings & Decorative Arts Gallery
Level 2, NGV International - About this work
-
In 1923 Man Ray created the first version of this sculpture, titled Object to be destroyed, in which a generic photograph of an eye attached to a metronome was intended to watch him at work as it ticked back and forth. He modified this in 1932, placing an image of Lee Miller’s eye on the work, Miller being his model, collaborator and muse at the time. Man Ray later recalled: ‘I really intended to destroy it one day, but before witnesses or an audience in the course of a lecture.’ When a group of radical students actually destroyed this work when it was on display in an exhibition in Paris in 1957, Man Ray decided to re-edition it, renaming the work Indestructible object.