Noire et blanche

For Man Ray, the human body was transactional, something that could be offered up, manipulated, and exchanged for an object. In Noire et blanche, he used his darkroom skills to accentuate Kiki de Montparnasse’s head with shadow and refine the surface to maximize its correspondence with an African Baule-style mask. Appearing almost disarticulated from her body, the model’s head becomes an object for comparison in a formal relationship that has engendered different interpretations. Frequently cast as an emblem of modernism’s appropriation of African art, it has more recently been read within the context of the French Surrealist movement’s interwar anticolonial stance and Man Ray’s position as an outsider in Paris.