Item Details:

OBJECT TO BE DESTROYED  (after Man Ray)                                                              

MAN RAY (1890-1976) 

CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE, 1921/2006

Metronome with 19th Century Engraving of an Eye

Size: 4.4 in (11.1 cm) x 4.4 in (11.1 cm) x 9.4 in (23.8 cm)

Object to Be Destroyed is a work by American artist Man Ray, originally created in 1923. The work consists of a metronome with a photograph of an eye attached to its swinging arm. After the piece was destroyed in 1957, later remakes in multiple copies were renamed Indestructible Object. Considered a "readymade" piece, in the style established by Marcel Duchamp, it employs an ordinary manufactured object, with little modification, as a work of art. Examples of the work are held in various public collections including Tate Modern London, MOMA New York and Reina Sofía, Madrid.

The original Object to Be Destroyed was created in 1923. According to Man Ray, the piece was intended as a silent witness in his studio to watch him paint. In 1932, the year Man Ray's lover Lee Miller left him to return to New York, a second version of the piece, called Object of Destruction, was published in the avant-garde journal This Quarter, edited by André Breton. This version featured an ink drawing with the following instructions:

Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow.

To make the connection to Miller more explicit, the object's original eye was replaced with a photo of hers. This remade piece was exhibited for the first time at Galerie Pierre Colle in Paris as Eye-Metronome in 1933. The remake was lost in 1940 during the German invasion of Paris. A subsequent replica was exhibited as Lost Object in 1945. Man Ray stated that he had always intended to destroy it one day, but as a public performance.

While on display in the Exhibition Dada in Paris in 1957, a group of protesting students, led by the French poet Jean-Pierre Rosnay [fr] and calling themselves the 'Jarivistes', took Man Ray at his word and actually destroyed the object.