Revolving Doors is a series of works produced by Man Ray at the start of his career in the United States around 1916-1917, before he moved to Paris in 1921 and became a central figure in the Dada and then Surrealist movements.
The series accompanied Man Ray’s long career: first produced as a series of colored paper collages around 1916, it was shown in New York at the Daniel Gallery in 1919, and later in the 1935 edition of the surrealist magazine Minotaure. The series was stenciled and lithographed again in 1926 by Editions Surréalistes, and in 1972 by Luciano Anselmino, who inspired the tapestries created in 1973 by Frédérique Bachellerie and Peter Schönwald.
This series perfectly illustrates the avant-garde and experimental spirit of Man Ray, known for his major contribution to the Dada movement and Surrealism. The series was created in the context of the Dada movement, which rejected the artistic and social conventions of the time. Revolving Doors embodies this spirit of rebellion in search of modernism, challenging traditional notions of art and beauty. Revolving Doors is characterized by abstract geometric forms and dynamic compositions.
Each work features a complex interplay between elements such as circles, straight lines and angles, evoking a sense of stability as well as movement and transformation. The works are not just aesthetic compositions, but also embody deeper ideas about perception and temporality. By using abstract geometric forms, Man Ray breaks away from traditional figurative representation. This abstraction invites viewers to freely interpret the works, leaving room for a multitude of symbolic meanings.
Revolving Doors was influential in the development of abstract art and prefigured some of Man Ray’s later explorations in photography and film. It illustrates the artist’s ability to capture movement and change through abstract, dynamic forms, marking a milestone in the evolution of modern art in the early 20th century. Man Ray continues to be celebrated for his daring and originality, and Revolving Doors remains a key work for understanding his artistic approach. This series perfectly illustrates how Man Ray was able to transcend the boundaries of artistic mediums and movements to create works that continue to resonate and inspire today.
In the following interview, Frédérique Bachellerie and Peter Schönwald, the tapestry designers, talk about their craft and this project. In 1972, Frédérique Bachellerie founded her studio Atelier 3 with Peter Schönwald and Michel Slaghenauffi. Since then, Atelier 3 has worked with over 100 artists and produced some 800 tapestries.
Frédérique Bachellerie and Peter Schönwald, how did you meet?
Frédérique Bachellerie: In Budapest, in 1965. My father was Hungarian and my mother French. But I studied in South America, in Santiago de Chile. I learned to weave all kinds of Indian fabrics at the School of Applied Arts. I returned to Hungary, where they wouldn’t accept my diploma. So I was asked to make ten tapestries to judge whether I was suitable. But I decided to go to France. I looked for a tapestry workshop and met Pierre Daquin, who had just graduated from the Gobelins school. He knew a lot of abstract painters. I worked for him for three years and learned a lot from him. In the meantime, I had met Peter in Hungary.
Peter Schönwald: I did all kinds of jobs before becoming a weaver. From the age of 18, I sold books and worked for Hungarian television as an assistant producer. I was passionate about poetry and literature. It was Frédérique who introduced me to modern art, which was more or less obscured in Hungary. I first had to do my military service, which lasted two years in my country, before joining Frédérique in France. At a certain point, we decided to take up this activity together, but to try to renew tapestry in a more figurative sense.
Can you tell us about your beginnings in art tapestry?
F.B.: Right from the start, we thought we could make tapestries of all kinds, from photos, comics, paintings and drawings, and that’s what we’ve been experimenting with for fifty years. If, personally, I made tapestries, it’s because there was, in Hungary, a very interesting person: Noémie Ferenczi, who is totally unknown in France but very famous in Germany and the United States. She’s one of the few people who wove her own tapestries. In general, painters make cartoons for weavers.
P.S.: In the beginning, I didn’t know how to weave at all. I was in charge of finding artists, commercially speaking. And, very quickly, and to our great surprise, we got a lot of work and a lot of orders.
F.B.: When we founded Atelier 3 in 1972, we initially set up shop in an apartment on rue Saint-Honoré, near Les Halles. Then we moved between Place de la Bastille and Nation.
How did you meet gallery owner Françoise Tournier?
P.S.: I simply walked into her gallery, which was in my neighborhood, one day in 1973. There was an exhibition of Man Ray lithographs. I asked her if she’d be interested in having a tapestry based on one of these lithographs. She immediately said yes.
F.B.: A friend of mine has always told me that the reason we’ve had the career we’ve had is because we’re from Central Europe. And I thought a lot about what that meant. It’s true that everything was closed in Hungary and, all of a sudden, we arrived in France where everything is open. But we were very keen, we had a lot of energy.
Was it a visual shock when you first saw these Man Ray lithographs?
P.S.: They’re not my favorite kind of work, but when I asked about their origin – collages he’d made in 1916 – I was stunned. In terms of geometry, Man Ray was very avant-garde.
Was it difficult to work from these lithographs?
P.S.: No, not at all. Frédérique immediately had ideas about how we could interpret them, so as not to be too classical.
F.B.: I worked for Pierre Daquin for three years, and he reused stitches of different thicknesses. He played a lot with his own tapestries on these large white surfaces that were more or less thick. I learned this technique. But when I saw what Man Ray was doing with three different colors – red, blue and yellow – the three primary colors that he superimposed to obtain violet, green or orange, I immediately said to myself that I could obtain thicknesses. It was quite natural. And as Man Ray had drawn a very fine pencil sketch, I didn’t need to use wool, hemp or cotton, but a material that would sink into the white wool of the background, so I used a metal wire, which is very thin, to obtain the lithograph drawings.
P.S.: When we presented the tapestry to Françoise Tournier, she immediately told us she wanted to publish the ten lithographs in an album entitled Revolving Doors. It took us a year and a half to make them. She first showed them in her gallery and then exhibited them at the first FIAC, in 1975, which she had co-organized. She sold them all, so we made two more series of ten. We can make six copies of each tapestry, numbered from 1 to 6, plus two artist’s proofs. Man Ray had produced 80 lithographs, each with eight copies. And he signed all 80 bolduc. As we had difficulty in getting payment for the third series of tapestries, she gave us a series of ten Man Ray lithographs in exchange.
F.B.: When we got this big order, we went to Saint-Tropez, where we had a small house, and we wove the Man Rays there. We stayed there for a year and a half… You should know that Françoise Tournier came to our studio on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris with Man Ray in 1973. We were in a seventeenth-century building with a grand staircase. At the bottom, Man Ray said he couldn’t go up. He was 83 years old. Peter, who was 30 at the time, carried him at arm’s length into our studio. Man Ray was a really nice person.
After so many years, how do you see these tapestries now?
F.B.: I see them differently than I did 50 years ago. It’s a work that exists independently of us. There’s an extraordinary balance in these drawings.
P.S.: I’m quite happy with their freshness. They’re in very good condition. We like to show them when we have people in the studio.
F.B.: Artists taught us that art was made to travel, and their paintings were made to travel. So our tapestries are too.
“Revolving Doors: Seven Tapestries by Man Ray” is on view until November 10, 2024 at Galerie Les Douches, in Paris. A selection will also be shown at Paris Photo from November 6, 2024.
