Born in 1890, Man Ray by the age of seven already excelled in drawing and at fourteen was the consummate flirt. He would bring girls to his bedroom to conduct life-classes, much to the vexation of his middle-class parents, who saw no future in the art world and tried to persuade their headstrong child to leave the girls alone and take his formal studies more seriously.

But Man Ray's desire to paint, and paint girls when circumstances permitted, grew stronger and he continued to make sketches in secret. He had yet to try painting in oil and after several visits to museums in New York, was beginning to consider the challenge insurmountable. "But I had already developed the attitude," he writes in his autobiography Self Portrait, "that whatever... MORE