MAN RAY
An American Dadaist

•	Cadeau  (meaning "gift" in French) is a utilitarian "found" object, an iron, altered by other found objects (tacks). It was spontaneously created by the artist for the avant-garde composer Erik Satie who attended the opening of May Ray's first exhibition at Librairie Six gallery in Paris in December of 1921. Satie, who spoke fluent English, responded favorably to Man Ray's work, and then invited him to a nearby cafe to talk. Man Ray describes the event: 

•	"We passed a shop where various household utensils were spread out in front. I picked up a flat-iron, the kind used on coal stoves and asked Satie to come inside with me, where, with his help, I acquired a box of tacks and a tube of glue. Back at the gallery I glued a row of tacks to the smooth surface of the iron, titled it, The Gift, and added it to the exhibition. This was my first Dada object in France, similar to assemblages I had made in New York."

•	By the end of the day, however, Cadeau mysteriously disappeared. The disappearance was of no concern to the artist; he simply made others, and today these replicas, such as the one in this exhibition, are found in collections all over the world. Cadeau is described by May Ray's biographer, "He was fond of saying that anyone could make an iron adorned with a row of tacks, but only one person could have come up with the original idea."
Tears