“It is still my earnest desire, some day while the eye is ticking away during a conversation, to lift my hammer and with one well-aimed blow completely demolish the metronome.”
—Man Ray
Man Ray made the first version of Objet indéstructible sculpture in 1923 shortly after his companion, the American photographer and model Lee Miller, left him. Attaching a photograph of Miller’s eye to the metronome, he linked his memory of her to the idea of an insistent beat or pulse that was both irksome and unending – a metaphor, perhaps, for human desire. He smashed the original, which he had titled Objet à détruire (Object to be Destroyed). He then created a new version in 1965 titled Objet indestructible in an edition of 100 – the same edition size as the present print – because, he suggested, “it would be very difficult to destroy all hundred.”
