[Various voices]
Lee Miller he met when she came to Paris. She was a model and photographer.
She wasn’t much interested in modelling, and someone suggested to her that she should meet Man Ray.
She sort of walked into a room and picked up Man Ray. She basically got up to him and said, I’m going to be your student.
Although there are different stories: she was last credited for being the one that opened the studio door and let the light in, and basically affected the photos, and then his style was created.
It looks very slightly nautical, do you know what I mean?
It looks a bit sinister.
Do you think?
Yeah.
I think it’s like it’s washed up on the beach.
Reminds me of jetties with rusting metals.
It’s the white.
It’s the white, yeah.
It’s the white looks like it’s been in the sea, and it’s got salt on it. That’s funny, because I’ve got a bit of lead and it hasn’t gone like that. Do you think he did something?
I’d say, well, perhaps it is salt air. The sea is always about separation and departure, isn’t it?
Yeah.
Knowledge of departure, somehow.
People say that that romantic, sensual period lasts anything from a year and a half to three years, but it’s, kind of, in your memory bank, so it’s like that sensuality has been banked, but it’s dead.
The bits of rope – like, I wonder if it’s like…
A noose.
Yeah.
Apparently, the break-up nearly sent him mad.
I think he took a photograph of himself, like, pretending to hang himself…
With a gun, and a noose.
Oh…with a rope around his neck.
Well, that’s what’s in his head. In my head, it’s, I want to carry these lips around with me.
Well, this…well, he did do that.
He did a painting that took him two years. He would wake up every morning, and it’s her red lips floating in the sky.
Those lips, like that love can be freeing; it’s like the sky, it’s limitless.
She’s as beautiful as a mackerel.
She’s as beautiful as the mackerel.
Yeah.
In the instance before I wake up, when I detach myself from my body, I meet you in the neutral light. I kiss you with everything that is still left of me, my own lips.
He knew that he would see those lips again, maybe not in the same way, but maybe it was to remind him that the lips once made him feel like that.
That’s super-sweet to be able to remember what you had, and be friends with it.
They actually remained friends until the end of their lives.
Well, if you do a piece of art like that, it, kind of, seals the deal for friendship, at least.
Hmm.
It looks quite still, in a way, but almost like a mausoleum – there you go, I’ve put the most thing…the thing that I absolutely adored about her, and probably obsessed about her, there, you know. But it’s peaceful.
Do you think we’re like that, still?
Well, no, we haven’t put it to bed yet, have we?
Okay.
Can we go somewhere else, now?
Sure.
Okay.
But I was being Lee Miller.
Well, no.
No, I was…
No, no, no; you’re Man Ray, I’m sorry, you’re Man Ray; you’re not Lee Miller. I’m Lee Miller; you’re Man Ray.
