American Art Collaborative

“Other contraptions of mine have been destroyed by visitors; not always through ignorance nor by accident, but willfully, as a protest. But I have managed to make them indestructible, that is, by making duplicates very easily.” Man Ray, “Self Portrait,” 196
In 1922, Man Ray created a piece titled Object to be Destroyed from a metronome and a photograph of an eye. In a 1956 Paris exhibition the piece was destroyed by angry viewers who considered the work meaningless. The artist immediately created a duplicate, which he named Indestructible Object, to show that the idea behind the work could never be erased. Further replicas have been known as Lost Object, Last Object (due to a printer’s error), and Motif Perpétuel. The piece was reproduced so many times that it developed a life of its own, demeaning the value of “original” art and craftsmanship in the true spirit of Dada. The one-eyed metronome even appeared on a political poster in Hamburg with the slogan “Choose the right beat,” an ironic use of the image that Man Ray would have approved