Man Ray or 11112
Richard de Grab took many photographs of Man Ray immortalizing the moment of his creation.
For those unfamiliar with Man Ray, this signature 11112 may be intriguing.
It is a pseudonym chosen by Man Ray, who provides no explanation whatsoever in any other known work of his Self-Portrait.
Several drawings of Man Ray's monogram equating his signature to the number 11112 (M= 111; R = 12). such as his "Studio door" that exhibited in 2018 Man Ray in Vienna presents the finest example of this signature.
As part of the exhibition on the surrealist object at Beaubourg (2013-2014), we could see a manuscript of André Breton about the choice by the latter of the monogram "1713" to initial his works, where the AB of André Breton becomes a 17 for A followed by a 13 for B, and the author to look for elements in the historical facts of the year 1713, which correspond to his personality: "Having observed that, reduced to initials, his own signature simulates the number 1713, he was led intuitively to see in this number only a date of European history and had the curiosity to note the salient events that this date can evoke (it could indeed be that at least one of these events was of a nature to involve for him the unconscious fixation to a bygone time, or even the identification with this time)". We could have believed that, influenced by Breton, Man Ray had found himself a monogram, and that "11112" was impregnated with an esoteric meaning smelling of sulphur and scoop.
Alas, no confirmation of this intuition. Marcel Fleiss, gallery owner and specialist of the artist, advances this answer: "During conversations with Man Ray in the years 1969/1974, he had just told me that he had changed his signature by laziness, or to go faster...".
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