Permanent Attraction: Man Ray and Chess

Dive deep, for the first time, into Man Ray’s career-long obsession with chess-themed artworks and their influence on international Modernism.

Authorized by The Man Ray Trust, Permanent Attraction: Man Ray & Chess is the first and only book on Man Ray’s chess-themed works in all media. With experience in studio art, chess, photography, cartography, prototyping, and scholarly research, the author offers a comprehensive interpretation of when, how, and why Man Ray created these timeless works.

Man Ray’s chess set designs are as sought after as his innovative photography, collected by everyone from the Maharajah of Indore to Igor Stravinsky, Artie Shaw, and David Bowie. Today, Man Ray’s chess-themed works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and numerous other institutions, as well as being highly prized by private collectors the world over.

Larry List is an independent writer and curator of Dada, Surreal, and chess-related art. His exhibitions include The Imagery of Chess Revisited, The Art of Chess, Man Ray & Sherrie Levine, and John Cage & Glenn Kaino. He has written catalog essays for The Noguchi Museum, The Menil Collection, The Tate Modern, The Andy Warhol Museum, and many others.