The paintings

"In returning to the mathematical objects as a source of material for my 'Shakespearian Equations', I proposed to myself not only to take liberties with the legends, but with the forms themselves, their compositions, and by the additions of color, to make them as arbitrary as the most creative work could be. I was as free as to do this as any painter of fruit or faces is free to choose his subject".
(Man Ray, Note on Shakespearian Equations)

Man Ray, All's Well That Ends Well, 1948All's well that ends well, 1948 (© Man Ray Trust, da Marion Meyer, Paris)

In the transition from photography to paintings, Man Ray juxtaposes two distinct realities, which are the rational universe of mathematics and the poetic universe of Shakespeare. Doing so, the artist includes his philosophy of life, because, building a bridge between rationality and poetry ,he finds a surrealist solution of what Breton defined as "the meretricious nature of old antinomies" that are action and dream, life and art.

Man Ray, Julius Caesar, 1948 Julius Caesar, 1948 (© Man Ray Trust, from The Rosalind & Melvin Jacobs Collection, New York)