Kelly Devine Thomas

Four brothers of Man Ray’s widow ended up running his estate out of a Long Island auto shop. Meanwhile, there is confusion bordering on chaos in the market over posthumous prints, misstamped works, and the question of who is doing what without permission. (ARTnews, June 2002)

In a low-rise auto shop and factor in a town on central Long Island, just past a showroom of floor mats and seat covers, there is a door with a sign that reads “Eric Browner Leave Me Alone I’m Retired.” Behind the door there is an office decorated with works by Man Ray, the celebrated Surrealist. A large poster of Glass Tears, an image of a woman weeping glass teardrops, hangs on one wall. An 8-by-10-inch reproduction of Violon d’Ingres, a famous photo of the model Kiki de Monparnasse, is propped on top of a filing cabinet. But the centerpiece of the room is a huge synthetic bloodshot eye with a cushiony top, a 1971 enlargement of Man Ray’s 1941 object The Witness, which used to serve as a seat for people visiting Man Ray’s widow, the late Juliet Man Ray, in her Paris apartment.

The owner of the auto shop, Eric Browner, 76, tall, tan, bearded, bald, and bespectacled, is frowning behind a desk. “I should be golfing,” he says, before asking his son Roger to get him some orange juice. He is in town for a few days from Florida, where he lives most of the year, for a board meeting of the Man Ray Trust, and the April chill in the Long Island air is bothering him . . .

Download the ARTnews article here.