The Met’s stress on quartz gun and fern—that is, on the rayographs—is a welcome departure from Man Ray’s familiar cast of naked and famous people. Man Ray is one of the few Dada-Surrealist cusp figures who finessed affiliations with both movements without alienating either one. In a single stroke, Man Ray had pushed photography to its limit and put painting on its heels. Before Man Ray hitched his career to photography—a choice he always half regretted—he was a devoted painter. Man Ray fantasized about making a picture as “a purely cerebral act,” escaping the gooeyness of the medium; the aerograph presented a nifty solution.