“in itself a work of art”: Word-Image Encounters in Ray: Art Miscellany

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ray: Art Miscellany was founded, edited, and published by Sidney James Hunt, a British painter, poet, and draughtsman, between 1926 and 1927. Ray was the first little magazine in England to introduce readers to the work of European and international avant-garde artists, including Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, Naum Gabo, and László Moholy-Nagy, and might be regarded as the only English equivalent of such influential publications as Der Sturm, De Stijl, and Mécano. Building on recent work as well as previous critical efforts, I conduct a detailed study of Ray’s adventurous content and design by way of a series of close visual and textual analyses. Essentially combinatorial, Hunt’s idiosyncratic aesthetic project can be characterized by its compositeness and cut and mix quality. As a result, terms and concepts borrowed from art history, critical theory, and art practice, namely assemblage and collage, allow for the exploration of the numerous eclectic encounters between word and image found within the pages of Ray.