I've been looking for a perfect set of modern, minimal chess for a long time - and when I finally found one, the price broke my heart. The set of figures and chessboard costs only $ 900, but believe me, if I had so much money for pleasure I would buy these chess without hesitation.
Man Ray (1890 - 1976) was a photographer and graphic designer, co-founder of New York Dadaism and a surrealist, and privately - a friend of Marcel Duchamp. From about 1920 to his death, he created sets of chess pieces; the sets of his chess considered today as works of art reach astronomical prices of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars among collectors. In this context, the price of the set below seems almost bargain!
After years, one of the iconic projects of the artist has been recreated by craftsmen from Germany and Italy. It is worth looking closely at the figures, because hidden forms and references have been smuggled in their figures:
- pyramid - king is the Egyptian symbol of royal power;
- cone - queen, refers to the traditional medieval headwear for women, worn by ladies from the upper classes;
- pitcher - bishop, is a symbol of tradition, in which the bishops were engaged in the production of exotic liqueurs and other spirits;
- Man Ray did not resist the temptation to introduce aesthetic dissonance in the project: jumper - knight, traditionally depicted in the form of a horse's head, this random shape found in the artist's studio - snail, or the end of the violin's neck;
- spherical pions - pawn, almost equal the height of cubic towers (rook) and present themselves on the chessboard almost as massively as all other figures; this is a deliberate procedure - the artist wanted to emphasize in this way how important pions are in contemporary chess games.
Chess can be purchased here: https://www.chesshouse.com/collections/man-ray-chess-set/products/man-ray-chess-pieces, and in the same online store you will also find other interesting sets, for example the one in the Art Deco style.
