Beatrice Wood

Beatrice Wood Remembers: Dada, Duchamp. Love & Tango

A Conversation with Beatrice Wood
Directed and written by Steven Watson

Director of photography Peter d’Agostino
Edited by Giuliano Ciabatta

Thanks to
The Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts
Morex Arai
Garth Clark
Paul Franklin
Anthony Johns
Kevin Wallace
Dana Martin
Sarwar Mushtaq
Paul Kasmin
Robert Watson
Hailey Wojcik

Special thanks to Francis M. Naumann

Selected sources for images:

Francis Naumann M. collection
Paul Kasmin collection
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Schlesinger Library, Radlcliffe College
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas
Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts
“I Shock Myself” by Beatrice Wood
“Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde”
by Steven Watson
“Beatrice Wood: Career Woman”
Music:
Chopin – Mazurka in G Major, KKIIa No. 2
Chopin – Mazurka in A Minor Op. 17: IV

Interview conducted October, 1987
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2019 ©Steven Robert Watson
www.steven-watson.com

Beatrice Wood: Her Art and Her Friends, India and Ojai by Susan Ginsberg

In 1962, Beatrice Wood had an exhibition of about 80 ceramic objects in 14 cities throughout India. She represented the United States government in a cultural exchange through the All India Handicrafts organization. Her art — ceramics and drawings — can be whimsical, but are primarily elegant with metallic glazes reminiscent of Persian pottery of the 9th century. On this tour, Wood gave lectures at schools, cultural centers and museums and she met many dignitaries from the political and cultural world. She returned to India in 1965 to photograph 'tribal art' and then again in 1975. Who was this remarkable woman? She was an intimate of Marcel Duchamp, the artist that changed the course of modern art, and a participant in avant-garde circles in New York and Paris in the teens and active with Dada groups (sometimes called the Mama of Dada). She was also close friends with Jiddu Krishnamurti, Rukmini Arundale, and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. She stayed in touch with Inder Kumar Gujral, and Biju Patniak and she readily embraced all things Indian including wearing a sari every day in India and the US. Her approach to life and art was to combine the wisdom of the East, positive thinking and a strong work ethic with a Dadaist sense of humor.

Susan Ginsburg
Susan Ginsburg lives in New York and has been teaching art history for many years at the School of Visual Arts and has worked as a curator for a number of private collections as well as advisor to investors. She has travelled widely in Europe, the Far East and more recently India. In the past few years, she has been studying philosophy of art and the cosmic dimension of the avant-garde in the Europe and the US.

This lecture was organised as a collaboration between Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) and the Museum Society of Mumbai (MSM) and was supported by Jai & Sugandha Hiremath, Hikal. Ltd.

BEATRICE WOOD CENTER FOR THE ARTS

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BEATRICE WOOD

VIDEOCERÁMICA # BEATRICE WOOD was born in San Francisco in 1893 and passed away in Ojai, California nine days after her 105th birthday on March 12, 1998. She attributed her longevity to "young men and chocolates."

Wood sspent time in Paris during her late teens. Studying art briefly at the Academie Julian, she was soon attracted to the stage and moved to the Comedie Francaise. She returned to the United States in 1914 and joined the French Repertory Theater in New York. While visiting the French composer Edgar Varese in a New York hospital in 1916, she was introduced to Marcel Duchamp. She soon became an intimate friend of the painter and a member of his recherche culturelle clique, which included Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Albert Gleizes, Walt Kuhn, and others. As a contributor to Duchamp's avant-garde magazines, Rogue and the Blindman, she produced drawings and shared editorial space with such luminaries of the day as Gertrude Stein. In 1933, after she purchased a set of six luster plates in Europe, she returned to America and wanted to produce a matching teapot. It was suggested that she make one at the pottery classes of the Hollywood High School. Of course, she would later laugh about that weekend and reminisce about how foolish she was in thinking she could produce a lustre teapot in one weekend. But she was hooked. She began to read everything she could get her hands on concerning ceramics. Around 1938 she studied with Glen Lukens at the USC, and in 1940 with the Austrian potters Gertrud and Otto Natzler. She remembers being "the most interested student in [Lukens's] class and certainly the least gifted…." "I was not a born craftsman. Many with natural talent do not have to struggle, they ride on easy talent and never soar. But I worked and worked, obsessed with learning." From that time on, Wood developed a personal and uniquely expressive art form with her lusterwares. Her sense of theater is still vividly alive in these works, with their exotic palette of colors and unconventional form. In 1983 the Art Galleries of California State University at Fullerton organized a large retrospective of the artist's sixty-six years of activity as an artist. Remarkably, it was during the artist's nineties that Wood produced some of her finest work including her now signature works, tall complex, multi-volumed chalices in glittering golds, greens, pinks and bronzes. Until shortly before her death she was producing at least two one-woman exhibitions a year and the older she became, the more daring and experimental her work was.

Wood received numerous honors. She was given the Ceramics Symposium Award of the Institute for Ceramic History in 1983 and the outstanding-achievement award of the Women's Caucus for Art in 1987, the year she was made a fellow of both the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts and the American Craft Council which also gave her the gold medal on her 100th birthday. She also received the Governor's Award for Art in 1994, and was made a "living treasure of California" by the state in 1984. Wood took part in hundreds of exhibitions both solo and group since the 1930's ranging from small craft shows, to showing on the Venice Biennale. From 1981 until her death, she was represented by the Garth Clark Gallery. In 1990, her close friend and art historian Francis Naumann organized a major retrospective of her figurative work which appeared at the Oakland Museum and The Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles. In 1997 the American Craft Museum organized "Beatrice Wood: A Centennial Tribute," a touring exhibition. In 1985 Wood published her autobiography, I Shock Myself . She continued to write, publishing many books. In 1993 she was the subject of an award winning film Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada by Lone Wolf Productions.

Beatrice Wood continued to throw on the wheel until June, 1997. She achieved some of her best lustre works in the 90s. Her last figurative work, "Men With Their Wives" was completed in December 1996 and is currently in a private collection in California.