Mid-Shore Arts: Bennett Bean on Being Careful

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While his first major piece of art sold to Whitney Museum in 1967, it could be said that Bennett Bean's art career actually started in 1981.

That was the year Bennett permanently ended teaching at Wagner College in New York and left the city for the New Jersey countryside and focus exclusively on his artwork.

That was a good bet on his part. Since that moment in time, he now has his artwork in the permanent collection of such esteemed museums as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California.

But as Bennett explains in his interview with the Spy at the Academy Art Museum from last week, it was due to this newly found freedom, which he calls a "romantic involvement," that has produced the extraordinary pottery and colors now on display in a major exhibition or his work entitled Be Careful What You Fall in Love With this fall at the AAM.

Open House – Bennett Bean, “Be Careful What You Fall In Love With”

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Ceramicist, designer, painter – Bennett Bean is a quintessential polymath. Best known for his treatment of ceramic vessels post-firing, he works in a range of mediums including stone, precious metals, wool and silk weaving, and painting.

On April 4, 2017 Rago Arts and Auction Center hosted an open house with the ever charming and laugh-out-loud funny Bennett Bean titled, “Be Careful What You Fall in Love With.” Bean presented a brief history of his work and the variety of mediums and formats he has explored over the course of his career, peppered with intimate and humorous looks at a life well lived.

Bennett Bean

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Artist Bennett Bean on life, luck, pots, rugs, and Buddhism. In 1970, he left the New York art world for rural Johnsonburg, New Jersey. He'd had solo exhibits, sold a sculpture to the Whitney Museum, yet found himself being drawn in another direction. We visited his studio and got a look at how he creates his signature ceramic vessels.

Beatrice Wood Remembers: Dada, Duchamp. Love & Tango

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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

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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.