The life and times of Beatrice Wood, mother of Dadaism and female extraordinaire

What curious times she lived in, all 105 years…from 1893 to 1998. A daughter of San Francisco socialites, Beatrice Wood lived life writ large. To her parents chagrin, she moved to Paris and studied art at the Académie Julian and acting at the Comédie-Française, appearing with the likes of Sarah Bernhardt. When WWI started, she returned to the United States. While acting in New York City, she was introduced to Henri-Pierre Roché by Marcel Duchamp. Together, the three founded the Dadaist magazine The Blind Man in 1910. Roché wrote Jules et Jim and it has been said that the love triangle that formed between Woods, Duchamp and Roché influenced Roché’s storyline. Beatrice Woods must have been really something! She still was at the time the video below was made.

Woods became part of a circle that included Dadaists Man Ray and Francis Picabia and art patrons Walter and Louise Arensberg. Eventually, she became known as the Mother of Dadaism because of her involvement in the movement. The one thorn in her side, however, was her mother. According to her biography on the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts site, she described herself during her theatre years as “terribly unhappy” because her “mother had interfered with every role offered me. So I left.” She moved from New York City to Montreal to continue to pursue theatre but, while there, she learned her mother had hired a private detective to spy on her. Under duress, she married the theatre manager, but it was a disastrous choice, as he used her  connections to find money for his gambling addiction. Eventually, her parents helped end the marriage. After another heartbreak, Wood migrated back to California, to Los Angeles, where she took her first ceramics course at Hollywood High School. After a fashion, she set opened a studio on Sunset Boulevard. She later said she had to do something to support herself after she ‘ran away from home’ and she did so by making pottery. In fact, she continued to work with clay until she was 104! Wood was also a writer and she had many literary friends, including Anais Nin. Wood’s books: The Angel Who Wore Black Tights, I Shock Myself (her autobiography), Pinching Spaniards and 33rd Wife of a Maharajah: A Love Affair in India. She also wrote under the pen name Countess Lola Screwvinsky! An aside: Beatrice Woods was partly the model for the character “Rose” in James Cameron’s movie, “The Titanic.”

Wood had lifelong spiritual leanings that included her interest in Annie Besant and the Theosophical Society, Krishnamurti, Buddhism, and Hinduism. To make a long story short, Wood also studied ceramics with Glen Lukens and her mentors, Gertrud and Otto Natzler. She became alienated from them; however, when they rejected her over idea theft, glazes and forms. Later, in a lecture, according to the bio on her center site, she said, “Do be true to yourself, whether it’s bad doesn’t matter. The important thing – you have to copy while you’re studying. And culture is – each of us – is like one pearl added to another to make a chain. We each contribute to the other. And that’s all right. But once you’re on your own, do that which comes from within. And I feel this very strongly.”

In 1947, she moved to Ojai, where she remained till her death…. (Her neighbor was Krishnamurti.) While there, Wood cemented a relationship with Vivika and Otto Heino and taught at the Happy Valley School. During the Ojai years, Wood developed a style she called “sophisticated primitives” and the video shows her making a vessel in this style. As the years passed, she became more and more recognized for her work, exhibiting in Japan, touring India, gratis the State Department. She developed a strong affinity with India, its crafts and dress, along with its spirituality. Though she married twice, both marriages were unconsummated and she didn’t marry any of her other loves. The centenarian Woods remained true to herself throughout her life, no mean feat, as she cut across the grain of the mainstream culture, several continents, and ages.

 ”And I have exposed myself to art so that my work has something beyond just the usual potter.” — Beatrice Wood

Tags: American icon, Art History, Beatrice Wood, Beatrice Wood Center of the Arts, centanarian, Ceramics, Dadaism, Henri-Pierre Roché, Marcel Duchamp, pottery