Beatrice Wood - "Luster Vessel" Earthenware with luster glaze bowl
 
 
 

Beatrice Wood • American (1893-1998)

Luster Vessel C: 1970 • Earthenware with Luster Glaze 6” x 6.5” x 6.5”

Beatrice Wood never set foot on the Titanic, but she painted with Monet in his garden at Giverny; tie-dyed costumes for Isadora Duncan; performed in plays by Sarah Bernhardt; fell in love many times, including famed author Henri-Pierre Roche, Dada artist Marcel Duchamp and India’s leading scientist.  Her life with Duchamp and Roche served as the basis for the well-known novel and Francois Truffaut movie, Jules and Jim.  

For 105 years, Beatrice Wood danced across Europe, America and India.  In her 90’s she took up writing and soon published books ranging from cookbooks to her autobiography, “I Shock Myself.”  When James Cameron was writing Titanic, he read that book, met Beatrice Wood and knew he’d found someone who made every day count.  He’d found Rose.

Beatrice Wood crammed many lives into her 38,360 days on earth.  She was a New York debutante who left her parents elegant home with $15 in her pocket hoping to become an avant-garde artist.  She was an art and theatre student in Paris, then New York when the start of World War I forced her to leave the continent.  She published two magazines of Dada art with two lovers, leading to her moniker “Mother of Dada.”   It was complicated.

(story continues below break)

 

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Beatrice_Wood_by_Tony_Cunha.jpg
 

In middle age, Wood became fascinated with folk art, leading to both a new career at the potters wheel, and a deep romance with India’s leading scientist who’d been invited to see her work.  Her stunning vessels with lustrous metallic surfaces were so admired she was named one of “America’s Living Treasures.”  But, of course she was.

Ever curious, she became fascinated with India, especially after meeting Annie Bresant, a leading light in the Theosophical Society who eventually became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress.  Wood became the “world’s oldest Theosophian”* embracing the society’s belief in the existence of a deeper spiritual reality accessible through mental states transcending human consciousness.  Very New Age-y for an aged woman.  

After her Indian love affair necessarily ended, she never visited India again.  “I never married the men I loved, I never loved the men I married,”1 she told a journalist.  But she continued dressing in her beloved saris while making pottery and ceramic sculptures in Ojai, California, a hotbed of ceramic arts.  She worked steadily at her wheel until a year before her death.  When asked what she wanted to take with her to her next life, she responded in typical Beatrice Wood fashion, “A nice young violent man with black hair.  And I would like to be in a beautiful sari.”*

As a century-old Rose Calvert says at the end of Titanic, “Only life is priceless so make every day count.”  Beatrice Wood probably said it first.

Canton Museum of Art Permanent Collection • Purchased in memory of Scott L. Trenton 2022.2

*While researching this article I stumbled across a wonderful piece by Sandip Roy on the website, firstpost.com.  These quotes were taken from that interview.

 
 

4 Ways to Sound Smart When Viewing at The Canton Museum of Art


1.
“She was well known for the lustrous metallic vessels. The mentors who taught her to glaze hated her for her success. Glazer haters.”

2.
“Well into her 90’s she was named one of America’s Living Treasures. She probably hoped to meet some handsome young treasure hunters.”

3.
“As a young woman she painted with Monet in his garden. As an old woman she threw pots with famed potters Viveka and Otto Heino. Social climber.”

4.
“She claimed her longevity was due to “art books, chocolates and younger men. Works for me.”


 
 

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