Beatrice Wood Mixed Media - Table Talk (1991)

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Fine Antiquities, Ancient & Pre-Columbian Art...

By Artemis Gallery

Dec 7, 2023

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• Lot Description
  Beatrice Wood (also known as Beatrice Beato Wood - American, 1893-1998). "Table Talk" mixed media (colored pencils and watercolor), 1991. Signed and dated at lower right. An exciting mixed media composition by Beatrice "Beato" Wood, a legendary artist known as the "Mama of Dada" for her pivotal role in the New York Dada group as well as her romantic relationship with Marcel Duchamp. As a visual artist, Beato was probably best known for her pioneering work as a ceramicist; however, she also created robust drawings throughout her career - beginning around 1920 with her early Dada experiments and continuing until her death at age 105. "Table Talk" is one of Beato's energetic depictions of friends gathered around a table at a party. The lively figures are engaged in animated conversations - striking dramatic poses and making communicative hand gestures - and the scene is rendered in an equally lively color palette. What's more, Beato's modernist eye for form as well as her spirit of experimentation clearly fueled her unique abstraction of the human figures as well as the chairs and table depicted in this piece. Even more remarkable, Beato created "Table Talk" when she was 98 years young! A fabulous work of art by Beatrice Wood, an immense talent who also had a wonderful sense of humor and famously said, "I owe it all to art books, chocolates, and young men!" Size (sight view): 13.75" L x 19.5" W (34.9 cm x 49.5 cm) Size (frame): 26.625" L x 31.2" W (67.6 cm x 79.2 cm)
  
  Luce Artist Biography: "Beatrice Wood fled her affluent home and proper upbringing to become an actress, artist, and writer. She was an outspoken and determined young woman who became known as the 'mama of dada' because of her involvement with the Dada artists and Marcel Duchamp. Wood began working with ceramics in 1933 when she took a class at Hollywood High School in California. She is recognized as a pioneer in experimenting with shining luster glazes, which became a trademark of her pottery. Wood had an insatiable love of life, romance and art, and worked at her wheel every day up until she was one hundred and three years old."
  
  Despite being an accomplished artist and a pioneer of Dada in her own right, Wood's romantic involvement with Duchamp has largely overshadowed her artistic contributions. According to Alexxa Gotthardt, "Wood was indeed a lover of Duchamp, who she met in New York in 1916. They were part of a legendary menage-a-trois with Henri-Pierre Roche that would go on to inspire Francois Truffaut’s French New Wave film, Jules et Jim (1962). More significantly, though, they had a lifelong creative dialogue that, in its first year, helped shape Dada.
  
  Though a 1993 documentary later dubbed Wood the 'Mama of Dada,' she is rarely listed among the movement's pioneers. But in 1917, both she and Duchamp submitted works to the Society of Independent Artists' first exhibition, which would double as Dada's coming out. While Duchamp's contribution to the show—a found urinal turned on its head and titled Fountain (1917)—would later be seen as a watershed moment in the history of modern art, it was Wood's Un peut (peu) d'eau dans du savon (1917) that caused public uproar at the time.
  
  'She was sort of the sensation of the show,' explains Francis Naumann, a Dada scholar, dealer, and dear friend of Wood's. 'Her work was attacked by the press.' The offending painting showed a woman's naked torso with a real piece of soap affixed 'at a very tactical position,' Wood would later explain. She and Duchamp also founded the seminal Dada journal, The Blind Man, with Roche. In one issue, Wood penned an article defending Duchamp's Fountain. 'The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges,' she mused. The quote is often erroneously attributed to Duchamp himself.
  
  While Duchamp no doubt served as a mentor to Wood, her rebellious creativity didn't start—or end —with him. 'Beatrice was a romantic, but she never allowed a man to control her life—ever,' explains Naumann. 'She paid her own bills from the very beginning to the end.'" ("The Forgotten Legacy of Cult California Artist Beatrice Wood" Artsy Editorial August 1, 2016)
  
  Provenance: Private Los Angeles, California, USA collection
  
  All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back.
  
  A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids.
  
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  #177694

  Condition

  Signed and dated at lower right. Mounted in custom, museum quality frame. Artwork has not been examined outside the frame but appears to be overall excellent. Fit with suspension wire and ready to display.
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