Famous first words: Michael Duncan on Charles Henri Ford - Passages -
Biography
ArtForum, Jan, 2003 by Michael Duncan
IN THIS SUGAR-FREE ERA, what artist has a life more interesting than his
art? The death of Charles Henri Ford (1908-2002) puts the capper on a time
when precociousness and chutzpah were art forms in themselves. In 1927, on
the eve of his nineteenth birthday, Ford wrote in his diary: "In two years
I will be famous. In two years I will be famous. In two years I will be
famous. In two years I will be famous. In two years I will be famous. In
two years I will be famous. This is my oath."
Not missing a beat, the poetry-besotted high school dropout started a
little magazine out of his small-town Mississippi bedroom, christening it
with the hip title Blues: A Magazine of New Rhythms. He announced the first
issue just as longtime literary journals The Dial and the Little Review
were folding, so even well-known writers like Gertrude Stein and William
Carlos Williams answered with submissions. Besides the big names, Ford
introduced talents who confirmed his nose for the new: James Farrell,
Erskine Caldwell, and fellow oddball teen Paul Bowles.
Through Blues he struck up a correspondence with the flamboyant young
genius Parker Tyler, whose descriptions of boho Manhattan beckoned him to
that hotbed of poetry and available men. Intoxicated by the Village scene,
the two soon cobbled together a collaborative novel, The Young and the Evil
(1933), a fragmented record of cruising, drag balls, and brittle repartee.
Dame Edith Sitwell allegedly proclaimed it "entirely without soul like a
dead fish stinking in hell," an assessment that defines its lasting appeal
as a proto--Blank Generation artifact.
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Managing to get to Europe, the fresh-faced ingenue had no problem gaining
access to the literary salons of Stein and Natalie Barney. While awaiting
publication of his novel, he briefly hooked up with Djuna Barnes in
Tangier, where they shared a rat-infested hovel while Ford typed the
manuscript of Nightwood. Back in Paris, he met the artist Pavel
Tchelitchew, a former Stein protege whose career was on the rise.
Tchelitchew--a brilliant, charismatic figure--was immediately taken with
the bright blue eyes, sharp mind, and boyish demeanor of what he called "my
darling huckleberries finn." In the luminous Portrait of Charles Henri Ford
in Poppy Field, 1933, Tchelitchew depicted his youthful lover with a golden
halo formed by stacks of hay--an inside joke, according to Tyler, based on
the Russian artist's misinterpreting Ford's written reference to "wet
dreams" as "wheat dreams." The love-struck Tchelitchew followed Ford back
to New York, where, after some domestic readjustments, the two eventually
established the mselves in a sunlit East Side penthouse.
Their tempestuous twenty-six-year liaison-lasting until Tchelitchew's
death--was one of the great gay relationships, despite its bumps and
indiscretions. Although never at ease with his secondary role, Ford
provided unwavering support for Tchelitchew's art and tolerance for his
high-strung volatility. Discord arose largely from Tchelitchew's powerful
friends--Lincoln Kirstein, the Sitwells, the collector Edward James--who
saw Ford as an opportunist. But Ford lived to score an odd kind of revenge
on the past: the publication of Water from a Bucket: A Diary 1948-1957
(Turtle Point, 2001), a scattered, gossipy account of love affairs and
failed writing projects that ends in the gruesome, tasteless chronicling of
Tchelitchew's health problems and death.
Beyond the bitchiness, Ford will be most remembered as editor of View,
America's last and best magazine of the avant-garde, which ran from 1940 to
1947. With a penchant for the unexpected and an unerring eye for quality,
View mixed fiction and poetry with features on Max Ernst, Tchelitchew, Man
Ray, Fernand Leger, and Isamu Noguchi, all of whose commissions graced its
covers. View was the first little magazine to publish translations of work
by Raymond Roussel, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, Jean Genet, and
Jean-Paul Sartre. The 1945 Marcel Duchamp issue was the first monograph on
the artist and featured a cutout collage cover.
View also put an American spin on the Surrealist sensibility. Aztec and
Native American poetry were featured, as well as Joseph Cornell's
worshipful paean to Hedy Lamarr. The magazine was formative for associate
editor Parker Tyler--perhaps the most underrated critic in American
letters. His later books on Tchelitchew, Florine Stettheimer, Holly-wood
film, and experimental cinema all had their seeds in View essays.
Most important, View was a quiet yet crucial force kindling underground
American culture. Touchstones of the decade to come like Henry Miller,
Bowles, Philip Lamantia, Paul Goodman, and Marshall McLuhan all published
in the magazine. Its brand of poetic Surrealism in particular seems to have
spilled over to the West Coast Beats. In the mid-'50s, Los Angeles artist
George Herms remembers excitedly perusing a pile of Views in Wallace
Berman's living room on Crater Lane.
In his last five decades Ford produced poetry, photography, collages, and
an experimental film. He appeared in a Warhol screen test and cavorted for
Jack Smith. Longtime stints in Crete and Nepal alternated with a small home
base in the Dakota on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As always, he was a
repository of the bewildering, fragmented encounters that define hip art
culture. In her introduction to Water from a Bucket, Lynne Tillman
describes his diary as an "itinerary of lived attitudes" delivered "in bits
and pieces, a collage, or...cut up." Ford's mid-'90s haiku, issued on a
handout at "Alive and Kicking," his recent exhibition at the Scene Gallery,
New York, defines his art of enduring:
I don't know how to
Take all this information
Stash under your hat.
Los Angeles-based independent curator and critic MICHAEL DUNCAN's most
recent show, "LA Post-Cool," can be seen at the San Jose Museum of Art
through March 23. Duncan is currently assembling retrospectives of the work
of Kim MacConnel and Richard Pettibone, and his "High Drama: Eugene Berman
and the Melancholic Sublime" will open at the McNay Art Museum, San
Antonio, in summer 2004. He has written for LA Weekly, the Los Angeles
Times, and Art in America, where he is a corresponding editor. In this
issue, Duncan remembers American avant-gardist Charles Henri Ford, who died
last year at the age of ninety-four.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
Biography
ArtForum, Jan, 2003 by Michael Duncan
IN THIS SUGAR-FREE ERA, what artist has a life more interesting than his
art? The death of Charles Henri Ford (1908-2002) puts the capper on a time
when precociousness and chutzpah were art forms in themselves. In 1927, on
the eve of his nineteenth birthday, Ford wrote in his diary: "In two years
I will be famous. In two years I will be famous. In two years I will be
famous. In two years I will be famous. In two years I will be famous. In
two years I will be famous. This is my oath."
Not missing a beat, the poetry-besotted high school dropout started a
little magazine out of his small-town Mississippi bedroom, christening it
with the hip title Blues: A Magazine of New Rhythms. He announced the first
issue just as longtime literary journals The Dial and the Little Review
were folding, so even well-known writers like Gertrude Stein and William
Carlos Williams answered with submissions. Besides the big names, Ford
introduced talents who confirmed his nose for the new: James Farrell,
Erskine Caldwell, and fellow oddball teen Paul Bowles.
Through Blues he struck up a correspondence with the flamboyant young
genius Parker Tyler, whose descriptions of boho Manhattan beckoned him to
that hotbed of poetry and available men. Intoxicated by the Village scene,
the two soon cobbled together a collaborative novel, The Young and the Evil
(1933), a fragmented record of cruising, drag balls, and brittle repartee.
Dame Edith Sitwell allegedly proclaimed it "entirely without soul like a
dead fish stinking in hell," an assessment that defines its lasting appeal
as a proto--Blank Generation artifact.
Advertisement
Managing to get to Europe, the fresh-faced ingenue had no problem gaining
access to the literary salons of Stein and Natalie Barney. While awaiting
publication of his novel, he briefly hooked up with Djuna Barnes in
Tangier, where they shared a rat-infested hovel while Ford typed the
manuscript of Nightwood. Back in Paris, he met the artist Pavel
Tchelitchew, a former Stein protege whose career was on the rise.
Tchelitchew--a brilliant, charismatic figure--was immediately taken with
the bright blue eyes, sharp mind, and boyish demeanor of what he called "my
darling huckleberries finn." In the luminous Portrait of Charles Henri Ford
in Poppy Field, 1933, Tchelitchew depicted his youthful lover with a golden
halo formed by stacks of hay--an inside joke, according to Tyler, based on
the Russian artist's misinterpreting Ford's written reference to "wet
dreams" as "wheat dreams." The love-struck Tchelitchew followed Ford back
to New York, where, after some domestic readjustments, the two eventually
established the mselves in a sunlit East Side penthouse.
Their tempestuous twenty-six-year liaison-lasting until Tchelitchew's
death--was one of the great gay relationships, despite its bumps and
indiscretions. Although never at ease with his secondary role, Ford
provided unwavering support for Tchelitchew's art and tolerance for his
high-strung volatility. Discord arose largely from Tchelitchew's powerful
friends--Lincoln Kirstein, the Sitwells, the collector Edward James--who
saw Ford as an opportunist. But Ford lived to score an odd kind of revenge
on the past: the publication of Water from a Bucket: A Diary 1948-1957
(Turtle Point, 2001), a scattered, gossipy account of love affairs and
failed writing projects that ends in the gruesome, tasteless chronicling of
Tchelitchew's health problems and death.
Beyond the bitchiness, Ford will be most remembered as editor of View,
America's last and best magazine of the avant-garde, which ran from 1940 to
1947. With a penchant for the unexpected and an unerring eye for quality,
View mixed fiction and poetry with features on Max Ernst, Tchelitchew, Man
Ray, Fernand Leger, and Isamu Noguchi, all of whose commissions graced its
covers. View was the first little magazine to publish translations of work
by Raymond Roussel, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, Jean Genet, and
Jean-Paul Sartre. The 1945 Marcel Duchamp issue was the first monograph on
the artist and featured a cutout collage cover.
View also put an American spin on the Surrealist sensibility. Aztec and
Native American poetry were featured, as well as Joseph Cornell's
worshipful paean to Hedy Lamarr. The magazine was formative for associate
editor Parker Tyler--perhaps the most underrated critic in American
letters. His later books on Tchelitchew, Florine Stettheimer, Holly-wood
film, and experimental cinema all had their seeds in View essays.
Most important, View was a quiet yet crucial force kindling underground
American culture. Touchstones of the decade to come like Henry Miller,
Bowles, Philip Lamantia, Paul Goodman, and Marshall McLuhan all published
in the magazine. Its brand of poetic Surrealism in particular seems to have
spilled over to the West Coast Beats. In the mid-'50s, Los Angeles artist
George Herms remembers excitedly perusing a pile of Views in Wallace
Berman's living room on Crater Lane.
In his last five decades Ford produced poetry, photography, collages, and
an experimental film. He appeared in a Warhol screen test and cavorted for
Jack Smith. Longtime stints in Crete and Nepal alternated with a small home
base in the Dakota on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As always, he was a
repository of the bewildering, fragmented encounters that define hip art
culture. In her introduction to Water from a Bucket, Lynne Tillman
describes his diary as an "itinerary of lived attitudes" delivered "in bits
and pieces, a collage, or...cut up." Ford's mid-'90s haiku, issued on a
handout at "Alive and Kicking," his recent exhibition at the Scene Gallery,
New York, defines his art of enduring:
I don't know how to
Take all this information
Stash under your hat.
Los Angeles-based independent curator and critic MICHAEL DUNCAN's most
recent show, "LA Post-Cool," can be seen at the San Jose Museum of Art
through March 23. Duncan is currently assembling retrospectives of the work
of Kim MacConnel and Richard Pettibone, and his "High Drama: Eugene Berman
and the Melancholic Sublime" will open at the McNay Art Museum, San
Antonio, in summer 2004. He has written for LA Weekly, the Los Angeles
Times, and Art in America, where he is a corresponding editor. In this
issue, Duncan remembers American avant-gardist Charles Henri Ford, who died
last year at the age of ninety-four.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group