Beatrice Wood

“What is Dada about this lecture is that I know nothing about Dada. I was only in love with men connected with it, which I suppose is as near to being Dada as anything,” Beatrice Wood told an audience at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1978. Indeed, in her day Wood was known for her sexual flings (and several imagined relationships she portrayed in her art) more than her artistic contributions to Dada. But today she holds the title of the “Mama of Dada,” after a colorful career and a lifelong passion for ceramics lasting until her death at 105 years old. “[Her] drawings have the combined openness and intimacy of a daily diary, revealing the wit and humor, pathos and joie de vivre for which Wood’s so well known,” writes Art Forum. “For example, works from Touching Certain Things, 1932–33, depict sexually tinged interactions between women with a directness and sweetness that remains, despite a quaint illustrative style, radical for our times.”