I shock myself : Beatrice Wood, career woman of art

In her own charming, spirited, and readable style, Beatrice Wood tells us the story of her unorthodox life and her influence on 20th-century art. Rebellious, radical, and romantic, Wood (1893–1998) defied propriety to become a true national, and international, treasure. Her absorbing autobiography includes vintage documents and her own personal photos and sketches of her many famous friends and acquaintances in the art world. She became romantically involved with the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, and offers rare glimpses into the lives of her circle, including key cultural figures like Constantin Brancusi, Isadora Duncan, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anais Nin, and Krishnamurti. At age forty Wood studied ceramics and went on to become one of the major ceramists of the 20th century, working until her death at age 105. This captivating chance to enjoy Wood's rare charisma and spirit provides a better understanding of American art and the people who have shaped it. "Beatrice Wood's Life has been extraordinary in every way, from earliest childhood, when her dominating Victorian mother realized she "wasn't like the rest of them," to her productive life at ninety-five in California's Ojiai Valley. Rebellious, radical and romantic, Beatrice Wood was determined to be an artist. She fled to Paris for several bohemian seasons as a painter and actress, then returned to New York where she fell into the loving clutches of two Frenchmen: Henri-Pierre Roche, the author of Jules and Jim, and Marcel Duchamp, the iconoclastic Dadaist. Her promising youth was followed by a disastrous marriage, financial woes and a debilitating physical affliction; but in 1933, at the age of forty, she discovered the passion that would change her life: pottery. Now one of America's acclaimed ceramicists, Beatrice Wood shares the intriguing details of her unconventional life in I Shock Myself. With candor and insight, she recollects nearly ten decades of world shaking events, heart breaking romances, and artistic achievement."--Publisher description.