Beatrice Wood: At Home with the Arensbergs

Guest Blogger Francis M. Naumann discusses two drawings by Beatrice Wood recording activities at the Arensbergs…

As I listened to the “The Arensbergs in Hollywood Part 2: Arriving at the House” and viewed still pictures and videos of the interior of the Arensberg home on Hillside Avenue in Hollywood, I fantasized about how the spaces would have been animated in the years when Walter and Louise Arensberg occupied them. There is a drawing by Beatrice Wood called Visit, dated 1930, which captures some of that spirit:

Beatrice Wood, Visit, 1930. Pencil and watercolor on paper, 8 ½ × 11 ¼ inches. Collection Francis M. Naumann and Marie T. Keller, Yorktown Heights, New York

Of the architectural elements in the home, Wood records the fireplace and one of the many archways, but it should be noted that this drawing—like all others by her from this period—were made after the fact, recording only her memory of an event or experience she had witnessed. With that in mind, it stands to reason that she might have gotten some of the details wrong, such as the circular rug in the left foreground (so far as is known, the Arensbergs never owned such a rug). She inscribes the picture with its title and date in the lower-right corner and, below that, she identifies the people depicted within the image: Marcel Duchamp (seated legs-crossed on the couch), Walter Arensberg (cigarette in hand), Helen Freeman (sprawled on the armchair) and Beatrice Wood herself (standing behind the chair, her head propped on her elbow). These identities were likely added at a later date, probably after 1936, for it was only then that Duchamp visited the Arensbergs at their Hollywood home for the first time. Instead, the character on the couch was probably Steve Hoag, a friend of Wood’s whom she often brought with her on visits to the Arensbergs.

Rendering this gathering at the Arensberg home was not something new to Wood, for she had made similar drawings when she knew the couple earlier in New York. It was in these years—from 1915 to 1920—that the Arensbergs opened their apartment on West 67th Street off Central Park to nearly nightly gatherings of artists and writers who arrived in the evening and stayed until the early hours of the morning. There they ate, drank, played chess and discussed the most pressing topics of the day, which ranged from world politics to the theories of Sigmund Freud (which they referred to as “Freudism”). In a drawing titled Soirée, for example, Wood records Duchamp engaged in a game of chess with Francis Picabia, while the French painter Albert Gleizes sits spread-eagled on the couch next to him as two unidentified figures look on (one labeled “Tango,” whose identity has been forgotten):

Beatrice Wood, Soirée, 1917. Pencil, watercolor and ink on paper, 8 ⅝ × 10 ⅞ inches. Collection Francis M. Naumann and Marie T. Keller, Yorktown Heights, New York

Just as with the drawing made later in Hollywood, Wood here simply records a semblance of a gathering she had witnessed. The modernist pictures on the wall are fanciful recreations, but she does depict the couch and armchair on which Picabia is seated accurately, as is confirmed in a photograph of this room taken by the artist Charles Sheeler in 1919:

Charles Sheeler, Interior of the Arensberg Apartment, ca. 1919. Gelatin silver print, 8 × 10 inches. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Gift of James Maroney and Suzanne Fredericks

In the end, Wood’s drawings are mere visual memories of activities that took place in the Arensberg apartment in New York and, later, at their home in Hollywood. As such, they bring these rooms to life, capturing some of the spirit of what took place in these memorable spaces.

— Francis M. Naumann

Francis M. Naumann is a scholar, curator, and art dealer who has written extensively on Marcel Duchamp and his principal patrons, Louise and Walter Arensberg. He has also written at length on many of the other artists who populated the legendary salon the Arensbergs hosted in their New York apartment from 1915–1920. In 1994 he wrote New York Dada 1915–23 (New York: Harry N. Abrams) and in 1996, he curated the exhibition “Making Mischief: Dada Invades New York” for the Whitney Museum of American Art, for which he re-created a section of their apartment in facsimile form.