Charles Henri Ford
Encyclopedia
Charles Henri Ford was an American
poet
, novelist, filmmaker, photographer, and collage
artist best known for his editorship of the Surrealist magazine View
(1940-1947) in New York City, and as the partner of the artist Pavel Tchelitchew
.
, he dropped out of high school and by age 16 he had started his first magazine, Blues(subtitled "A Bisexual Bimonthly"). Actress Ruth Ford
(1911-2009) was his sister and only known sibling.
Not long after, he became part of Gertrude Stein
's salon in Paris, where he met Natalie Barney, Man Ray
, Kay Boyle
, Janet Flanner
, Peggy Guggenheim
, Djuna Barnes
and others of the American expatriate community in Montparnasse
and Saint-Germain-des-Près. He went to Morocco
in 1932 at the suggestion of Paul Bowles
, and there he typed Barnes' just-completed novel, Nightwood
(1936), for her.
With Parker Tyler
, who would later become a highly respected film critic, he co-authored The Young and Evil (1933), an energetically experimental novel with obvious debts to fellow writer Djuna Barnes
, and also to Gertrude Stein, who called it "the novel that beat the Beat Generation by a generation". The novel portrays a collection of young genderqueer
artists as they write poems, have sex, move in and out of cheap rented rooms, and duck into the neighborhood's many speakeasies. The characters' gender and sexual identities are presented candidly; it was this candor which was reportedly the reason for its rejection by several American and British publishers. It was finally picked up by Obelisk Press
in Paris.
Ford returned to New York City in 1934 and brought Pavel Tchelitchew (Ford's life partner until the latter's death in 1957) with him. Ford's circle at the time included Carl Van Vechten
, Glenway Wescott
, George Platt Lynes
, Lincoln Kirstein
, Orson Welles
, George Balanchine
, and E. E. Cummings
. Visiting friends from abroad included Cecil Beaton
, Leonor Fini
, George Hoyningen-Huene
, and Salvador Dalí
.
He published his first full-length book of poems, The Garden of Disorder in 1938. William Carlos Williams
wrote the introduction. In 1940, Ford and Tyler collaborated again on the magazine View, which was mainly concerned with avant-garde and surrealist art. It was published quarterly, as finances permitted, until 1947. It attracted contributions from such artists as Tchelitchew, Yves Tanguy
, Max Ernst
, André Masson
, Pablo Picasso
, Henry Miller
, Paul Klee
, Albert Camus
, Lawrence Durrell
, Georgia O'Keeffe
, Man Ray
, Jorge Luis Borges
, Joan Miró
, Alexander Calder
, Marc Chagall
, Jean Genet
, René Magritte
, Jean Dubuffet
, and Edouard Roditi
.
In the 1940s, View Editions, an associated publishing house, came out with the first monograph on Marcel Duchamp
and the first book translations of André Breton's
poems. Charles Henri Ford's 1949 book of poems, Sleep in a Nest of Flames, contained a preface by Dame Edith Sitwell
.
Ford and Tchelitchew moved to Europe in 1952, and in 1955 Ford had a photo exhibition, Thirty Images from Italy, at London's Institute of Contemporary Art. In Paris the next year he had his first one-man show of paintings and drawings. Jean Cocteau
wrote the foreword to the catalog. In 1957, Tchelitchew died in Rome.
In 1962 Ford again returned to the United States and began associating with Pop
artists and underground filmmakers. His 1965 exhibition of "Poem Posters" at Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, New York, triggered a color-poster fad, and a film made of the show was chosen for Fourth International Avant-Garde Film Festival in Belgium
.
Ford also had a long connection with Nepal
, where he bought a house. He brought Indra Tamang, a young man from a Nepalese village, back to New York City to be his caretaker. With one other Nepali collaborator, Ford compiled a number of art projects using his art and Indra's photography. Ford left some paintings, and the rights to his book, Young and Evil, to Tamang.
He lived for many years in The Dakota
apartment building on Central Park West
. In 2001, Water From A Bucket: A Diary 1948-1957 was published. Also in 2001 he was the subject of a documentary, Sleep in a Nest of Flames, made by James Dowell and John Kolomvakis.
, who died in 2009, aged 98.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, novelist, filmmaker, photographer, and collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
artist best known for his editorship of the Surrealist magazine View
View (magazine)
View was an American literary and art magazine published from 1940 to 1947 by artist and writer Charles Henri Ford, and writer and film critic Parker Tyler. The magazine is best known for introducing Surrealism to the American public....
(1940-1947) in New York City, and as the partner of the artist Pavel Tchelitchew
Pavel Tchelitchew
Pavel Tchelitchew was a Russian-born surrealist painter, set designer and costume designer. He left Russia in 1920, lived in Berlin from 1921 to 1923, and moved to Paris in 1923. In Paris Tchelitchew became acquainted with Gertrude Stein and, through her, the Sitwell and Gorer families...
.
Life
Born in Brookhaven, MississippiBrookhaven, Mississippi
Brookhaven is a small city in Lincoln County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 9,861 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Lincoln County...
, he dropped out of high school and by age 16 he had started his first magazine, Blues(subtitled "A Bisexual Bimonthly"). Actress Ruth Ford
Ruth Ford (actress)
Ruth Ford was an American model and stage and film actress. Her brother was the bohemian surrealist Charles Henri Ford. Their parents managed the Tennessee Hotel in Clarksville, Tennessee.-Life and career:As a model she posed for Harper's, Town and Country and Mademoiselle...
(1911-2009) was his sister and only known sibling.
Not long after, he became part of Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
's salon in Paris, where he met Natalie Barney, Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...
, Janet Flanner
Janet Flanner
Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She wrote under the pen name "Genêt"...
, Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R...
, Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...
and others of the American expatriate community in Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
and Saint-Germain-des-Près. He went to Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
in 1932 at the suggestion of Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
, and there he typed Barnes' just-completed novel, Nightwood
Nightwood
Nightwood is a 1936 novel by Djuna Barnes first published in London by Faber and Faber. An edition published in the United States in 1937 by Harcourt, Brace included an introduction by T. S. Eliot.....
(1936), for her.
With Parker Tyler
Parker Tyler
Harrison Parker Tyler, better known as Parker Tyler was an American author, poet, and film critic. Tyler had a relationship with underground filmmaker Charles Boultenhouse from 1945 until his death...
, who would later become a highly respected film critic, he co-authored The Young and Evil (1933), an energetically experimental novel with obvious debts to fellow writer Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...
, and also to Gertrude Stein, who called it "the novel that beat the Beat Generation by a generation". The novel portrays a collection of young genderqueer
Genderqueer
Genderqueer is a catch-all term for gender identities other than man and woman, thus outside of the gender binary and heteronormativity...
artists as they write poems, have sex, move in and out of cheap rented rooms, and duck into the neighborhood's many speakeasies. The characters' gender and sexual identities are presented candidly; it was this candor which was reportedly the reason for its rejection by several American and British publishers. It was finally picked up by Obelisk Press
Obelisk Press
Obelisk Press was an English language press based in Paris, France, which was founded by Jack Kahane in 1929.Kahane, a novelist, began the Obelisk Press after his publisher, Grant Richards, went bankrupt. Going into partnership with a printer, Kahane, as Cecil Barr, published his next novel...
in Paris.
Ford returned to New York City in 1934 and brought Pavel Tchelitchew (Ford's life partner until the latter's death in 1957) with him. Ford's circle at the time included Carl Van Vechten
Carl van Vechten
Carl Van Vechten was an American writer and photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.-Biography:...
, Glenway Wescott
Glenway Wescott
Glenway Wescott was a major American novelist during the 1920-1940 period and a figure in the American expatriate literary community in Paris during the 1920s. Wescott was gay. His relationship with longtime companion Monroe Wheeler lasted from 1919 until Wescott's death.-Biography:Wescott was...
, George Platt Lynes
George Platt Lynes
George Platt Lynes was an American fashion and commercial photographer.Born in East Orange, New Jersey to Adelaide and Joseph Russell Lynes he spent his childhood in New Jersey but attended the Berkshire School in Massachusetts. He was sent to Paris in 1925 with the idea of better preparing him...
, Lincoln Kirstein
Lincoln Kirstein
Lincoln Edward Kirstein was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, and cultural figure in New York City...
, Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, George Balanchine
George Balanchine
George Balanchine , born Giorgi Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was one of the 20th century's most famous choreographers, a developer of ballet in the United States, co-founder and balletmaster of New York City Ballet...
, and E. E. Cummings
E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...
. Visiting friends from abroad included Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre...
, Leonor Fini
Leonor Fini
Leonor Fini was an Argentine surrealist painter.-Life and work:Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she was raised in Trieste, Italy. She moved to Milan at the age of 17, and then to Paris, in either 1931 or 1932...
, George Hoyningen-Huene
George Hoyningen-Huene
Baron George Hoyningen-Huene was a seminal fashion photographer of the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Russia to Baltic German and American parents and spent his working life in France, England and the United States.-Europe:...
, and Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
.
He published his first full-length book of poems, The Garden of Disorder in 1938. William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
wrote the introduction. In 1940, Ford and Tyler collaborated again on the magazine View, which was mainly concerned with avant-garde and surrealist art. It was published quarterly, as finances permitted, until 1947. It attracted contributions from such artists as Tchelitchew, Yves Tanguy
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy , known as Yves Tanguy, was a French surrealist painter.-Biography:Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin...
, Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, André Masson
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
, Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
, Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...
, Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
, Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
, Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
, René Magritte
René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
, Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...
, and Edouard Roditi
Edouard Roditi
Édouard Roditi was an American poet, short-story writer and translator. He was born in Paris and subsequently studied in France, England, Germany and the USA. He published several volumes of poetry, short stories, and art criticism...
.
In the 1940s, View Editions, an associated publishing house, came out with the first monograph on Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
and the first book translations of André Breton's
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
poems. Charles Henri Ford's 1949 book of poems, Sleep in a Nest of Flames, contained a preface by Dame Edith Sitwell
Edith Sitwell
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE was a British poet and critic.-Background:Edith Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the oldest child and only daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall; he was an expert on genealogy and landscaping...
.
Ford and Tchelitchew moved to Europe in 1952, and in 1955 Ford had a photo exhibition, Thirty Images from Italy, at London's Institute of Contemporary Art. In Paris the next year he had his first one-man show of paintings and drawings. Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
wrote the foreword to the catalog. In 1957, Tchelitchew died in Rome.
In 1962 Ford again returned to the United States and began associating with Pop
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
artists and underground filmmakers. His 1965 exhibition of "Poem Posters" at Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, New York, triggered a color-poster fad, and a film made of the show was chosen for Fourth International Avant-Garde Film Festival in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
.
Ford also had a long connection with Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, where he bought a house. He brought Indra Tamang, a young man from a Nepalese village, back to New York City to be his caretaker. With one other Nepali collaborator, Ford compiled a number of art projects using his art and Indra's photography. Ford left some paintings, and the rights to his book, Young and Evil, to Tamang.
He lived for many years in The Dakota
The Dakota
The Dakota, constructed from October 25, 1880 to October 27, 1884, is a co-op apartment building located on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City...
apartment building on Central Park West
Central Park West
Central Park West is an avenue that runs north-south in the New York City borough of Manhattan, in the United States....
. In 2001, Water From A Bucket: A Diary 1948-1957 was published. Also in 2001 he was the subject of a documentary, Sleep in a Nest of Flames, made by James Dowell and John Kolomvakis.
Death
Charles Henri Ford died, aged 89, in 2002. He was survived by his elder sister, actress Ruth FordRuth Ford (actress)
Ruth Ford was an American model and stage and film actress. Her brother was the bohemian surrealist Charles Henri Ford. Their parents managed the Tennessee Hotel in Clarksville, Tennessee.-Life and career:As a model she posed for Harper's, Town and Country and Mademoiselle...
, who died in 2009, aged 98.
Poetry
- A Pamphlet of Sonnets (1936)
- The Garden of Disorder (1938)
- ABC's (1940)
- The Overturned Lake (1941)
- Poems for Painters (1945)
- The Half-Thoughts, The Distances of Pain (1947)
- Sleep in a Nest of Flames (1949)
- Spare Parts (1966)
- Silver Flower Coo (1968)
- Flag of Ecstasy: Selected Poems (1972)
- 7 poems (1974)
- Om Krishna I: Special Effects (1972)
- Om Krishna II: from the Sickroom of the Walking Eagles (1981)
- Om Krishna III (1982)
- Emblems of Arachne (1986)
Exhibitions
- Between Bridges, London, 2007 (http://www.betweenbridges.net/)
- Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, 2008 (http://www.galeriebuchholz.de/)
External links
- Charles Henri Ford Page at Milk Magazine
- Modern Poetry Web pages on Ford
- Interview with Charles Henri Ford
- Charles Henri Ford on glbtq
- A review of The Young and Evil
- Sleep in a nest of flames
- Charles Henri Ford Collection, Photographs at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at AustinUniversity of Texas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
- Charles Henri Ford papers, 1906-1989. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California. The Charles Henri Ford archive comprises diverse papers collected from 1920-1989 relating to himself, his companion, Pavel Tchelitchew, and a large circle of friends and literary figures.