Naughty or Nice? Dada Drawings by Clara Tice

Naughtz or Nice? f d a d a d r a w i n g s b y c l a r a t i c ef

Naughtz or Nice?

D A D A D RA W I N G S B Y C L A R A T I C E

Naughtz or Nice?

D A D A D RA W I N G S B Y C L A R A T I C E

NOVEMBER 20, 2009 – JANUARY 15, 2010

MEREDITH WARD FINE ART 44 EAST 74TH STREET SUITE 1 NEW YORK NY 10021 TEL 212 744 7306 INFO@MEREDITHWARDFINEART.COM

KING PAUSOLE, C. 1926

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NAUGHTY OR NICE? DADA DRAWINGS BY CLARA TICE

Clara Tice (1888-1973) became an overnight sensation in 1915 when the New York City vice squad attempted to confiscate her drawings of nude women, which were hanging in a Greenwich Village restaurant. She soon became a cause célèbre of the downtown art scene, a well-known personality among the city’s bohemian crowd, and a central figure in the group of New York Dada artists around Marcel Duchamp. Yet today, outside the area of Dada scholarship, Tice is virtually unknown. Almost a century after the scandal that launched her career, this exhibition reintroduces the art that made Clara Tice an icon of her era.

Clara Tice was born in Elmira, New York and was raised in a boarding house on West 32nd Street in Manhattan, where her father worked for the Children’s Aid Society. She became a student of Robert Henri, and participated in the 1910 exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, organized by Henri, John Sloan, and Arthur B. Davies. After that important but brief public debut, Tice continued to work and exhibit in New York for the next five years until the raid in Greenwich Village brought her sudden fame.

Tice had an extraordinary ability to capture the grace and agility of the human body in motion with a few simple lines, and she approached her subjects with an irreverent and naughty wit. Her wry sense of humor is on full display in drawings like La Baionnette (cover), where she fashioned chic headwear out of bayonets, and Portrait of Frank Crowninshield (page 6), in which she composed the face of this New York notable out of tiny female nudes. The frolicsome Arabian Nights Dancers (page 13), while playful, is also subtly subversive with its interracial cast of characters and sexual overtones.

Works like these were on view in March 1915 at Polly’s, a Greenwich Village restaurant popular among downtown bohemians, where they caught the attention of Anthony Comstock, New York City’s anti-vice crusader. Comstock decided that the images were indecent and must be removed. Before he could seize the drawings, however, a restaurant patron, who also happened to be the editor of the underground magazine Rogue, purchased the lot. The entire episode was splashed across the front page of the New York Tribune and immediately catapulted Tice to fame. Thanks to this publicity, the drawings came to the attention of the charismatic editor of Vanity Fair, Frank Crowninshield, who published them in the magazine a few months later. As Tice later observed, “All I can say is that [Comstock] was some press agent.”

The Comstock incident was also memorialized in a mock trial, staged by publisher and impresario Guido Bruno at his Garret on the corner of Thompson

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P O RT R A I T O F F R A N K C R O W N I N S H I E L D , C . 1 9 2 0

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Street and Washington Square South in Greenwich Village. On the evening of October 18th, Tice took the stage as the “defendant,” accused of having “committed unspeakable black atrocities on white paper,” and having “murdered art.”

She stood on a coffin lid to defend herself and pleaded “no contest.”

Thanks to the notice in Vanity Fair and the promotion offered by Bruno and others, Tice became a well-known figure among the bohemian artists of Greenwich Village. For the next several years, she was given exhibitions at galleries around town. The elegant, cosmopolitan style of her drawings brought her more work from Vanity Fair, as well as commissions from “little magazines” like Rogue, Playboy, The Quill, and newspapers including The New York Times, the World, the Globe, and the Sun. Tice also received commissions to do book illustrations, such as the series of racy drawings she produced for Pierre Loüys’ The Adventures of King Pausole in 1926 (page 4), as well as murals and interior decorations for Manhattan theatres, restaurants, and clubs.

Our thanks go to Patricia

Throughout the teens and twenties the diminutive Tice (she was about five feet tall) was often seen strolling around the Village with her huge Russian wolfhound named Varna O’Valley Farm, who was just about half her height. She

Guenther, who is currently preparing her Ph.D. dissertation and catalogue raisonné of Clara Tice’s work,

also took part in what today might be called performance pieces, attending

for assisting with the

artist’s balls and donning outrageous costumes. Around 1917, probably through

identification and sources for

Duchamp, Tice was introduced to Walter and Louise Arensberg, where she

the drawings. Thanks, also,

joined a circle of personalities that included Henri-Pierre Roché, Edgard Varèse, Beatrice Wood, and Marius de Zayas.

to Rebecca Hathaway for her diligent research and for her assistance with all aspects

Tice was an early advocate for women’s liberation. She claimed to be the

of the exhibition.

first to bob her hair, promoted short dresses and rolled stockings, and stated that “brains [and] the ability to do things are the things that attract a man.” Her draw-

SOURCES

ing, Virgin Minus Verse—a picture of a carefree corsetless woman—was repro-

Marie T. Keller, “Clara Tice,

duced in Rogue opposite Mina Loy’s feminist poem, “Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots.” She referred to her longtime lover Harry Cunningham as her “husband,”

‘Queen of Greenwich Village,’” in Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity, ed.

even though they were never married. In her art and in her life, Tice embodied

Naomi Sawelson-Gorse

the idea of “The New Woman,” liberated from social constraints and enjoying

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 414- 441.

professional, economic, and sexual freedom.

Tice’s drawings capture the spirit, wit, and irreverent style of an earlier era in New York City, when Greenwich Village was a true bohemian hangout, when

Francis Naumann, New York Dada 1915-24 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994), pp. 117-

Dada artists were pushing the boundaries of acceptability, and when women

120.

were beginning to redefine their traditional roles in society. In retrospect, it may

Francis Naumann and Beth Venn,

not only have been the nudity in the drawings that seemed so dangerous a cen-

Making Mischief: Dada Invades

tury ago, but the unbridled sense of freedom the drawings expressed.

New York, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American

MEREDITH WARD

Art, 1996).

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PRETTY SOFA

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MASKED FIGURE WITH NUDE ON A STRING

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THE WAR MOTHER, 1916

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WOMAN WITH CAT

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COCKTAIL SHAKER

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ARABIAN NIGHTS DANCERS, C. 1915

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LUXURIOUS BED, C. 1915

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CHECKLIST All drawings will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Tice’s work, now in preparation by Patricia Guenther.

Arabian Nights Dancers, c. 1915

Portrait of Frank Crowninshield, c. 1920

ink and pencil on paper

pencil on paper

8 1/2 x 11 inches

11 7/8 x 9 inches

Cocktail Shaker

Pretty Sofa

ink and pencil on paper

ink and pencil on paper

7 7/8 x 11 3/8 inches

4 1/4 x 8 1/2 inches

Cowboy with Lasso

Serpent Woman

watercolor, ink, and pencil on paper

ink on paper

9 7/8 x 8 1/2 inches

7 3/4 x 3 3/4 inches

Graceful Dancer Reaching Up

Swirling Woman

ink and pencil on paper

ink and pencil on paper

10 3/8 x 5 9/16 inches

5 3/4 x 3 3/8 inches

High-Stepping Dancer

Three Leaping Dancers, c. 1915

ink and colored pencil on paper

ink and pencil on paper

8 3/8 x 5 1/8 inches

11 x 8 1/2 inches

King Pausole, c. 1926

Two Clowns

ink on paper

ink and pencil on paper

6 3/8 x 4 3/4 inches

10 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches

La Baionnette, c. 1917

The War Mother, 1916

ink on paper

ink and pencil on paper

5 5/8 x 3 5/16 inches

11 x 8 1/2 inches

Luxurious Bed, c. 1915

Whirling Dancer with Streamer

ink on paper

ink on paper

8 1/2 x 11 inches

8 3/4 x 8 inches

Masked Figure with Nude on a String

Woman with Bonnet Singing

ink on paper

ink on paper

6 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches

8 9/16 x 6 3/8 inches

Nude Between Curtains

Woman with Cat

ink on paper

gouache and ink on paper

8 3/4 x 4 13/16 inches

5 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches

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PUBLISHED IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE EXHIBITION

Naughtz or Nice?

DADA DRAWINGS BY CLARA TICE

N O V E M B E R 2 0 , 2 0 0 9 – J A N U A RY 1 5 , 2 0 1 0

M E R E D I T H WA R D FI N E A RT 44 EAST 74TH STREET SUITE 1 NEW YORK NEW YORK 10021 T E L 2 1 2 7 4 4 7 3 0 6 FA X 2 1 2 7 4 4 7 3 0 8 I N F O @ M E R E D I T H WA R D F I N E A RT. C O M W W W. M E R E D I T H WA R D F I N E A RT. C O M

DESIGN THE GRENFELL PRESS, NEW YORK PRINTING PERMANENT PRINTING, LTD., HONG KONG EDITION OF 1600

COVER: LA BAIONNETTE, C. 1917 FRONTISPIECE: NICKOLAS MURAY (1892-1965), CLARA TICE WITH HER DOGS, C. 1924

P U B L I C AT I O N C O P Y R I G H T © 2009 M E R E D I T H WA R D F I N E A RT

MEREDITH WARD FINE ART 44 EAST 74TH STREET SUITE 1 NEW YORK NY 10021 TEL 212 744 7306 INFO@MEREDITHWARDFINEART.COM