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Charles Henri Ford (February 10, 1913–September 27, 2002)
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Online References:
Modern American Poetry http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ford/ford.htm This Is Art http://www.thisisart.com/charleshenriford.html Journal of Contemporary Art http://www.jca-online.com/ford.html Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Online Studies Journal http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Interviews/ford.html Sleep in a Nest of Flames (with information on the film) http://www.sleepinanestofflames.com/ NY Arts Magazine http://nyartsmagazine.com/33/12.html Art Book (with information on ordering Water From a Bucket, Ford's diary) http://www.artbook.com/1885586205.html Ford's poem "An Afternoon with André Breton" in milk magazine http://www.milkmag.org/charlesvol2.htm more information about View magazine http://www.heyotwell.com/work/arthistory/thesis/intro.html
Quotations on Ford: "My acquaintance with Charles goes back 50 years. He is an honorable member of a very ancient literary clan of old bohemian Surrealists, who go back to Homer." —Allen Ginsberg
"Withal he is possessed by an enigmatic and eerie charm as a member of some spectral elite. He has the 'mark' about him." —William Burroughs
" The Young and Evil creates this generation as This Side of Paradise by Fitzgerald created his generation." —Gertrude Stein
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Born in 1913, American poet, editor, filmmaker, photographer, and collage artist Charles Henri Ford has passed away at age 93. Longtime inhabitant of the Dakota in New York City, Ford was a revolutionary and provocateur, who led many lives and mastered many various disciplines. A high school dropout, Ford started his first magazine Blues in 1929 at a young age and quickly thereafter became a part of the inner circle of Gertrude Stein's salon in Paris. He became acquainted with Natalie Barney and Marie-Louise Bousquet and became friends with Man Ray, Kay Boyle, Janet Flanner, Peggy Guggenheim, Djuna Barnes and others of the Expatriate colony in Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-les-Prčs. In 1932, he traveled to Morocco, lured by Paul Bowles. There, he typed for Djuna Barnes the novel she'd just completed, Nightwood. In 1933, he co-wrote The Young and Evil with Parker Tyler, a novel that was promptly banned in Paris and America. In 1934 he returned to New York City, bringing Pavel Tchelitchew. Among his circle at that time were Carl Van Vechten, Glenway Wescott, George Platt Lynes, Lincoln Kirstein, Julien Levy, Orson Welles, George Balanchine, and e.e. cummings. These friends were often joined by visiting friends-from-overseas: Cecil Beaton, Leonor Fini, Hoyningen-Huene, and Salvador Dali. His first full-length book of poems, The Garden of Disorder, with introduction by William Carlos Williams appeared in 1938. In 1940, Ford started View magazine. View attracted talent worldwide; artists such as Pavel Tchelitchew, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, André Masson, Pablo Picasso, Henry Miller, Paul Klee, Albert Camus, Lawrence Durrell, Georgia O'Keefe, Man Ray, Jorge Luis Borges, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Jean Genet, René Magritte, Jean Dubuffet, and Edouard Roditi appeared in the pages of View. View Editions, during the Forties, published a first monograph on Marcel Duchamp and the first book translations of André Breton's poems. Ford's many books of poetry include the following: The Overturned Lake, Sleep in a Nest of Flames, Spare Parts, Silver Flower Coo, Flag of Ecstasy, Om Krishna, and Out of the Labyrinth.
collage by Charles Henri Ford |
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