Curious Collectors

VANITIES

Ruth Fords Tchelitchews

£1 I e was the greatest painter on B B earth! ' ' says veteran actress Ruth Ford of her favorite artist and I I pal, Pavel Tchelitchew. Her lab■ ■ yrinthine Dakota apartment is a testament to her magnificent obsession. "I can't hang all my Tchelitchews,'' she admits. At last count, she had over a hundred paintings and drawings by the Russian emigre artist that she shares with her brother, Charles Henri Ford, the poet, erstwhile editor of View magazine, and Tchelitchew's best friend for twentyfive years. According to Ruth, the two were introduced by Djuna Barnes. Throughout the sprawling space, there are portraits of Charles as a young man. Tchelitchew, Ruth says, "captured the poet, the sensitivity... the mystery that all geniuses have.'' Today, Charles resides in Kathmandu. Any conversation with Ruth Ford is

a journey to her remarkable past. Cecil Beaton, who often photographed her, considered her one of the great beauties of his day. As an actress, Ruth starred in John Huston's Broadway production of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. And as the wife of movie star Zachary Scott, Ruth flourished at the hub of High Bohemian society, chumming it up with Garbo, Isak Dinesen, and Carl Van Vechten. If Tchelitchew was, as has been said, "the Warhol of the forties,'' Ruth and company constituted the swing era's Factory crowd.

And even by the time Warhol himself arrived, Ruth was still very much on the scene. Originally a set designer of ballets for Diaghilev, Tchelitchew associated himself with a group called the NeoRomantics—painters with a collective bone to pick with abstract art. As Ruth puts it, "His paintings are paintings! Not lines and geometric designs... splotches and splashes!" Later, upon reaching America, Pavel became known for his strange, brooding anthropomorphic landscapes, as well as his telling portraits of society eccentrics like poetess Dame Edith Sitwell. Today, Tchelitchew's oeuvre is on the verge of a revival, and the cognoscenti are scooping them up. Meanwhile, Ruth Ford is sitting pretty on a veritable treasure trove. Currently, the Keith Green Gallery on Park Avenue is presenting a twostage exhibition honoring the artist's life and work. Much of the Fords' collection is on display, a personal tribute to their close friend. "As a man," Ruth says, summing up her impressions of the artist, "Tchelitchew was the most extraordinary, fascinating, hypnotic, irresistible, inspiring, dazzling person I have ever known." And, of course, there have been those who've said the same thing of

Ruth Ford.

Brooks Peters