Clara Tice - Infinite Women

This bio has been republished from Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde. See below for full attribution.

Born: 22 May 1888, United States
Died: 2 February 1973
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

Clara Tice is known as the “Queen of Greenwich Village” due to the role her erotic and revolutionary illustrations played in the Bohemian/modernist scene of Greenwich Village during the 1910s and 1920s. Her illustrations, many of which depicted nude women and animals, simultaneously caused controversy and were celebrated. Tice exercised her artistic ability in all of the careers she pursued throughout her life, ranging from set designer to children’s book editor.
Tice was born in 1888 in Elmira, New York, roughly two hundred miles away from New York City, where she would spend the majority of her life. She was first introduced to the city at a young age when she moved with her middle-class family to Manhattan (Keller 415). Throughout her childhood, Tice was encouraged to be creative, experimental, and independent by her progressive parents and began studying painting under the guidance of Robert Henri in her late teens. Henri, one of the founders of the Ashcan School, embraced controversial subject matters in his own art and encouraged Tice to follow suit. Tice allowed her art to be influenced by Henri, while permitting her own unique style and subject matter to develop. Tice also helped to initiate the first exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910 (Guenter 4-5). During the exhibition, Tice sold her art to viewers who celebrated her work’s simple style and provocative subject matter. Other viewers, petitioning for the preservation of morality of New York City, openly admonished the unapologetically overt images Tice produced by paint and by pen (“At the Little,” 47-48; “Clara Tice lights,” 8; Keller 414-419). Contrary to the desires of viewers who aimed to keep Tice’s work out of the public eye, negative opinions concerning Tice’s art attracted the attention of Modernist publications, which began to rapidly publish Tice’s work, fueling her artistic career (Keller 414).
During the 1910s, Tice first came into contact with modernist artists and writers including Mina Loy. Tice and Loy’s relationship developed during the six-year span between 1915 and 1921, in which both were active members of the modernist Arsensberg circle (Keller 425). The two women interacted and influenced each other socially and artistically. Creatively influencing each other, they collaborated on publications such as the journal entitled, Rogue 2.1 (August 1915), where Tice’s illustrations appear alongside of Loy’s poem, “Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots” (Loy, Beinecke). Additionally, Tice included Loy in her infamous sketch, “Who’s Who in Manhattan,” which presents a cartoon caricature of Loy “wearing a top hat” and being identified as “a Painter-Poet” of the time (Burke 369).
Tice continued producing her trademark illustrations throughout the 1920s becoming a recognizable public figure in Greenwich Village. Tice’s bohemian illustrations appeared on theater curtains and within Greenwich Village shop interiors (“At the Little,” 47-48; Keller 429-432). Tice continued producing art until her last major exhibition in 1934 (Keller 434). Following her final exhibition, Tice moved to Connecticut and began illustrating children’s books. She returned to NYC in the mid-1940s and remained in Greenwich Village until she became destitute and moved in with her sister in Queens. There, Tice reflected on her life as an artist and began several drafts of an autobiography which was never published. Suffering from glaucoma and arthritis, she was unable to write or produce art throughout the 1950’s and ‘60’s (Guenter 8-10; Keller 435-436). Clara Tice died in Queens, NY in 1973 at the age of eighty-five.