CLOSE UP : Artist of the Century

Ask sculptor Beatrice Wood the secret of her success and there’s no hesitation: With a twinkle in her blue eyes, the 99-year-old leans over to confide: “Chocolate and young men . . . and you can take that as you wish.”

Wood, who turns 100 next month, still puts in long hours in her Ojai studio, creating her famous lusterware vessels, plates, tiles and whimsical sculptures. “My back may be 100 but my mind is 32, and that’s my official age,” she says.

Her favorite subject is the relationship between the sexes, perhaps a natural topic for her: In her early 20s, while studying acting and art in Paris, she was part of a love triangle with novelist Henri-Pierre Roche and his close friend, painter Marcel Duchamp. That relationship helped shape her artistic vision--and it provided the inspiration for Francois Truffaut’s film “Jules and Jim.” It also began a lifetime of close friendships with Anais Nin, Krishnamurti, Isadora Duncan and other noted artists and philosophers.

Wood’s work in ceramics, which she started at age 40, is on display at the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It now regularly fetches prices that she once described as “unreasonable.”

She also finds time to chat about life and art with an average of 300 unannounced visitors each month. Some come to talk with an international art figure, some just to be in her aura. Others come for advice on their careers.

“When I was younger, one paid the price for being an artist,” she says. “Now it’s become kind of a Madison Avenue play toy. I have young people just starting off in pottery, they come and they say, ‘Will you help me get an exhibition in New York?’ ” Wood marvels. “I don’t like that kind of thing because I think the great painters were never thinking of an exhibition; they painted because they couldn’t not paint.”