Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy
Whitechapel Gallery, London

“LIFE’S meaning is lost without the spirit of play. In play, the mind is prepared to accept the unimagined and incredible, to enter a world where different laws apply, to be free, unfettered and divine.”

That was what Eileen Agar (1899-1991) believed and this fierce desire for freedom motivated her art. Her last wish was “to die in a sparkling moment.” A handsome woman, with a sense of entitlement, she succeeded in “sparkling” socially but unfortunately much of her work lacks the very sense of lightness and amusement which she rated so highly.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1899 to a Scottish industrialist and an American heiress to a biscuit manufacturer, Agar led a privileged life. After attending English boarding schools, she was “finished” in France before studying at London’s prestigious Slade School of Art.

Henceforth, she remained based in Britain, where her father’s “small” allowance allowed her to rent a studio, buy materials, travel and to focus on her work without having to worry about economic survival.

Cubism and Surrealism liberated her from the Slade’s rigorous representational tradition and by 1930 she began creating distinctively personal works. With a Modernist refusal to directly depict the visible world, Agar expressed its essence, a springboard from which to convey her states of mind.

The sea, which she had crisscrossed on ocean liners between South America and Europe since childhood, remained a major inspiration and she worked from it in Swanage, Dorset and Brittany. Marine life, feathers, flowers, leaves and the human figure jostle each other in overcrowded and indecisive compositions, in collages, assemblages and photographs but above all in oil paintings as seen in Aurora (1942).

The lack of a horizon or of spatial recession and unpleasantly over-worked surfaces add to the claustrophobic effects which have an anxious and sometimes disturbing or disorienting quality while only rarely sparkling with unworldly magic.

Her work had an affinity with the Surrealists, which she contested. Yet she shared their rebellion against the hypocrisies and tight-lipped social norms of the bourgeois class into which she was born. Indeed, Agar was one of the very few women artists respected by Andre Breton’s misogynist circles.

She nevertheless exhibited in London’s International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936. Led by the critic Herbert Read, these deliberately provocative artists purported to be revolutionary. Yet as the socialist AL Lloyd remarked: “If Surrealism were revolutionary it could be of use. But Surrealism is not revolutionary because its lyricism is socially irresponsible. Surrealism is a particularly subtle form of fake revolution.”

In fact, Agar’s work is closer in spirit to the British Pastoralists and the British painter with whom she felt the closest artistic affinity was her friend, Paul Nash.

In her sixties, Agar finally truly achieved her lifelong desire for creative freedom. Working on a larger scale freed her love of pattern to blossom without overcrowding the paintings: her colours became less muddy and her surfaces less scumbled from fussy re-workings.

And turning to specific subjects anchored her tendency to wayward, unfocused musings. Within a clearly organised geometric composition, Alice with Lewis Carroll of 1961 conveys childlike wonder and magical surprise with clear colours.

In the early 1960s, her discovery of quick-drying acrylic paints further encouraged her to leave flat areas of bright colour unmolested. The Bird (1969) which was probably inspired by Georges Braque — to whom she paid homage — no longer strains after effect but conveys her deep respect for the vibrancy of nature.

The mediums of assemblage and photography imposed boundaries which also helped her to produce more focused works. Fish Basket (1965) has an elegance which a talented milliner would appreciate.

The 20th century’s restrictive social and professional expectations of women, combined with the male-dominated art world’s misogynist assumptions, ensured that few women managed to sustain careers.

Agar was one of the few exceptions and her work began to gain greater recognition from the 1970s, when feminist art historians, curators and gallerists began to assert themselves by rebalancing historical injustices.

Some believe that all past women artists deserve critical recognition, since women artists have been marginalised or neglected for so long. In fact, this indiscriminate criterion is a patronising form of inverted sexism which benefits the art market and careerist gallerists while doing few favours to past and living women artists who do badly deserve and need critical acclaim.

Agar was one of thousands of 20th-century artists of all genders and sexes who drew on the innovations of modernist pioneers. Like these, she produced some good works and many lightweight ones. A smaller more focused exhibition would do her more justice.      
 
Runs until August 29, box office: whitechapelgallery.org