Eileen Agar and Ithell Colquhoun Author(S): Dawn Ades Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol

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Eileen Agar and Ithell Colquhoun Author(S): Dawn Ades Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol Notes on Two Women Surrealist Painters: Eileen Agar and Ithell Colquhoun Author(s): Dawn Ades Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, Women in Art (Apr., 1980), pp. 36-42 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360177 . Accessed: 05/03/2014 11:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Oxford Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Wed, 5 Mar 2014 11:37:56 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Notes on Two WomenSurrealist Painters: Eileen Agarand Ithell Colquhoun DAWNADES This article is primarilyconcerned with the work of realiststyle by the early thirties,or show the influence two English artists, Eileen Agar and Ithell Colqu- of Tanguy's strangelandscapes peopled with biomor- houn, and will examine in particular their relation- phic objects. This is partly explained by the catholic ship with Surrealism. It will also raise, although interestin all modern art of one of the two selectors briefly,some questions about the role, both active and for the 1936 London Surrealist Exhibition, Herbert ideal, of women withinSurrealism, and the effectthat Read: in abstractpainting and sculptureas well as Sur- prevailingsurrealist attitudes towards women, as they realism. As significant,I think,is the factthat the first are revealed through the surrealist pre-occupation great generationof surrealistpainters, including Mir6 with sexuality and eroticism, may have had upon and Masson, and to a certain degree Arp, found that theirwork. automatismled to freerand more autonomous forms, Surrealism made a belated but spectacular arrival towards a biomorphic abstraction. When Breton re- in England withthe opening of the InternationalSur- affirmedthe importanceof automatismfor Surrealism realistExhibition in London in June 1936, twelveyears in 1941, after the decade of the dominance of the afterthe publication of the firstSurrealist Manifesto by "hand-painted dream picture", he defined automat- Andre Breton, and the foundation of the Surrealist ism and the trompe l'oeil fixingof dream images as Research Centre in Paris. Many English painters the two distinctand major routes within Surrealism: were already aware of the movement, and had seen surrealistworks in Paris, but its influenceat this time "Automatism... has remainedone of Surrealism'stwo tended to be diffusedin a more general modernism greatdirections. [...] Withoutprejudice to thedeep indivi- heavilyindebted to Picasso. Stronglycommitted artists dual tensionsthat graphic and verbalautomatism brings to like Roland Penrose formedclose links with the Paris thesurface and to someextent is able to resolve,I maintain and Leonora left to work thatit is theonly mode of expression which gives full satis- group, Carrington England factionto both and ear with Max Ernst in but there was neither eye by achievingrhythmic unity just France, as in an automatic or textas in a focus nor direction for surrealist in recognisable drawing sympathisers or a bird'snest. In thefield of art, the work of interest was shown melody [...] England, although sporadic by art can be consideredsurrealist only in proportionto the reviews. In 1935 David had literary Gascoyne pub- effortsthe artist has made to encompassthe whole psycho- lished A ShortHistory of Surrealism, which, writtenwith physicalfield (in whichthe fieldof consciousnessconsti- advice from Breton and Eluard, and containing a tutesonly a verysmall segment). Freud has demonstrated brilliantlyselected section of translationsfrom French thatat theseunfathomable depths there reigns the absence surrealist writings,helped prepare the way for the ofcontradiction, the relaxation of emotional tensions due to exhibition. repression,the lack of a senseof time, and thereplacement ofexternal a the Even after the exhibition, surrealist activity in realityby psychicreality obeying pleasure was and it was not until 1940 that a principlealone. Automatismleads us in a straightline to England patchy, this The road available surrealismto reach concerted effortwas made to establish a with region. other to group its the ofdream in thekind of defined aims. The for this came not from objective, stabilizing images impetus stilllife knownas l'oeil(and the word Paris-oriented but fromthe artist deception trompe very surrealists, Belgian deceptionbetrays the weaknessof the process),has been and dealer E.L.T. with a orien- Mesens, consequent proved by experienceto be far less reliable and even tation of the group towards the Belgian surrealists, presentsvery real risksof thetraveller losing his way alto- like Rene Magritte. The 'membership' of the sur- gether." realist group fluctuated widely. Until 1940 it was loosely defined, and could be determined only by Eileen Agar was the only professional woman participation in surrealistexhibitions, the signing of painterto exhibitat the InternationalSurrealist Exhi- tracts, or inclusion in a surrealist review like Mino- bition in 1936. It was Roland Penrose and Herbert taure.Names appear and disappear rapidly. It is poss- Read who selected the artistsfor it, and theyspent the ible, however, to detect a differencebetween the months before June visiting studios. The selection works of those exhibitingat the 1936 exhibition,and was not based on very rigid criteria. Breton had those who joined subsequently. With a few obvious always been the arbiter of visual Surrealism in exceptionslike Roland Penrose, the earlier generation France, and although it was clearly not difficultto of English surrealists were working in an abstract identifycertain techniques, such as automatic draw- manner. Subsequent adherents,like Edith Rimming- ing, frottage,or decalcomania, with Surrealism, to ton, Conroy Maddox, or Ithell Colquhoun, favour limitSurrealism to technique had never been Breton's either meticulous illusionary realism, established by practice. Nor, had this been a strict requirement, Salvador Dali and Magritte as the dominant sur- would many English paintershave qualified. So it was - 36 THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL April 1980 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Wed, 5 Mar 2014 11:37:56 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions in termsof rathergeneral qualities of the imagination 1929), now in the Tate Gallery. This is a strange, that Penrose and Read judged the native painters. almost naive painting: Greece, Christianity, and Paul Nash, who had met Eileen Agar the previous modern technology, which Agar believed to be the summer in Swanage, suggested they should visit her bases of modern civilisation,are representedby a long studio, which they did in the early spring of 1936. black iron bridge, the facade of a church in the sky "Both of us were at once enchanted by the rare above and a Greek pillar. This is a highly personal quality of her talent, the product of a highlysensitive painting; afterit, Agar's work moves fasttowards an imaginationand a feminineclairvoyance." Thus, like assured abstraction, although her style remained several English painters, Eileen Agar virtually deliberatelyvaried, but not eclectic. In Paris she came became a surrealistovernight. In his catalogue note to across Breton and Eluard but the contacts she valued Eileen Agar: A Decade of Discoveries(1975), Penrose most at this time were with the cubist painter Louis noted thatAgar's workwas in a period of transitionin Marcoussis and the sculptorBrancusi, whom she met 1936. It is interestingto see how farand in what direc- through Ezra Pound. In 1931, after returning to tion contact with the surrealists, from the meeting England, she painted Movementin Space. Recently on with Paul Nash on, did in factchange her work. exhibitionin The Thirties exhibitionat the Hayward, Eileen Agar had been one of the firststudents to this was, in the context of much English painting of enter, in 1923, the studio of Leon Underwood, a the time, a strikinglyspare, restrained,abstract work, generous and lively teacher, who also taught Henry closer perhaps to Gabo than to any cubist painting. Moore. In spite of strong parental opposition, she She was, however, at the same time making pencil entered the Slade in 1924. She firstvisited Paris in drawingsof her husband, the writerJosephBard. 1925-6, and saw a surrealist painting in a gallery She met Nash in 1935. This was the period during window. In 1928 the Russian artist Boris Anrep which he was most absorbed by surrealistideas. He advised her to returnto live in Paris, on the grounds and Edward Burra used to send each other collages, that English art was too provincial. She followed his and fabricatedsome together. Nash was working on advice, and, while in Paris, painted ThreeSymbols (c. surrealistpaintings like Harbourand Room,and prepar- Fig. 1. EileenAgar: 'Sea Swans', 1952, gaucheandfrottage, 38.1 x 50.8 cm. Collectionof the artist. - THE OXFORD ARTJOURNAL April 1980 37 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Wed, 5 Mar 2014 11:37:56 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Direct
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