Eileen Agar

A foreigner on Wikipedia charmingly writes, "After the World War II, she had started a new productive area (almosts 16 solo exhibitions between 1946 to 1985)"... but it is only 1936 and she has no idea what the future holds for her. She is still young in our photograph, and yet she has already lived through one World War. She is gazing at us from under a Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse. The world makes no sense. In a few years, she will witness another World War.

And we, looking at this picture, we do not know even the simplest realities: that the hat (for example) is a mishmash of colors. A museum restoration effort on the hat reports back: "[It] is constructed on a cork bark base painted in blue and yellow and decorated with a large orange coloured plastic flower, a blue plastic star, assorted shells, two varieties of coral painted in green and pink, two star fish, twists of paper, a large glass bead, a piece of jigsaw puzzle, a piece of bark from a plane tree and a large fish bone." By energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectroscopic analysis of a paint sample, "the yellow pigment was identified as chrome yellow. The blue was compared with Monastral, manganese, Irgalite and Vulcaflor blues but did not seem to be any of these. Nor was it Prussian blue. It appeared to be a mixture of an organic blue and yellow. The EDXRF analysis tended to confirm this suspicion. No elements were present other than chlorine. The blue pigment, therefore, was not firmly identified."

But she isn't speaking to us about chrome yellow or an unidentified blue. She speaks of nothing of all, and gives us even less. We have-- a gaze, a hat, and a hand. Make of it what you will.

Blind waiting

Two works by Californian artist Katherine Zsolt, who seems to live in a world populated by bodies.


Looking at the first image, I am brought back to how dead bodies would crop up inexplicably across my childhood dreams: walk into a room and trip over a fresh corpse; open a drawer and pull out a bleeding head; wake up among a pile of the dead, to find that you are one of them too. Zsolt strands the bed in the middle of a black lake. You know this is the kind of water that will drag you down by the head, and so you helplessly lie put under the covers while dead bodies grow numerous in the space around you.

The second image is also a body, but then I look again and I don't know what lies draped under there. The form is broken and askew. It is a man who has dropped his head into the other part of the draped sack? A neck in between that has been stretched out until it is the neck of an embryonic bird? A neckless man touching a bowling ball with the amputated club of his arm? I don't know, but this piece is called "Waiting" and for me it captures that feeling when you are waiting... and waiting... and bit by bit the hope drains out of you, until every part of you sags with disappointment.