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.