MARIA DUARTE, JOHN GREEN and ANGUS REID review Power Ballad, Landmarks, My Mother’s Wedding, and Fairyland
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Rebel seeking a cause
CHRISTINE LINDEY sees a retrospective of Eileen Agar's work which reflects her lifelong quest for a non-conformist art
NOTABLE: (Left) Alice with Lewis Carroll, 1961 and (right) Eileen Agar, 1927
GORDON PARSONS is disappointed by Kenneth Branagh’s lightweight Prospero in an ambitious rendition of the play
Chris Searle speaks to bassist PAUL ROGERS
MARJ MAYO recommends a well illustrated and very positive account of an extraordinary period in local government history
RITA DI SANTO takes us through the prize winners, and takes the temperature of a festival that prioritised narratives of exile, state violence and class division
MIRANDA RICHMOND relishes the gloriously liberated art of Roy Oxlade, and traces his method back to the thinking of David Bomberg, his acknowledged teacher
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.
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MIRANDA RICHMOND relishes the gloriously liberated art of Roy Oxlade, and traces his method back to the thinking of David Bomberg, his acknowledged teacher
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
BLANE SAVAGE recommends the display of nine previously unseen works by the Glaswegian artist, novelist and playwright