In an undated note bequeathed to the Tate Archive in 1992, Eileen Agar (1899–1991) writes of her admiration for the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: “Lewis Carroll is a mysterious master of time and imagination, the Herald of Sur-Realism and freedom, a prophet of the Future and an uprooter of the Past, with a literary and visual sense of the Present.” The same could be said of Agar, whose long career as an artist spanned most of the twentieth century and intersected with some of the prevailing movements of the time, including Cubism and surrealism. Her timeless work—including the oil painting Alice with Lewis Carroll—will be on view through August 29 at the Whitechapel Gallery’s “Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy,” the largest exhibition yet of the sui generis artist’s oeuvre. A selection of images from the show appears below.

Eileen Agar, Erotic Landscape, 1942, collage on paper, 10 x 12″. Private collection. Estate of Eileen Agar/Bridgeman Images. Photograph courtesy Pallant House Gallery, Chichester © Doug Atfield.

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Although he’s best known for his lush, technically miraculous oil paintings, Paul Cézanne held his sketchbook near and dear. In a 1904 letter to the Fauvist painter Charles Camoin, Cézanne wrote, “Drawing is merely the configuration of what you see.” Thousands of his works on paper have survived. More than two hundred fifty of these rarely shown pieces form the basis of “Cézanne Drawing,” which will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art through September 25. A selection of images from the show appears below.

Paul Cézanne, Still Life with Blue Pot, 1900–06, pencil and watercolor on paper, 19 × 24 7/8″. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Paul Cézanne, Bathers (Baigneurs), 1885–90, watercolor and pencil on wove paper, 5 × 8 1/8″. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Lillie P. Bliss Collection. Photo © 2021 MoMA, NY.

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Outside of Brazil, the achievements of the São Paulo–based amateur photography group Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante have long been overlooked. Its ranks included biologists, accountants, lawyers, journalists, and engineers, all of whom were united in their passion for the art form. To encourage innovation, the club held monthly contests, which often resulted in photos that look unreal from today’s vantage point: crisp shadows of circus goers roosting on bleachers, nightmarish skyscrapers slurring across the frame, pedestrians wandering among the streetcar rails like planets locked in lonely orbit. Presenting the group’s work for the first time internationally, “Fotoclubismo” will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art through September 26. A selection of images from the show appears below.

André Carneiro, Rails (Trilhos), 1951, gelatin silver print, 11 5/8 × 15 5/8″. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of José Olympio da Veiga Pereira through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund. © 2020 Estate of André Carneiro.

Thomaz Farkas, Ministry of Education (Ministério da Educação) [Rio de Janeiro], ca. 1945, gelatin silver print, 12 7/8 × 11 3/4″. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist.

In The Shabbiness of Beauty, published this past month by MACK, the artist and writer Moyra Davey places her work in conversation with that of the photographer Peter Hujar. Before becoming a book, the project appeared as an exhibition at Berlin’s Galerie Buchholz in spring 2020. Thousands of miles away, confined to their New York City apartment, Eileen Myles printed out Davey’s and Hujar’s photographs and mounted their own private rendition of the show. The essay Myles wrote about this experience appears below.

Peter Hujar, Paul’s Legs, 1979, from The Shabbiness of Beauty, by Moyra Davey and Peter Hujar (MACK, 2021). Courtesy The Peter Hujar Archive LLC.

Steve died. He was huge. He was fifty and lived in the apartment downstairs right by the front door. His Yankees sticker is still there. He went into the hospital on March 2 and died on March 22. Anna at the laundromat told me. Anna’s quite bent, deep into her eighties. I remember her in her fifties a mean and vivid woman. She got older the place is filthy many of the machines are broken but it’s on the corner and I’m weirdly loyal to it. Steve worked there usually standing outside and I think he delivered bags for Anna. He helped me lug things upstairs too. Years earlier he lived right next door to me with a crowd of people. I remember when he was a little boy and he was thrown butt naked into the hall as a joke. I was coming up the stairs and he was desperately pounding on the door. Your neighbor died Anna told me when I was getting my change. Steve I asked. He’d be standing outside my front door when I came home from wherever. Hey Steve. Was it COVID I asked. We don’t know. His sister comes once a week to get the mail Anna said. She comes on Tuesday. They still send it. I told her the post office doesn’t take you off for a while. They’re worried the landlord won’t give back the security she intimated. What’s it like five hundred dollars. Two. Two hundred and something. Then I turned hoping his sister would come in. And now this place is familiar less. I mean everything perpetually feels more unconnected to a past when I was young and the Tin Palace on East Second Street was a jazz/poetry bar and Stanley Crouch held court at the bar. He died last week. My friends who were bartenders lived in this building and I just went over here one day on my break and I could have it the super said and I moved in. This is like 1977. Time puts its stamp on everything.

This leg. I’m beginning to print the pictures out. Fifty-five or fifty-six of them. It looks lousy but you get the graphic thing of it. I have four hanging over my bed. Moyra was interested in the quality of hair smooshed when wet. It’s about not shaving. Isn’t it funny or cool that hair does this. And those droplets below the ankle. One on the calf. It’s a specimen leg, not unloving or dead. Just deeply specific. To take my leg or that leg and say this. The black line at the bottom further holds back the organic nature. Like suturing it. So the show goes Leg, Nude, Kate (without scruple). I’ll print out Nude now. Read More

In recent years, the work of the ninety-four-year-old artist Betye Saar has experienced something of a critical reappraisal, with major retrospectives appearing concurrently at the Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2019. When asked why this sudden resurgence in attention might be occurring, she replied: “Because it’s about time! I’ve had to wait till I’m practically 100.” It’s baffling that she had to wait at all: Saar’s work, especially her Joseph Cornell–inspired assemblages, is without peer. Thankfully, a new show at the Crocker Art Museum, in Sacramento, California, suggests that talent travels matrilineally in the Saar family. “Legends from Los Angeles,” which will be on view through August 15, features twenty-three works by Betye and her daughters Alison and Lezley. A selection of images from the exhibition appears below.

Betye Saar, Woman with Two Parrots, 2010, mixed-media collage on paperboard, 12 x 24 5/8″. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Emily Leff and James Davis III. © Betye Saar / Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California.

Alison Saar, Jitterbug, from the Copacetic portfolio, 2019, linocut on handmade Japanese Hamada kozo paper, 19 1/2 x 18″. Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by the Marcy and Mort Friedman Acquisition Fund; and Janet Mohle-Boetani, M.D., and Mark Manasse. © Alison Saar. Photo courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery and Mullowney Printing.

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