Marguerite Agniel

Marguerite Agniel (1891 – c. 1971) was a Broadway actress and dancer, who then became a health and beauty guru in New York in the early 20th century. She is known for her 1931 book ''The Art of the Body: Rhythmic Exercise for Health and Beauty'', one of the first to combine yoga and nudism.

After appearing in '' Vogue'' in 1926, she wrote for '' Physical Culture'' and other magazines. In the 1930s, she published a series of books, including ''Body Sculpture'' and ''Your Figure'', advocating health and beauty practices, illustrated mainly with photographs of herself.

Agniel stated that her dance technique derived from Ruth St. Denis (who had followed François Delsarte), while her "aesthetic athletics" came mainly from the physical culture advocate, Bernarr Macfadden. She described the sexologist Havelock Ellis and the musicologist Sigmund Spaeth as major influences.

Life

Marguerite Agniel was born on January 21, 1891, one of the six children of George Agniel and Ada Lescher Flowers. Her father, who had worked as a farmer in Indiana, died in 1893 while she was an infant, leaving her mother to raise the children alone. The Agniel family was French-Jewish; her mother's family was English. She was married in New York on March 21, 1917.

Agniel performed in Broadway plays including ''The Amber Empress'' with music by Zoel Parenteau in 1916, and Raymond Hitchcock's ''Pin Wheel'' in 1922.

Career

Agniel appeared in the November 15, 1926, issue of '' Vogue'', demonstrating slimming exercises in the form of floor stretches, with postures close to the yoga asanas Salabhasana, Supta Virasana, Sarvangasana and Halasana.
She wrote for '' Physical Culture'' magazine in 1927 and 1928.
She wrote a piece titled "The Mental Element in Our Physical Well-Being" for '' The Nudist'', an American magazine, in 1938; it showed nude women practising yoga, accompanied by a text on attention to the breath. The social historian Sarah Schrank comments that it made perfect sense at this stage of the development of yoga in America to combine nudism and yoga, as "both were exercises in healthful living; both were countercultural and bohemian; both highlighted the body; and both were sensual without being explicitly erotic."

In 1931 she wrote the book ''The Art of the Body: Rhythmic Exercise for Health and Beauty'', illustrated mainly with photographs of herself; she notes in the preface that her dance technique derives from Ruth St. Denis (who in turn followed François Delsarte), but that her "system of 'aesthetic athletics'" was based mainly on that of Bernarr Macfadden, an advocate of physical culture. She names the sexologist Havelock Ellis and the musicologist Sigmund Spaeth as major influences, stating that both had shown "an extraordinarily intuitive understanding" of her work.
Agniel was depicted in an "elegant, though sharply ironic" Palladium photographic print by the Canadian photographer Margaret Watkins, titled "Head and Hand". It shows her hand holding a portrait sculpture head of herself by Jo Davidson.

File:Marguerite Agniel in a Buddha position with her legs crossed Wellcome V0048585.jpg, In "Buddha position", Muktasana. Photograph by John de Mirjian, c. 1928
File:Marguerite Agniel in Supta Virasana.jpg, In Supta Virasana, demonstrating "A good exercise for the back and abdominal muscles". Photograph by John de Mirjian, c. 1928
File:Marguerite Agniel as Mona Lisa by Robert Henri.jpg, "As Mona Lisa" by Robert Henri, c. 1929
File:Marguerite Agniel July-1923.jpg, Topless, c. 1923

Reception

Agniel's friend, the sexologist Havelock Ellis wrote in a letter to Louise Stevens Bryant in 1936 that Agniel's books were "full of beautiful illustrations, nearly all of herself. She has a wonderful art of posing, & they are largely nudes, though she is no longer young." Devon Smither describes Agniel as "a leading health and beauty guru", and ''the Art of the Body'' as "a moralizing exercise manual" providing a mixture of exercises, advice on cosmetics, and spiritual guidance.

The scholars Mary O'Connor and Katherine Tweedie comment that Watkins's portraits of Agniel were circulated sometimes as artistic "nudes", sometimes as portraits, and sometimes as instances of "a regime of exercise and body modification". They write that since Agniel chose to use these photographs of herself, she is presenting them "not as the passive victim of an objectifying male gaze ... but as the means of promulgating her own vision of the world and her own expertise. She circulates her body as an image of the ideal and for commercial profit."

Works

* 1931 ''The Art of the Body''. London: Batsford.
* 1931 "Dancing Mothers and Dancing Daughters", ''Hygeia'' 9:344-348
* 1933 ''Body Sculpture''. New York: E.H. & A.C. Friedrichs.
* 1936 ''Your Figure''. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Company and also published in 1936 as ''Creating Body Beauty'', New York: Bernard Ackerman.

See also

* Mary Bagot Stack
* Genevieve Stebbins

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Agniel, Marguerite
1891 births
1971 deaths
American stage actresses
20th-century American dancers
20th-century American women writers
American people of French-Jewish descent
Jewish American actresses
Jewish dancers
People associated with physical culture
20th-century American actresses
20th-century American Jews
20th-century American non-fiction writers