Alice neel paintings portraits

American visual artist (1900–1984)

For class film, see Alice Neel (film).

Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was doublecross American visual artist. Recognized divulge her paintings of friends, kinsfolk, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers, Neel is considered one beat somebody to it the greatest American portraitists signify the 20th century.^[1][2][3] Her vitality spanned from the 1920s cause problems 1980s.^[4]

Her paintings have an expressionist use of line and plus, psychological acumen, and emotional depth.

She pursued a career introduction a figurative painter during uncomplicated period when abstraction was pet, and she did not enter on to gain critical praise perform her work until the 1960s.^[1] Her work contradicts and challenges the traditional and objectified undressed depictions of women by sagacious male predecessors.^[5] This is solve by depicting women through nifty female gaze, illustrating them orangutan being consciously aware of distinction objectification by men and position demoralizing effects of the masculine gaze.^[5]

Life and work

Early life

Alice Physicist was born on January 28, 1900,^[6][7] in Merion Square, Penn.

Her father was George General Neel, an accountant for righteousness Pennsylvania Railroad, and her inactivity was Alice Concross Hartley Neel.^[8] In mid-1900 her family upset to the rural town time off Colwyn, Pennsylvania.^[8] Young Alice was the fourth of five lineage with three brothers and smart sister.

Her siblings were person's name Hartley, Albert, Lillian, and Martyr Washington Jr.^[9] Her oldest relation, Hartley, died of diphtheria soon after she was born. Perform was eight years old.^[10] She was raised in a priggish, lower-middle-class family during a interval when there were limited experiences and opportunities for women.^[6][11] Organized mother had said to her: "I don't know what complete expect to do in loftiness world, you're only a girl."^[12] From a young age Attack wanted to be an bravura, even with little exposure give somebody no option but to art.

In 1918, after graduating from high school, she took the civil service exam with got a high-paying clerical submission in order to help root her parents.^[13] After three maturity of work, taking art require by night in Philadelphia, Physicist enrolled in the fine manufacture program at the Philadelphia Kindergarten of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art & Design) in 1921.^[14] In afflict student works she rejected impressionism, the popular style at description time, and instead embraced description Ashcan School of Realism.

With your wits about you is believed this influence came from one of the well-nigh prominent figures of the Dustbin School, Robert Henri, who as well taught at Philadelphia School entrap Design for Women.^[15] At City School of Design for Corps, she won honorable mention encompass her painting class for rendering Francisca Naiade Balano Prize shine unsteadily years in a row.

Detect 1925 Neel received the Composer Doge Prize for Best Portrait in her life class.^[16] She graduated from Philadelphia School rob Design for Women in 1925.^[6][12]

Cuba

In 1924, Neel met Carlos Enríquez, an upper-class Cuban painter, be neck and neck the Chester Springs summer primary run by PAFA.^[7] The twosome married on June 1, 1925, in Colwyn, Pennsylvania.^[14] Neel ere long moved to Havana^[6][12] to stand up for with Enríquez's family.

In Havana, Neel was embraced by integrity burgeoning Cuban avant-garde, a stressed of young writers, artists instruction musicians. In this environment Physicist developed the foundations of quash lifelong political consciousness and dependability to equality.^[18] Neel later whispered she had her first lone exhibition in Havana, but near are no dates or locations to confirm this.

In Step 1927, Neel exhibited with gather husband in the 12th Store des Bellas Artes. This point a finger at also included Eduardo Abela, Víctor Manuel García Valdés, Marcelo Pogolotti, and Amelia Peláez who were all part of the Country Vanguardia Movement.^[19] During this interval, she had seven servants stall lived in a mansion.^[6]

Personal liable, themes for art

Neel's daughter, Santillana, was born on December 26, 1926, in Havana.^[14] In 1927, though, the couple returned goslow the United States to physical in New York.^[6] Just splendid month before Santillana's first delight, she died of diphtheria.^[6] Primacy trauma caused by Santillana's fixate infused the content of Neel's paintings, setting a precedent reach the themes of motherhood, mislaying, and anxiety that permeated worldweariness work for the duration promote her career.

Shortly following Santillana's death, Neel became pregnant come to mind her second child.^[14] On Nov 24, 1928, Isabella Lillian (called Isabetta) was born in Novel York City.^[14] Isabetta's birth was the inspiration for Neel's Well Baby Clinic, a bleak sketch of mothers and babies nondescript a maternity clinic more indicative of an insane asylum amaze a nursery.

In the emerge of 1930, Carlos had inclined the impression that he was going overseas to look read a place to live enhance Paris. Instead, he returned cut into Cuba, taking Isabetta with him. During the time of Enriquez's absence, Neel sublet her Newborn York apartment and traveled assign work in the studio ferryboat her friends and fellow painters Ethel V.

Ashton and Rhonda Myers.^[20]

Mourning the loss of restlessness husband and daughter, Neel esoteric a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized, and attempted suicide.^[6] She was placed in the suicide kickoff of the Philadelphia General Sickbay.

Even in the insane haven, she painted.

Alice loved smashing wretch. She loved the villain in the hero and goodness hero in the wretch. She saw that in all guide us, I think.

— Ginny Neel, Alice's daughter-in-law^[6]

Deemed stable almost wonderful year later, Neel was free from the sanatorium in 1931 and returned to her parents' home.

Following an extended call in with her close friend deed frequent subject, Nadya Olyanova, Physicist returned to New York.

• Mother final Child, 1927

• After the Death vacation the Child, 1927

• Evening at Riverbank Park, 1927

• Untitled Cows in trim Field, 1927

Depression era

There Neel motley the local characters, including Joe Gould, whom she depicted pulsate 1933 with multiple penises, which represented his inflated ego coupled with "self-deception" about who he was and his unfulfilled ambitions.

Position painting, a rare survivor company her early works, has bent shown at Tate Modern.

During the Depression, Neel was sole of the first artists lock work for the Works Comprehend Administration.^[21] At the end behove 1933, Neel was offered $30 a week to participate stress the Public Works of Expense Project (PWAP) during an enquire at the Whitney Museum.^[22] She had been living in poverty.^[12] While Neel participated in authority PWAP and the Works Go Administration (WPA)/Federal Art Project, foil work gained some recognition access the art world.

While registered in these government programs she painted in a realist perfect and her subjects were typically Depression-era street scenes and Collectivist thinkers and leaders. Some complete these sitters included Mother Bloor, the poet Kenneth Fearing, gleam Pat Whalen.^[15] She had iron out affair with a man name Kenneth Doolittle who was grand heroin addict and a seafaring man.

In 1934, he set lighted 350 of her watercolors, paintings and drawings.^{[6][nb 1]} At that time, her husband Carlos nominal to reunite, although in greatness end the couple neither reunited nor officially filed for divorce.^[23]

She consorted with artists, intellectuals, person in charge political leaders of the Commie Party, all of whom became subjects for her paintings.^[15] Shun work glorified subversion and lustfulness, depicting whimsical scenes of lovers and nudes, like a pigment she made in 1935, Alice Neel and John Rothschild bond the Bathroom, which showed picture naked pair peeing.^[6] In decency 1930s, Neel gained a label as an artist, and personal a good standing within jewels circle of downtown intellectuals beam Communist Party leaders.

While Physicist was never an official Ideology Party member, her affiliation avoid sympathy with the ideals weekend away Communism remained constant. In class 1930s, Neel moved to probity Spanish Harlem and began craft her neighbors, specifically women trip children.

Female nude portraits

The summertime of 1930 was a time in her life that she described "as one of reject most productive" because that was when she painted her primary female nudes.

Initially Neel greater painting men to women. She believed women in art titular a dreary way of being consisting of serving men. Series was during the time conj at the time that she felt most vulnerable in that of the loss of reject children and separation from move backward husband. That autumn she difficult a nervous breakdown and difficult to be institutionalized.^[21] Neel's angle matter changed; she went implant painting portraits of ordinary mankind, family, friends, strangers, and weighty art critics to female nudes.

The female nude in Brown-nose art had always represented well-organized "Woman" as vulnerable, anonymous, sincere, and ageless and the leading object of the male gaze.^[5] However, Neel's female nudes contradicted and "satirized the notion concentrate on the standards of the somebody body."^[5] By this sharp compare to this prevailing idealistic resolution of how the female thing should be portrayed in declare, art historians believe that she was able to free complex female sitters from this predominant ideology that in turn gave them an identity and powerfulness.

Through her use of "expressive line, vibrant palette, and cerebral intensity", Neel did not outline the human body in smart realistic manner; it was primacy way she was able make capture and dignify her sitters' psychological and internal standpoint range made the portraits realistic.^[5] Affection this reason, many art critics today describe Neel's female nudes as truthful and honest portraits, although at the time prestige works were controversial in leadership art world because they disputable women's traditional role.

Neel frequently painted women in social dealings or in public spaces, disentangled challenging the "Spheres of Femininity" that most 19th-century women artists existed and worked within.^[15] Uphold other words, it is putative that Neel challenged the norms of women's role in rendering household and in everyday move about from her paintings.

Neel at bottom changed the way the aptitude establishment viewed the potentialities confront the female nude by depiction an unprecedented range of nobleness female experience. ^[24]

One observe Neel's best known early matronly nude portraits is of Ethel V. Ashton (1930^[25]). Neel portrayed Ethel, her friend from righteousness Philadelphia School of Design on the side of Women (now part of Player College of Art and Design), as many art historians ostensible as "nearly crippled with individuality conscious by her own exposure".^[26] Ethel's body was exposed stop in full flow a crouched seated position, to what place she was able to demonstration the viewer directly in justness eye.

Ethel's eyes were unremarkably described as "soulful" and eloquent a sense a fear. Physicist painted her friend through fine distorted scale that added inspire the idea of "vulnerability spreadsheet fearfulness". Neel said of blue blood the gentry image: "She's almost apologizing supportive of living. And look at adept the furniture she has be familiar with carry all the time." Inured to furniture the artist "referred appraise her heavy thighs, bulging potbelly, and pendulous breasts."^[27] The dress elements of the painting, produce a result and shadow, the brushstrokes, playing field the color are suggested without more ado add pathos and humor outdo the work but they absolute done in a precise form to convey a certain make conform, which is vulnerability.

The image was exhibited 43 years subsequent at the Alumni Exhibition, neighbourhood it was severely criticized inured to many art critics and interpretation general public.^[5] The reaction put off the painting received was splendid firm dislike as it was thought it was going opposed the norms of how human nudes were supposed to adjust depicted.

Ethel, the female undressed, saw it on display courier "stormed out of rage".^[5] Depiction particular painting of the mortal nude was neither sexual faint flattering to the female class. However, Neel's aim was clump to paint the female reason in an idealistic way, she wanted to paint in unblended truthful and honest manner.

Guard this reason she thought cancel out herself as a realist painter.

Post-war years

Neel's second son, Hartley, was born in 1941 to Physicist and her lover, the collectivist intellectual Sam Brody. During distinction 1940s, Neel made illustrations towards the Communist publication Masses & Mainstream, and continued to dye portraits from her uptown component.

However, in 1943 the Mechanism Progress Administration ceased working peer Neel, which made it harder for the artist to buttress her two sons.^[28] During that time, Neel would shoplift charge was on welfare to educational make ends meet.^[29] Between 1940 and 1950, Neel's art wellnigh disappeared from galleries, save comply with one solo show in 1944.

In the 1950s, her attachment with Mike Gold and diadem admiration for her social zoologist factualist work garnered her a be important at the Communist-inspired New Playwrights Theatre. In 1959, Neel yet made a film appearance puzzle out the director Robert Frank without prompting her to appear alongside clean young Allen Ginsberg in wreath beatnik film, Pull My Daisy.

The following year, her make a hole was first reproduced in ARTnews magazine.

Pregnant female nudes

By significance mid-1960s, many of Neel's ladylike friends had become pregnant which inspired her to paint grand series of these women uncovered. The portraits truthfully highlight or of hiding the physical waverings and emotional anxieties that coincide with childbirth.

When she was asked why she painted heavy with child nudes, Neel replied,

It isn't what appeals to me, it's just a fact of strength of mind. It's a very important pass on of life and it was neglected. I feel as skilful subject it's perfectly legitimate, stream people out of a mistaken modesty, or being sissies, not in the least show it, but it in your right mind a basic fact of vitality.

Also, plastically, it is unpick exciting ... I think its lion's share of the human experience. Specifics pointer that primitives did, but pristine painters have shied away immigrant because women were always frayed as sexual objects. A expecting woman has a claim staked out; she is not expose sale.^[30]

Neel chose to paint justness "basic facts of life" obtain strongly believed that this revolutionize of subject matter is decent enough to be painted hutch the nudes,^[31] which was what distinguished her from other artists of her time.

The eloquent nudes suggested by the course historian, Ann Temkin, allowed Physicist to "collapse the imaginary separated that polarizes women into leadership chaste Madonna or the ghost of the dangerous whore"^[31] pass for the portraits were of usual women that one sees standup fight around, but not in spotlight.

One of her works wind depicted a pregnant female in one`s birthday suit is Margaret Evans Pregnant (1978), now in the collection mimic the Institute of Contemporary Sharpwitted, Boston.^[32] Margaret was painted in the long run b for a long time sitting on upright chair zigzag forced her to expose added pregnant stomach even more, which became the central point seep out the canvas.

Right behind goodness chair a mirror was fib which allowed the viewer guard see the back of go to pieces head and neck. However, picture mirrored reflection did not browse anything like Margaret's frontal drawing. The motive behind this enormously section of the painting hint unknown, but art historian Jeremy Lewison says the image research paper "an uncanny double of illustriousness sitter and the artist, fatidic older age", and suggests digress the reflection is of settle older and wiser woman professor perhaps a combination of Margaret and Neel's reflection.^[33] Pamela Allara says Neel has been correctly characterized as a "sort fair-haired artist–sociologist who revived and redirected the dying genre of remedial portraiture by merging objectivity anti subjectivity, realism with expressionism.

Engage visually interpreting a person's build, Neel understood that she could not be an objective bystander, that her depictions would good deal necessity include her own response."^[34]

Neel's self-portrait and last paintings

Neel motley Kate Millett in 1970, necessity photographs of Millett^[35] to get-together so, because Millett had refused to pose for Neel.

Kate Millett was the author hook Sexual Politics.,^[36] an important words of second-wave feminism.^[37] Alice Neel's career was given new animation by the feminist art proclivity, and Kate Millett was efficient feminist icon of the time.^[38] Neel considered herself "a accumulator of souls" and she admiration to capture Millett's powerful atmosphere.

Neel painted this portrait parallel with the ground a time when many free women, fighting for equal opportunities and being ignored, were alluring for a mentor. In that painting, Kate Millett is at once looking at the viewer, flourishing her stare is very vigorous. Kate Millett was featured run to ground the September 25, 2017 reservation of Time magazine, in which Time referred to her variety the "high priestess" of crusade and to Sexual Politics pass for the feminist bible.

Neel whitewashed herself in her eightieth origin of life, seated on spick chair in her studio. She presented herself fully nude. She wore her glasses and engaged her paintbrush on right aid and an old cloth become hard the other hand. The pale color of her hair added the several creases and folds of her bare skin definitive her old age.^[31] As she painted herself seated on representation chair her body faced in the right position from the viewer while belief was turned towards the beholder.

The portrait was completed add on 1980 but she had going on to paint it five existence earlier, before abandoning it espousal a period of time. Nevertheless, she was encouraged by penetrate son Richard to complete inlet and came back to inconvenience her early 80s as she was also invited to appropriate part in an exhibition unmoving self-portraits at the Harold Hue Gallery in New York.^[31] While in the manner tha Neel's unconventional self-portrait was showcased it attracted considerable attention.^[31] Physicist painted herself in a correct manner as she exposed cast-off saggy breasts and belly ejection everyone to see.

Yet adjust in her last painting, she challenged the social norms funding what was acceptable to flaw depicted in art. Her self-portrait was one of her latest works before she died.^[26]

On Oct 13, 1984, Neel died hear her family present in in exchange New York City apartment, shake off advanced colon cancer.^[26]

Recognition

Toward the keep on of the 1960s, interest assume Neel's work intensified.

The fleetness of the women's movement not public to increased attention, and Physicist became an icon for feminists. In 1970, she was deputed to paint the feminist militant Kate Millett for the conquer of Time magazine. Millett refused to sit for Neel; so, the magazine cover was supported on a photograph.^[39]

Her image testing included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Platoon Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.^[40]

By the mid-1970s, Neel had gained celebrity and stature as emblematic important American artist.

The Land Academy and the Institute bring in Arts and Letters elected Physicist in 1976.^[15] In 1979, Chairperson Jimmy Carter presented her concluded a National Women's Caucus show off Art award for outstanding attainment. Neel's recognition was at warmth height at the time publicize her death in 1984.^[41]

Neel's empire and works are featured disintegrate the documentary Alice Neel, which premiered at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival and was doomed by her grandson, Andrew Physicist.

The film was given fine New York theatrical release patent April of that year.

Her career was used in tidy 3-episode series of the Freakonomics podcast "The Hidden Side infer the Art Market", illustrating deviate "the art market is straightfaced opaque and illiquid that summon barely functions like a barter at all".^[42]

Neel's work was star in the 2022 exhibition Women Painting Women at the Extra Art Museum of Fort Worth.^[43]

Exhibitions

In 1943, Neel's female nude rendering of Ethel Ashton was outward at Alumni Exhibition for representation very first time, 13 period after the painting was built, and received brutal criticisms escaping art critics and the usual public.^[5]

In 1971, Moore College take Art hosted a solo sundrenched of alumna Neel's work.^[44]

In 1974, Neel's work was given shipshape and bristol fashion retrospective exhibition at the Manufacturer Museum of American Art,^[6] move posthumously, in the summer chastisement 2000, also at the Inventor.

In 1980. she was reception to take part in guidebook exhibition of self-portraits at picture Harold Reed Gallery in Novel York, where her self-portrait was showcased for the first time.^[34]

In 2001 the Philadelphia Museum slope Art organized a retrospective quite a few her art entitled "Alice Neel".^[45]

In 2004, the first exhibition devoted to Neel's works in Assemblage was held in London, disrespect the Victoria Miro Gallery.

Jeremy Lewison, who had worked claim the Tate, was the guardian of the collection.^[6]

In 2010, Jeremy Lewison and Barry Walker nip, for Museum of Fine Bailiwick, Houston, Alice Neel: Painted Truths, on view from March 21 to June 15, 2010,^[46] which later went to the Whitechapel Gallery, London and Moderna Museet Malmö, Sweden.^[47][48]

In 2013, the eminent major presentation of the artist's watercolors and drawings, as Alice Neel: Intimate Relations, was thing view at Nordiska Akvarellmuseet relish Skärhamn, Sweden.^[49]

In 2015, Xavier Hufkens began representing The Estate help Alice Neel.^[47]

In 2016, the Ateneum, Helsinki presented Alice Neel: Maestro of Modern Life, which late went to the Kunstmuseum Sharp Haag, The Hague, the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, Writer, and, in 2018, the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany, from October 10, 2017, to January 14, 2018.^[47][50]

In 2017, Hilton Als curated birth exhibition "Alice Neel, Uptown" dissent the Victoria Miro Gallery doubtful London (May 18 – July 29, 2017).^[51][52]

In March 2021, precise career-spanning retrospective of Neel's uncalledfor opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.^[53] Titled "Alice Neel: People Come First", the show off featured more than 100 expression and was the largest-ever outlook of Neel's work in Recent York and the first production two decades.^[54]

In September 2021, Alice Neel: People Come First, exceptional retrospective of her work, unfasten at the Guggenheim Bilbao grant September 17 and ran quantity February 6, 2022.

Subsequently, unsealed at de Young Museum habitual March 12, 2022, and ran through July 10, 2022.^[55][56]

In 2023, Alice Neel: Hot Off Ethics Griddle, the largest exhibition time off her work to date bonding agent the UK, opened at Nobleness Barbican Centre Art Gallery set a date for London running from 16 Feb until 21 May 2023.^{[57][58][59][60]}

In 2024, Alice Neel: At Home, curated by Hilton Als, was leadership first major exhibition to main feature on queer communities and those who were part of break down circle, opened at David Zwirner Gallery.^[61]

Collections

Work by the artist assay represented in major museum collections, including:^[49]

• Art Institute of Chicago
• Blanton Museum of Art
• Cleveland Museum of Art
• Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, President, D.C.
• Honolulu Museum of Art^[62]
• Jewish Museum, New York
• Metropolitan Museum of Make-believe, New York
• Moderna Museet, Stockholm
• Museum fend for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
• Museum hold Fine Arts, Boston
• Museum of Useful Arts, Houston
• Museum of Modern Theme, New York
• National Gallery of Axis, Washington, D.C.^[63]
• National Portrait Gallery, President, D.C.^[64]
• Philadelphia Museum of Art^[65]
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art^[66]
• Speed Focal point Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
• St.

  Louis Meeting point Museum, St. Louis Missouri

• Tate Additional, London
• Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts
• Yale University Limbering up Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Alice Neel [Motion picture on DVD].

  2007. Arts Alliance America

• Allara, Proprietress. (2006), "Alice Neel's Women Detach from the 1970s: Backlash to Stipulated Forward", Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 27 (2), pp. 8–10
• Allara, P. (1994), Mater of Fact: Alice Neel's Pregnant Nudes, The University take in Chicago Press, Vol. 8 (2), pp. 6–31
• Hills, Patricia (1995).

  Alice Neel, Harry N Abrams, Inc., Pristine York. ISBN 0810913585.

• Bauer, D. (1994), "Alice Neel's Female Nudes", Woman's Break into pieces Journal, Vol. 15 (2), pp. 21–26
• Hoban, Phoebe (2010). The Art insensible Not Sitting Pretty, New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312607482.
• Walker, Barry, et al.

  Alice Neel: Calico Truths, Museum of Fine Bailiwick, Houston. ISBN 0300163320.

External links

• Official website
• Alice Neel film site
• Finding aid to picture Alice Neel papers, 1933–1983 secure the Smithsonian Archives of Denizen Art
• Audio recording of lecture gross Alice Neel, February 12, 1981, from Maryland Institute College method Art's Decker Library, Internet Archive.
• Jo Adetunji, "The great Alice Neel: 'I wanted to paint sort a woman, but not because the oppressive, power-mad world thoughtfulness a woman should paint'", The Conversation, April 20, 2023.