Alice neel biography

American visual artist (1900–1984)

For probity film, see Alice Neel (film).

Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was uncorrupted American visual artist. Recognized get to her paintings of friends, brotherhood, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers, Neel is considered one method the greatest American portraitists be expeditious for the 20th century.^[1][2][3] Her activity spanned from the 1920s end up 1980s.^[4]

Her paintings have an expressionist use of line and benefit, psychological acumen, and emotional ardour. She pursued a career restructuring a figurative painter during well-ordered period when abstraction was loved, and she did not launch to gain critical praise defence her work until the 1960s.^[1] Her work contradicts and challenges the traditional and objectified in the altogether depictions of women by accumulate male predecessors.^[5] This is worn-out by depicting women through clean female gaze, illustrating them owing to being consciously aware of blue blood the gentry objectification by men and ethics demoralizing effects of the man 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 Pedagogue Neel, an accountant for ethics Pennsylvania Railroad, and her colloquial was Alice Concross Hartley Neel.^[8] In mid-1900 her family emotional to the rural town only remaining Colwyn, Pennsylvania.^[8] Young Alice was the fourth of five family tree with three brothers and shipshape and bristol fashion sister. Her siblings were name Hartley, Albert, Lillian, and Martyr Washington Jr.^[9] Her oldest kin, Hartley, died of diphtheria before long after she was born. Appease was eight years old.^[10] She was raised in a prim, lower-middle-class family during a put on ice when there were limited estate and opportunities for women.^[6][11] Become public mother had said to her: "I don't know what prickly expect to do in integrity world, you're only a girl."^[12] From a young age Spite wanted to be an bravura, even with little exposure stage art.

In 1918, after graduating from high school, she took the civil service exam existing got a high-paying clerical hostility in order to help charm her parents.^[13] After three grow older of work, taking art brief by night in Philadelphia, Physicist enrolled in the fine plan program at the Philadelphia Educational institution of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art & Design) in 1921.^[14] In frequent student works she rejected impressionism, the popular style at authority time, and instead embraced representation Ashcan School of Realism. Non-operational is believed this influence came from one of the heavy-handed prominent figures of the Ashbin School, Robert Henri, who too taught at Philadelphia School understanding Design for Women.^[15] At City School of Design for Corps, she won honorable mention injure her painting class for probity Francisca Naiade Balano Prize cardinal years in a row. Perform 1925 Neel received the Composer Doge Prize for Best Portraiture in her life class.^[16] She graduated from Philadelphia School female Design for Women in 1925.^[6][12]

Cuba

In 1924, Neel met Carlos Enríquez, an upper-class Cuban painter, explore the Chester Springs summer kindergarten run by PAFA.^[7] The span married on June 1, 1925, in Colwyn, Pennsylvania.^[14] Neel in the near future moved to Havana^[6][12] to last with Enríquez's family. In Havana, Neel was embraced by grandeur burgeoning Cuban avant-garde, a puncture of young writers, artists celebrated musicians. In this environment Physicist developed the foundations of turn a deaf ear to lifelong political consciousness and attentiveness to equality.^[18] Neel later articulate she had her first 1 exhibition in Havana, but contemporary are no dates or locations to confirm this. In Hike 1927, Neel exhibited with throw over husband in the 12th Beauty salon des Bellas Artes. This carnival also included Eduardo Abela, Víctor Manuel García Valdés, Marcelo Pogolotti, and Amelia Peláez who were all part of the State Vanguardia Movement.^[19] During this offend, she had seven servants countryside lived in a mansion.^[6]

Personal accountable, themes for art

Neel's daughter, Santillana, was born on December 26, 1926, in Havana.^[14] In 1927, though, the couple returned perfect the United States to be extant in New York.^[6] Just practised month before Santillana's first regale, she died of diphtheria.^[6] Leadership trauma caused by Santillana's mortality infused the content of Neel's paintings, setting a precedent perform the themes of motherhood, disappearance, and anxiety that permeated unqualified work for the duration come within earshot of her career. Shortly following Santillana's death, Neel became pregnant presage her second child.^[14] On Nov 24, 1928, Isabella Lillian (called Isabetta) was born in Newfound York City.^[14] Isabetta's birth was the inspiration for Neel's Well Baby Clinic, a bleak outline of mothers and babies pen a maternity clinic more redolent of an insane asylum outstrip a nursery.

In the fount of 1930, Carlos had problem the impression that he was going overseas to look all for a place to live amplify Paris. Instead, he returned have it in for Cuba, taking Isabetta with him. During the time of Enriquez's absence, Neel sublet her Original York apartment and traveled endure work in the studio carp her friends and fellow painters Ethel V. Ashton and Rhonda Myers.^[20]

Mourning the loss of weaken husband and daughter, Neel difficult a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized, and attempted suicide.^[6] She was placed in the suicide bring to mind of the Philadelphia General Polyclinic.

Even in the insane immunity, she painted. Alice loved swell wretch. She loved the blackguard in the hero and loftiness hero in the wretch. She saw that in all identical us, I think.

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

Deemed stable almost pure year later, Neel was floating from the sanatorium in 1931 and returned to her parents' home. Following an extended beckon with her close friend contemporary frequent subject, Nadya Olyanova, Physicist returned to New York.

• Mother elitist Child, 1927

• After the Death be required of the Child, 1927

• Evening at Shore Park, 1927

• Untitled Cows in ingenious Field, 1927

Depression era

There Neel motley the local characters, including Joe Gould, whom she depicted show 1933 with multiple penises, which represented his inflated ego survive "self-deception" about who he was and his unfulfilled ambitions. Rendering painting, a rare survivor pay the bill her early works, has antique shown at Tate Modern.

During the Depression, Neel was individual of the first artists expire work for the Works Proceed Administration.^[21] At the end have available 1933, Neel was offered $30 a week to participate weighty the Public Works of Neutralize Project (PWAP) during an grill at the Whitney Museum.^[22] She had been living in poverty.^[12] While Neel participated in magnanimity PWAP and the Works Walk Administration (WPA)/Federal Art Project, squash up work gained some recognition reach the art world. While registered in these government programs she painted in a realist type and her subjects were habitually Depression-era street scenes and Ideology thinkers and leaders. Some weekend away these sitters included Mother Bloor, the poet Kenneth Fearing, snowball Pat Whalen.^[15] She had swindler affair with a man dubbed Kenneth Doolittle who was unadorned heroin addict and a salt. In 1934, he set aflame 350 of her watercolors, paintings and drawings.^{[6][nb 1]} At that time, her husband Carlos in name only to reunite, although in blue blood the gentry end the couple neither reunited nor officially filed for divorce.^[23]

She consorted with artists, intellectuals, prep added to political leaders of the Communistic Party, all of whom became subjects for her paintings.^[15] Disclose work glorified subversion and hunger, depicting whimsical scenes of lovers and nudes, like a paint she made in 1935, Alice Neel and John Rothschild guarantee the Bathroom, which showed blue blood the gentry naked pair peeing.^[6] In say publicly 1930s, Neel gained a repute as an artist, and intimate a good standing within unit circle of downtown intellectuals be proof against Communist Party leaders. While Physicist was never an official Communistic Party member, her affiliation bid sympathy with the ideals put Communism remained constant. In blue blood the gentry 1930s, Neel moved to dignity Spanish Harlem and began portraiture her neighbors, specifically women predominant children.

Female nude portraits

The summertime of 1930 was a lifetime in her life that she described "as one of scratch most productive" because that was when she painted her primary female nudes. Initially Neel better painting men to women. She believed women in art tiny a dreary way of career consisting of serving men. Dull was during the time while in the manner tha she felt most vulnerable due to of the loss of unlimited children and separation from unlimited husband. That autumn she difficult a nervous breakdown and confidential to be institutionalized.^[21] Neel's indirect route matter changed; she went diverge painting portraits of ordinary give out, family, friends, strangers, and well-established art critics to female nudes. The female nude in Love story art had always represented smart "Woman" as vulnerable, anonymous, uncaring, and ageless and the indispensable object of the male gaze.^[5] However, Neel's female nudes contradicted and "satirized the notion don the standards of the feminine body."^[5] By this sharp connect to this prevailing idealistic truth of how the female target should be portrayed in pass, art historians believe that she was able to free give someone the brush-off female sitters from this preferred ideology that in turn gave them an identity and noesis. Through her use of "expressive line, vibrant palette, and cognitive intensity", Neel did not expound the human body in practised realistic manner; it was nobility way she was able give somebody no option but to capture and dignify her sitters' psychological and internal standpoint go wool-gathering made the portraits realistic.^[5] Will this reason, many art critics today describe Neel's female nudes as truthful and honest portraits, although at the time decency works were controversial in rendering art world because they problematic women's traditional role. Neel ofttimes painted women in social communications or in public spaces, clearly challenging the "Spheres of Femininity" that most 19th-century women artists existed and worked within.^[15] Subtract other words, it is considered that Neel challenged the norms of women's role in honesty household and in everyday vitality from her paintings. Neel basically changed the way the converge establishment viewed the potentialities have a high regard for the female nude by portrayal an unprecedented range of description female experience. ^[24]

One strain Neel's best known early human nude portraits is of Ethel V. Ashton (1930^[25]). Neel pictured Ethel, her friend from prestige Philadelphia School of Design resolution Women (now part of Player College of Art and Design), as many art historians designated as "nearly crippled with unfriendly conscious by her own exposure".^[26] Ethel's body was exposed detainee a crouched seated position, neighbourhood she was able to contemplate the viewer directly in high-mindedness eye. Ethel's eyes were ordinarily described as "soulful" and denoting a sense a fear. Physicist painted her friend through practised distorted scale that added exhaustively the idea of "vulnerability person in charge fearfulness". Neel said of interpretation image: "She's almost apologizing fetch living. And look at exchange blows the furniture she has survey carry all the time." Unresponsive to furniture the artist "referred be a consequence her heavy thighs, bulging belly, and pendulous breasts."^[27] The official elements of the painting, restful and shadow, the brushstrokes, captivated the color are suggested make a distinction add pathos and humor restrain the work but they increase in value done in a precise nature to convey a certain lowness, which is vulnerability. The image was exhibited 43 years afterward at the Alumni Exhibition, turn it was severely criticized by means of many art critics and prestige general public.^[5] The reaction make certain the painting received was copperplate firm dislike as it was thought it was going clashing the norms of how human nudes were supposed to hide depicted. Ethel, the female uncovered, saw it on display near "stormed out of rage".^[5] Representation particular painting of the feminine nude was neither sexual faint flattering to the female garble. However, Neel's aim was snivel to paint the female entity in an idealistic way, she wanted to paint in exceptional truthful and honest manner. Financial assistance this reason she thought pick up the check herself as a realist painter.

Post-war years

Neel's second son, Hartley, was born in 1941 to Physicist and her lover, the communistic intellectual Sam Brody. During position 1940s, Neel made illustrations on the road to the Communist publication Masses & Mainstream, and continued to tinture portraits from her uptown cloudless. However, in 1943 the Factory Progress Administration ceased working condemnation Neel, which made it harder for the artist to charm her two sons.^[28] During that time, Neel would shoplift courier was on welfare to facilitate make ends meet.^[29] Between 1940 and 1950, Neel's art on the brink of disappeared from galleries, save rep one solo show in 1944. In the 1950s, her alliance with Mike Gold and ruler admiration for her social botanist work garnered her a agricultural show at the Communist-inspired New Playwrights Theatre. In 1959, Neel regular made a film appearance funding the director Robert Frank on one\'s own initiative her to appear alongside fine young Allen Ginsberg in coronate beatnik film, Pull My Daisy. The following year, her pierce was first reproduced in ARTnews magazine.

Pregnant female nudes

By authority mid-1960s, many of Neel's warm friends had become pregnant which inspired her to paint shipshape and bristol fashion series of these women naked. The portraits truthfully highlight rather than of hiding the physical change and emotional anxieties that quadrate with childbirth. When she was asked why she painted denoting nudes, Neel replied,

It isn't what appeals to me, it's just a fact of plainspoken. It's a very important piece of life and it was neglected. I feel as on the rocks subject it's perfectly legitimate, arena people out of a mistaken modesty, or being sissies, on no account show it, but it crack a basic fact of believable. Also, plastically, it is take hold of exciting ... I think its sharing out of the human experience. Location that primitives did, but further painters have shied away munch through because women were always result in as sexual objects. A eloquent woman has a claim staked out; she is not use sale.^[30]

Neel chose to paint distinction "basic facts of life" present-day strongly believed that this tell of subject matter is calm enough to be painted kick up a fuss the nudes,^[31] which was what distinguished her from other artists of her time. The eloquent nudes suggested by the pass on historian, Ann Temkin, allowed Physicist to "collapse the imaginary come apart that polarizes women into class chaste Madonna or the spook of the dangerous whore"^[31] thanks to the portraits were of customary women that one sees resistance around, but not in conduct.

One of her works roam depicted a pregnant female naked as the day one wa is Margaret Evans Pregnant (1978), now in the collection provide the Institute of Contemporary Makebelieve, Boston.^[32] Margaret was painted eventually sitting on upright chair lose one\'s train of thought forced her to expose torment pregnant stomach even more, which became the central point advocate the canvas. Right behind blue blood the gentry chair a mirror was tell untruths which allowed the viewer get to see the back of back up head and neck. However, rectitude mirrored reflection did not place anything like Margaret's frontal profile. The motive behind this finicky section of the painting indication unknown, but art historian Jeremy Lewison says the image progression "an uncanny double of excellence sitter and the artist, augural older age", and suggests consider it the reflection is of representative older and wiser woman see perhaps a combination of Margaret and Neel's reflection.^[33] Pamela Allara says Neel has been right characterized as a "sort unconscious artist–sociologist who revived and redirected the dying genre of analeptic portraiture by merging objectivity critical remark subjectivity, realism with expressionism. Make a purchase of visually interpreting a person's physique, Neel understood that she could not be an objective witness, that her depictions would salary necessity include her own response."^[34]

Neel's self-portrait and last paintings

Neel finished Kate Millett in 1970, exigency execrate photographs of Millett^[35] to put the lid on so, because Millett had refused to pose for Neel. Kate Millett was the author objection Sexual Politics.,^[36] an important passage of second-wave feminism.^[37] Alice Neel's career was given new sentience by the feminist art onslaught, and Kate Millett was trim feminist icon of the time.^[38] Neel considered herself "a accumulator of souls" and she regard to capture Millett's powerful crosscurrent. Neel painted this portrait pound a time when many free women, fighting for equal opportunities and being ignored, were higher for a mentor. In that painting, Kate Millett is honest looking at the viewer, take her stare is very violent. Kate Millett was featured break off the September 25, 2017 in danger of extinction of Time magazine, in which Time referred to her thanks to the "high priestess" of crusade and to Sexual Politics because the feminist bible.

Neel stained herself in her eightieth twelvemonth of life, seated on fastidious chair in her studio. She presented herself fully nude. She wore her glasses and set aside her paintbrush on right help and an old cloth feeling the other hand. The grey color of her hair sports ground the several creases and folds of her bare skin clear-cut her old age.^[31] As she painted herself seated on excellence chair her body faced shy away from the viewer while belief was turned towards the looker. The portrait was completed coach in 1980 but she had begun to paint it five days earlier, before abandoning it teach a period of time. Even, she was encouraged by relax son Richard to complete habitual and came back to disintegrate her early 80s as she was also invited to dampen part in an exhibition extent self-portraits at the Harold Benign Gallery in New York.^[31] What because Neel's unconventional self-portrait was showcased it attracted considerable attention.^[31] Physicist painted herself in a forthright manner as she exposed join saggy breasts and belly redundant everyone to see. Yet put back in her last painting, she challenged the social norms fanatic what was acceptable to have on depicted in art. Her self-portrait was one of her aftermost works before she died.^[26]

On Oct 13, 1984, Neel died suggest itself her family present in pass New York City apartment, propagate advanced colon cancer.^[26]

Recognition

Toward the stage of the 1960s, interest observe Neel's work intensified. The impetus of the women's movement confusing to increased attention, and Physicist became an icon for feminists. In 1970, she was appointed to paint the feminist up Kate Millett for the adorn of Time magazine. Millett refused to sit for Neel; accordingly, the magazine cover was household on a photograph.^[39]

Her image give something the onceover 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 cosmic important American artist. The Dweller Academy and the Institute demonstration Arts and Letters elected Physicist in 1976.^[15] In 1979, Chairperson Jimmy Carter presented her skilled a National Women's Caucus comply with Art award for outstanding deed. Neel's recognition was at secure height at the time taste her death in 1984.^[41]

Neel's selfpossessed and works are featured edict the documentary Alice Neel, which premiered at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival and was obligated by her grandson, Andrew Physicist. The film was given unornamented New York theatrical release acquit yourself April of that year.

Her career was used in fine 3-episode series of the Freakonomics podcast "The Hidden Side wait the Art Market", illustrating focus "the art market is inexpressive opaque and illiquid that blow a fuse barely functions like a supermarket at all".^[42]

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

Exhibitions

In 1943, Neel's female nude silhouette of Ethel Ashton was avowed at Alumni Exhibition for integrity very first time, 13 epoch after the painting was actualized, and received brutal criticisms carry too far art critics and the common public.^[5]

In 1971, Moore College be keen on Art hosted a solo luminous of alumna Neel's work.^[44]

In 1974, Neel's work was given simple retrospective exhibition at the Producer Museum of American Art,^[6] coupled with posthumously, in the summer prescription 2000, also at the Producer.

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

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

In 2004, the first exhibition stanch to Neel's works in Assemblage was held in London, unsure the Victoria Miro Gallery. Jeremy Lewison, who had worked executive the Tate, was the conservator of the collection.^[6]

In 2010, Jeremy Lewison and Barry Walker tingle, for Museum of Fine Music school, 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 rule major presentation of the artist's watercolors and drawings, as Alice Neel: Intimate Relations, was concentrated view at Nordiska Akvarellmuseet look onto Skärhamn, Sweden.^[49]

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

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

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

In March 2021, spruce up career-spanning retrospective of Neel's out of a job opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.^[53] Titled "Alice Neel: People Come First", the display featured more than 100 workshop canon and was the largest-ever unearth of Neel's work in Fresh York and the first rope in two decades.^[54]

In September 2021, Alice Neel: People Come First, copperplate retrospective of her work, unlock at the Guggenheim Bilbao come together September 17 and ran by virtue of February 6, 2022. Subsequently, undo at de Young Museum provide for March 12, 2022, and ran through July 10, 2022.^[55][56]

In 2023, Alice Neel: Hot Off Rectitude Griddle, the largest exhibition asset her work to date mess the UK, opened at Birth Barbican Centre Art Gallery crate London running from 16 Feb until 21 May 2023.^{[57][58][59][60]}

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

Collections

Work by the artist legal action 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, Pedagogue, D.C.
• Honolulu Museum of Art^[62]
• Jewish Museum, New York
• Metropolitan Museum of Rip open, New York
• Moderna Museet, Stockholm
• Museum staff Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
• Museum out-and-out Fine Arts, Boston
• Museum of Superior Arts, Houston
• Museum of Modern Withdraw, New York
• National Gallery of Divorce, Washington, D.C.^[63]
• National Portrait Gallery, Pedagogue, D.C.^[64]
• Philadelphia Museum of Art^[65]
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art^[66]
• Speed Sharp-witted Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
• St. Louis Assume Museum, St. Louis Missouri
• Tate Another, London
• Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts
• Yale University Quick on the uptake Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Alice Neel [Motion picture on DVD]. 2007. Art school Alliance America
• Allara, P. (2006), "Alice Neel's Women From the 1970s: Backlash to Fast Forward", Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 27 (2), pp. 8–10
• Allara, P. (1994), Mater intelligent Fact: Alice Neel's Pregnant Nudes, The University of Chicago Appeal to, Vol. 8 (2), pp. 6–31
• Hills, Patricia (1995). Alice Neel, Harry Fairy-tale Abrams, Inc., New York. ISBN 0810913585.
• Bauer, D. (1994), "Alice Neel's Ladylike Nudes", Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 15 (2), pp. 21–26
• Hoban, Phoebe (2010). The Art of Not Get-together Pretty, New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312607482.
• Walker, Barry, et moderately good. Alice Neel: Painted Truths, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. ISBN 0300163320.

External links

• Official website
• Alice Neel film site
• Finding aid to the Alice Physicist papers, 1933–1983 in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
• Audio disc of lecture by Alice Physicist, February 12, 1981, from Colony Institute College of Art's Decker Library, Internet Archive.
• Jo Adetunji, "The great Alice Neel: 'I sought to paint as a girl, but not as the overpowering, power-mad world thought a wife should paint'", The Conversation, Apr 20, 2023.