Alice Neel: Painted Truths
March 21 - June 13, 2010
Art object labels from the exhibition
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Futility of Effort
- 1930
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Anne McNamara and Errol Mitlyng, Dallas,
Texas
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- Alice Neel painted the nearly monochromatic Futility
of Effort after the death of her first daughter, Santillana, and while
enduring the loss of custody of her second daughter, Isabetta. Far from
being a portrait, the image captures Neel's grief by referencing an article
she read about a child who was strangled by crawling through bedposts as
the mother was ironing. Identifying with the story, Neel's allegorical
image transforms the innocent child into a martyr.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Symbols (Doll and Apple)
- c. 1933
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Barbara Lee, Cambridge, Massachusetts
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- Alice Neel continued to mourn the loss of her daughters
and to process her own mental breakdown and suicide attempts in the overtly
symbolic painting Symbols (Doll and Apple). Dominated by an emaciated,
lifeless doll, the scene combines Latin American images of private devotion
and Christian icons. Neel's painting may also be read as a meditation on
the status of women in a male-dominated world.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Kenneth Fearing
- 1935
- Oil on canvas
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- The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Hartley S.
Neel and Richard Neel, 1988
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- Considered one of the leading poets of his generation,
Kenneth Fearing wrote about the suffering of the laboring class during
the Depression. Surrounded by the snippets of society about which he wrote,
Fearing is illuminated by a single lightbulb, a symbol of enlightenment
and modernism. The bleeding skeleton in his heart implies that, despite
his characteristic deadpan verse, he sympathizes with humanity as his heart
literally bleeds for the sorrows of the world.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Pat Whalen
- 1935
- Oil on canvas with paper element collaged onto surface
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, gift of Dr.
Hartley Neel, 81.12
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- Pat Whalen, a fervent Communist, was a union organizer
for the longshoreman of Baltimore. Neel, who was also lifelong sympathizer
of leftist causes and an on-and-off again Communist Party member, depicts
Whalen as a secular saint. His attribute, a copy of the Daily Worker,
the organ of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), lies beneath his large fists,
which identify Whalen as both a laborer and fighter.
- [66 words]
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Man with Rose
- 1936
- Oil on canvas
- Private collection
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- The identity of the sitter in Man with Rose is
unknown, and thus the meaning of the still-life vignette, rose, and stick
drawing of the hanged man remain unclear. When Alice Neel created this
portrait, she lived in downtown New York and associated with numerous poets
and journalists. This fact, along with the aforementioned symbols and the
sitter's formal attire, strongly suggest the subject is a writer.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- José
- 1936
- Oil on canvas
- Estate of Alice Neel
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- Alice Neel met José Negron, a musician and nightclub
singer, in 1935. She gave birth to their son, Richard, in September 1939,
but José abandoned Neel and their infant son three months later
for another woman. He eventually became an Episcopal priest and taught
theology in Mexico. In this portrait, Neel portrays her subject like a
Gothic wood carving set against a flamelike crimson background, as if a
martyr at the stake, or a sinner in hellfire.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- T.B. Harlem
- 1940
- Oil on canvas
- National Museum of Women in the Arts, gift of Wallace
and Wilhelmina Holladay, 1983.24
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- The saintly patient in T.B. Harlem is Carlos Negron,
the bother of Alice Neel's companion, José Negron, from 1935 to
1939. Painted after José left Neel, the work attests to Neel's affectionate
relationship with his family. Before the development of penicillin, doctors
treated tuberculosis-related collapsed lungs by removing some of the patient's
ribs. Influenced by the styles of El Greco and Goya, Neel portrays Carlos's
battered body as an elegy to the suffering of the poor.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Ed Meschi
- 1933
- Oil on canvas
- Estate of Alice Neel
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- The dark tones in this portrait of Ed Meschi enhance
the intense gray color of his eyes, the focal point of the painting. Meschi's
identity remains a mystery, and the painting's neutral space and the sitter's
nondescript clothing offer no clues to his social class or occupation.
However, in Meschi's serpentine pose and hypnotic eyes, Neel endows the
sitter with a menacing, snakelike quality.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Max White
- 1935
- Oil on linen
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, museum purchase
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- The writer Max White sat for Alice Neel on three occasions:
in 1935, 1939, and 1961. In her first depiction of White, Neel employed
a straightforward style of portraiture by presenting White almost directly
facing the viewer. His masculine features are softened by the sensuous
rendering of his lips, while his asymmetrical eyes and shoulders give the
figure an electrical charge.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Elenka
- 1936
- Oil on canvas
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Richard Neel
and Hartley S. Neel, 1987 (1987.376)
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- Elenka is one of Alice Neel's
most painterly and complex portraits of the 1930s and the work technically
anticipates her later stylistic innovations. Despite the painting's elaborate
background and the lush treatment of the sitter's blouse, the viewer is
instantly drawn to Elenka's exotic face. Her auburn hair, olive complexion,
and heavily outlined facial features stand out despite the fact that the
right side of her face is in shadow.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Richard at Age Five
- 1945
- Oil on canvas
- Estate of Alice Neel
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- In this unusually small portrait, Alice Neel depicts
her elder son, Richard, just before his sixth birthday. She emphasizes
Richard's face, especially his eyes, which she depicts as black voids to
suggest a limited amount of vision; Richard suffered from poor eyesight
from a young age and was registered as blind. Reminiscent of the treatment
of eyes in Byzantine icon paintings, Richard's disproportionately large
eyes reflect Neel's concern for her son.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Art Shields
- 1951
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Lillian and Billy Mauer
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- This three-quarter profile portrait depicts the left-wing
journalist Art Shields, who was a labor reporter for the Daily Worker,
the newspaper of the Communist Party USA. Shields's jewel-toned red shirt
contrasts with the yellow-gold background, a direct quote of 14th-century
Sienese gold-ground paintings, lending the painting a quality of otherworldliness.
Neel's unflinching study of Shields portrays a noble man staring into the
distance as if recalling long-ago battles.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Psychiatrist's Wife (Elsie Rubin)
- 1957
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Alison and John Ferring, St. Louis, Missouri
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- By identifying her sitter as an anonymous professional
man's wife rather than as a person in her own right, Alice Neel rather
cruelly revealed her assessment of Elsie Rubin's talent as a painter. Rubin,
who had studied at the Art Students League, was a practicing artist and
teacher. She supported progressive causes, particularly the burgeoning
women's movement. Neel depicts her as a society woman, not as an artist.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Sam
- 1958
- Oil on canvas
- Estate of Alice Neel
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- Alice Neel's relationship with Sam Brody (1907-1987),
though sporadic, was the longest romantic attachment of her life. Brody,
a photographer, documentary filmmaker, and film critic, was a founder of
the Workers' Film and Photo League. Their relationship began in 1940; the
following year, Neel gave birth to their son, Hartley. Although the couple
often battled, Neel could always rely on Brody to support her work and
assure her of its importance. She painted this portrait of her prickly,
recalcitrant, but brilliant companion in the last year of their liaison.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Frank O'Hara, No. 2
- 1960
- Oil on canvas
- Estate of Alice Neel
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- When Alice Neel asked Frank O'Hara to pose for her, the
request was strategic. O'Hara (19261966) was one of the leading poets
of the nascent New York School. More important to Neel, he was also an
art critic and an assistant curator at the Museum of Modern Art. After
painting a flattering profile portrait, Neel executed this second version
in one sitting. Her first conscious attempt to gain recognition from the
New York art establishment went unrewarded. O'Hara never wrote about or
showed Neel's work.
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- Alice Neel, Frank O'Hara (1926-1966), 1960, oil
on canvas, 43 x 16 1/8 inches (86.4 x 41 cm), the National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., gift of Hartley S. Neel.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Robert Smithson
- 1962
- Oil on canvas
- Courtesy of Locks Foundation
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- In one of the last paintings that she completed in her
apartment in Spanish Harlem, Alice Neel portrayed Robert Smithson (1938-1973)
before he had arrived at the theoretical framework that led to the ecologically
inspired land art for which he is renowned today. At the time of the sitting,
Smithson was a virtually unknown painter concerned with issues relating
to the human body. Today, Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970) in the
Great Salt Lake is perhaps the best-known example of landscape sculpture.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Maynard Stone
- 1964
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, Boston, Massachusetts
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- Occasionally, throughout her career, Alice Neel painted
two portraits of the same sitter in rapid succession. The first version
is usually more conventional, the second is generally more freely composed,
expressionistic, and psychologically probing. In this second portrayal
of Maynard Stone, an art history student, a table bisects the canvas, creating
an asymmetrical duality between the upper and lower parts of the painting,
and implying a disjuncture in the sitter's personality.
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- Alice Neel, Maynard Stone (first version), 1964,
36 x 24 inches (91.4 x 61 cm), Estate of Alice Neel.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Fuller Brush Man
- 1965
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Diane and David Goldsmith
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- Dewald Strauss (1906-1974) was interned in Dachau after
Kristallnacht, November 910, 1938. Through the intervention of relatives,
he was allowed to immigrate to the United States in 1940. Serving in the
U.S. Army during World War II, he received a Purple Heart for injuries
in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he became a door-to-door salesman.
Alice Neel recalled: "He had to make twenty-five sales a day for Fuller
Brush or he would lose his job. But he was so happy to be in America."
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Hartley
- 1966
- Oil on canvas
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, gift of Arthur M.
Bullowa, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art,
1991.143.2
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- Alice Neel said of this portrait of her younger son:
"Hartley was studying medicine at Tufts in Boston, and he visited
me at Christmas, 1965. He told me he could not bear dissecting a corpse
and that he would have to leave... He told me he couldn't see a corpse
as a thing, as some of the other students could. He was twenty-five and
in a trap, but finally decided to go back to Tufts."
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Dorothy Pearlstein
- 1969
- Oil on canvas
- Estate of Alice Neel
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- Dorothy Pearlstein, a former print publisher, is the
wife of the figurative painter Philip Pearlstein. She remembers that Alice
Neel approached her at a party or opening, attracted by the way the dark,
curly lining of her sheepskin coat echoed her hair. Neel often asked people
to pose for her in a particular outfit that she found striking. She was
not interested in fashion per se, but as a signifier of its period.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- The Family (John Gruen, Jane Wilson and Julia)
- 1970
- Oil on canvas
- Estate of Alice Neel
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- Jane Wilson is a landscape painter. Her husband, John
Gruen, now a photographer, regularly wrote art, music, and dance criticism
for such publications as the New York Herald Tribune, Vogue,
Artnews, and the New York Times. Julia Gruen was 12 years old
at the time of this painting and a student at the School of American Ballet.
She is now director of the Keith Haring Foundation.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- David Bourdon and Gregory Battcock
- 1970
- Oil on canvas
- Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin,
Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 1983
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- David Bourdon (1934-1998) and Gregory Battcock (c. 1937-1980),
both art critics, were well connected in the New York art world. Bourdon
posed in a suit and tie, an oddly conservative costume for the man who
had played a leather-clad living bedpost in Andy Warhol's unfinished film
Batman-Dracula. Battcock, his domestic partner who had recently
been appointed a full professor of art history at William Patterson College,
chose a more informal outfit. Alice Neel portrayed the couple as fundamentally
detached from each other.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Andy Warhol
- 1970
- Oil on canvas
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, gift of Timothy
Collins, 80.52
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- No two portrait painters could be more unalike than Alice
Neel and Andy Warhol (1928-1987). Whereas Neel relished arriving at the
sitter's inner psychological essence through repeated sittings, Warhol
worked from photographs, interested only in the persona that his subject
had created to present to the world. Stripped to the waist, Warhol reveals
the scars of his 1968 gunshot wounds. With a severely limited palette,
Neel creates a hauntingly ethereal image of an androgynous secular saint.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd
- 1970
- Oil on canvas
- The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Fund,
2009.345
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- One of the most interesting of Andy Warhol's transgendered
"superstars" was Jackie Curtis (1947-1985), a playwright, poet,
and cabaret performer, shown here with his close friend and minder, Ritta
Redd (Richard Zolla). Born John Holder, Jr., Curtis pioneered the "glam
rock" look of the 1970s. Alice Neel perfectly captured the aggressive/submissive
dynamic between the two friends.
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- Alice Neel
- American, 1900-1984
- Jackie Curtis as a Boy
- 1972
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of John Cheim, New York
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