Alice Neel lived “concurrent[ly] with the 20th century” and the events she lived through, made a great impact on her work. Today, she is regarded as an activist who painted portraits of minority populations and art world elites alike.
Neel’s paintings are loose and expressive but have a certain truthful frankness to them. In the podcast, Molesworth mentioned that the “history of portraiture” is “one riddled by narcissism, flattery, and patronage”. However, Neel’s paintings depart from this as her portraits rarely depicted conventional beauty.
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| Alice Neel, Pregnant Woman, 1971 |
One of the first aspects pointed out about Neel was that she was a mother as well as an artist. Her paintings also feature mothers and pregnant women. In Pregnant Woman, the subject’s expression is of tired acceptance of her situation rather than elatedness. This and the sickly greens of the paint exemplify the more grotesque aspects of motherhood.
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| Alice Neel, Andy Warhol, 1970 |
Before listening to this podcast, I did not know much about Neel. But upon further research, I realized there as one painting I was familiar with, the portrait of Andy Warhol at the Whitney Museum. I always thought this portrait showcased the humanness of Andy Warhol who is a sort of unreachable idol in the art world. His eyes are closed, the scars on his aging chest are exposed and with the soft pastels in the color palette, there is an effect of quietness one would not expect from the explosive career and personality Warhol embodied.
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| Alice Neel, Self Portrait, 1980 |
Neel continued to paint portraits throughout her life and one painting mentioned in the podcast is her Self Portrait in 1980. She is a woman of 80 years of age and that can be seen from her naked sagging flesh and wispy white hair. This portrait epitomizes how unafraid she was of depicting and embracing the imperfections of being human.
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