ALICE NEEL
Alice Neel experienced an all too common disregard that critic Jillian Steinhauer succinctly describes in an essay for The Believer: “The best way to succeed as a woman artist is to be old.”
A lifelong painter, Neel famously clung to portraiture while her peers explored abstraction, a fidelity that both kept her in poverty and restricted her from wide success until she reached her 60s. Her life is rife with traumatic moments of motherhood, an ever-growing cast of friends and lovers, and a fierce, unparalleled devotion to pursing art no matter the cost.
Phoebe Hoban’s definitive biography, Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty, probes the painter’s life and work and offers some literary tidbits of note.
Alice Neel by Sam Brody, 1944
AN ‘ALICE NEELIST’
Although Neel rejected the feminist label, claiming instead that she was an “Alice Neelist,” the power in much of her work centers around her ability to see and to find the vulnerability in her subjects, no matter how hardened or avoidant of external perception—Neel convinced even the shy Andy Warhol to disrobe and unveil the scars on his torso. As Judy Chicago remarked:
“I remember Anaïs Nin said something that always stayed with me. She talked about Virgina Woolf’s “To The Lighthouse,” and she talked about what was a singular aspect of female intelligence–which was the ability, like a lighthouse beam, to penetrate the deepest layers of the psyche. And I think you can really see that in Alice Neel’s paintings.”
ON THE BOOKSHELF
A piece in The New York Times Style Magazine explored Neel’s Upper West Side apartment, which remains almost exactly as it was when the painter was still living. On the bookshelf were both Simone de Beauvior’s The Second Sex and Che Guevara Speaks, a selection of writings and speeches by the Argentinian radical. Both titles are a testament to Neel’s unshakable commitment to Marxism and political upheaval, a loyalty that led her to meetings and even sustained friendships with novelists Howard Fast, Phillip Bonosky, and Annette Rubinstein.
ROBERT LOWELL CONNECTION
Neel’s depiction of the poet Kenneth Fearing was included in her show at Graham Gallery in the mid-60s and caught the eye of Robert Lowell. According to Hoban, the latter offered to trade one his manuscripts for a portrait of his own. The deal fell through when Lowell was hospitalized following a nervous breakdown, prompting critic and writer Elizabeth Hardwick, who was also his wife, to rent the work for $50 per month.
BREAKFAST
Among the 155 recipes of MoMA’s coveted “Artists’ Cookbook” is Neel’s simple and yet particularly luxurious breakfast: “orange juice, Brie cheese, whole wheat bread, black coffee, and Russian caviar ladled from a five-pound can.”
CULT STATUS
Neel’s compassion brought her an eclectic cast of friends, while her quick wit propelled her to the status of cult figure. Because of the latter, she makes an appearance alongside Allen Ginsburg in the Beat classic “Pull My Daisy,” a short film based on Neal Cassady’s antics. Jack Kerouac provides narration.
Susan Sarandon also plays Neel in Joe Gould’s “Secret,” a drama released in 2000 about the painter’s long time friend and famed eccentric. The film is based on the 1965 book by author and New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, who profiled Gould and chronicled his progress in writing the longest history of the world to ever exist.