Not Just A Face In A Crowd - On "Alice Neel: People Come First"
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984) , Margaret Evans Pregnant, 1978, Oil on canvas, 57 3/4 × 38 1/2 in. (146.7 × 97.8 cm), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Gift of Barbara Lee, The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women, © The Estate of Alice Neel
As Alice Neel's survey show, “Alice Neel: People Come First,” comes to a close at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Artists Equity reflects on the impact that Neel had on portraiture, figurative painting, and the culture of New York City in general. A prominent member of NYAE during our early years, Neel's influence penetrates deep into our organization and acts as an inspiration for our programming to this day. We continue to honor Neel, her legacy, and the power of portraiture through providing portrait and figurative artists unique, specialized opportunities, including our Portrait Studio and exhibition opportunities like our current call-for-entries, Recumbent: The Art of Lying, a juried open call focusing on depictions of the human body.
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Since the beginning of mankind’s creative endeavors, the human figure has been employed as a conduit to convey complex narratives and capture sweeping emotions, as well as act as a visual shorthand to examine latent, deeply ingrained cultural belief systems. The manner in which a body is depicted and, perhaps more importantly, is intended to be viewed within a specific cultural context and time period is incredibly revealing. The subjects within worthy portraiture can be imbued with gravitas and great significance, but yet can inspire complete, total empathy.
At Alice Neel’s retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alice Neel: People Come First, the artist utilizes the unique strengths of the artform of portraiture to champion and empower the disenfranchised. The show - which includes the wide array of paintings, drawings and sketches Neel created during her illustrious and prolific fifty-plus-year career- displays a persistent drive to portray the many facets of New York City society and the everyday people who resided within it. Particularly, she was compelled to depict people who were considered outsiders, often marginalized and living on the fringes of society. The subjects of her paintings are people from dramatically different walks of life and diverse social backgrounds, including leftist thinkers, Civil Rights activists, bohemians, battered housewives, expectant mothers, the critically/terminally ill, and the working-class residents of Spanish Harlem. Neel recognized the power of the unassuming yet ubiquitous art of portraiture to preserve its subjects’ stories, as well to give them agency and power. In combination with the artform’s accessibility, Neel’s dedication to making these individuals’ humanity strikingly visible and intimately understood compelled her to put a spotlight on these forgotten people and their complex internal narratives.
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984) , James Farmer, 1964,Oil on canvas , 43 3/4 × 30 1/4 in. (111.1 × 76.8 cm) , National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Gift of Hartley S. Neel and Richard Neel, © The Estate of Alice Neel
Through her paintings, Neel transforms her sitters into monolithic encapsulations of their environment and the society they inhabit. New York City and the often hard-scrabble and challenging circumstances these individuals face shape their very being. However, they in turn shape and influence their surroundings, forming a reciprocal relationship with the city in which they live. This conflation of the streets, architecture, and mood of New York City with its denizens can be reflected by the color palette she selects. Slate greys, mossy greens, warm, orange-tinted browns, ruddy pinks, and vibrant atmospheric blues have a robust presence in both Neel’s cityscapes and her figures. Neel’s palette conveys a sense of something inhabited, familiar, and storied, yet also well-worn. Gritty and tinged with an aura of melancholy, her paintings convey a city and people who have weathered poverty, seemingly insurmountable tribulation and at times, subjects on the verge of collapse. Even in her use of color, Neel is unflinching in her portrayal of the harsh, often brutal realities of residing in New York and American life in general. While she does not whitewash the many existential hardships, Neel also emphasizes the durability and perseverance found within everyday life.
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984)), Ninth Avenue El, 1935 , Oil on canvas, 24 × 30 in. (61 × 76.2 cm),Cheim and Read, New York , © The Estate of Alice Neel
In works such as “Ninth Avenue El” and “T.B. Harlem,” the viewer is given a glimpse of two scenes. The former depicts exhausted workers trudging home on a dreary night in Great Depression era New York, hunched over and bundled up against the bitter cold. The ill-maintained infrastructure of the station appears dingy and sickly in the artificial lights of storefronts and passing vehicles. The latter depicts a young man in Spanish Harlem who has fallen victim to an outbreak of tuberculosis (a disease that disproportionately affects poor communities of color.) In both paintings, Neel does not shy away from the bleak periods that punctuate the mundanity of life. However, in both works she emphasizes the dignity and resolve of the subjects depicted. In “Ninth Avenue El,” we see subtle acts of intimacy between the commuters- two men casually hang out underneath a street sign, a mother gently guides her child along the street as the faint glow of bus headlights illuminates their bodies. Despite the clear difficulties and strain within these people’s lives, a sense of kinship forged by their mutual circumstances and shared urban ecosystem. With these small touches, a sense of wistful peace is also imbued into this late-night scene. Likewise, while Neel does not sugarcoat or minimize the agonizing and unnecessary suffering of Carlos Santiago Negrón (the subject of “T.B. Harlem,) she makes sure to emphasize his strength. Even as he lies in bed with a sizable divot apparent in his chest from the tuberculosis treatment and his eyes sunken in from prolonged illness, Neel depicts him as present, alert, and sitting up. The man’s slender fingers tenderly point to his bandaged wound, reminiscent of the icons of Christian martyrs. His gaze, while weary from enduring months of painful illness, is firm and unyielding, with a sense of life and purpose still shining behind his eyes. Negrón remains resilient and defiant in the face of the senseless cruelty and indifference which contributed to the outbreak which caused his current ailment. In both works, New York is portrayed as a place where great injustice and inequity exists. It is omnipresent within the very construction of the city and the bodies of those who reside there. Yet, through its ordinary people and the lives they lead, New York City is infused with a scrappy resilience, a beauty defined by its ability to evolve and persist despite its flaws, and the seemingly limitless potential that arises from this drive to persevere. The people become the city itself, incorporated in its infrastructure, foundational to its very existence.
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984) T.B. Harlem, 1940, Oil on canvas, 30 × 30 in. (76.2 × 76.2 cm), National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay © The Estate of Alice Neel
This central belief of people’s monumental importance extends further to the manner in which Neel depicts the human body. In Neel’s portraits, the subject’s face acts as the core of the painting, dictating the entire composition of the sitter’s body and environment. Almost every aspect of the artwork depends on how the subject’s face is constructed by Neel; all other elements are added on the canvas as a direct response. Neel renders the features of her sitters as solid and immutable, to the point of looking topographical, comparable to a stone facade of a building or aerial view of a landscape. The expressions of Neel’s sitters are often stoic and steely, implacably contributing to their unflinching view. In contrast, the body of the subject becomes a natural extension of the variety of wrinkles, curvatures, reacting sympathetically to the asymmetrical aspects of the sitter's face. The rest of the body radiates outwards from the face. Their bodies are highly expressive, with playfully gestural, fluid appendages reminiscent of curving roads and flowing rivers. The combination of lithe, elegantly tactile limbs with well-defined prominent facial features allows Neel’s portraits to be highly sensual and sensitive to the sitters’ distinctive characteristics without being cloying or sentimental. By blending these two aspects, Neel’s paintings exude a raw intensity while retaining the appearance and distinct personality of the sitter.
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984) , Andy Warhol, 1970, Oil and acrylic on linen , 60 × 40 in. (152.4 × 101.6 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Gift of Timothy Collins, © The Estate of Alice Neel
Neel’s human figures are often outlined and accentuated by a bright, highly pigmented blue line which interlaces through their fingers, resting on the tips of their joints, and hugging the contour of the body. The line has a dual function: to create delineation between the figure and their surroundings, as well to allow the figure to expand and connect into their setting and permeate its surroundings. Neel’s backgrounds are often intentionally stark, sometimes almost entirely blank. Large flat planes of color and frayed, quick brushstrokes often are the only things to imply the sitter’s surroundings. Through this, the body expands into and subsumes its environment, becoming an all-encompassing structure within the artwork.
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984), Linda Nochlin and Daisy, 1973,Oil on canvas ,55 7/8 × 44 in. (141.9 × 111.8 cm) ,Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Seth K. Sweetser Fund © The Estate of Alice Neel
Through Neel’s hand, each person and body is its own self-contained structure and ecosystem, speaking multitudes. The character of each individual Neel painted, while present in each painting, is not something that can be absorbed in one glance. Each sitter is presented as a human being with many facets, containing many narratives, some which are initially contradictory at first viewing. Even in portraits of pairs, mothers and children, lovers and siblings, Neel resists the temptation to present the subjects as a set. With young children and babies, she recognizes them as a separate individual rather than just an extension of their parents, they are their own beings with their own stories, each with their own potential. Neel understands that although New York is composed of many people, all of whom shape and form the world around them, it is dishonest to summarize them and reduce them to simply a part of a larger whole. Each can be presented on their own as someone of great importance. The unmistakable value of portraiture is to lend each individual significance, even those overlooked by most of society.
Article By Gina Mischianti
Alice Neel: People Come First continues through August 1 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan). The exhibition was curated by Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey.