Alice Neel was an influential artist of the mid-20th century — painting friends, family, peers, lovers, and strangers. But she stayed largely unrecognized until after she died in 1984. Now her work is on display at the David Zwirner gallery in LA, where you can see her depictions of queer people and their allies, including poets Allen Ginsburg and Adrienne Rich, former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, and other activists, dancers, and scholars. The exhibition is At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World. It runs now through November 2.
“[Neel] was able to create atmospheres in her canvas that spoke not only to our individual stories, but our collective humanity,” says Hilton Als, the exhibition curator and staff writer at The New Yorker. “And at the same time, she was able to frame it with a clarity and distillation, I would say, of her background as an artist, and her real interest in trying to get to the essence of people, so there's not a lot of tomfoolery. And when you unpack those paintings, when they're coming out of crates, or when you're doing any installation with her work, there is immediately this psychic energy.”
Neel’s lifestyle was also outside the norm of her era. She painted portraits when that style wasn’t popular, and her home was in Harlem (uptown) while other artists lived downtown.
Al notes that Neel was put off by the Bohemianism of downtown Manhattan, which she saw as a “pose.”
“By moving uptown to a largely Hispanic neighborhood, she was not only making a choice in terms of the culture that she was attracted to. She was also making a choice in terms of domesticity, the life that she preferred of people in Harlem, East Harlem, with their doors open, community — that she felt much more comfortable and also felt much more comfortable raising two children in. It's very important for us to remember that during these years, she was mothering, and she was working.”
When it came to painting women, Neel portrayed them in frank ways. Some were pregnant and/or breastfeeding.
“Annie Sprinkle, 1982” by Alice Neel. Credit: © The Estate of Alice Neel, courtesy of The Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner.
One of them was Annie Sprinkle, a sex worker in downtown NY. Al says Sprinkle was joyful about her body and exhibiting it. “I think the energy is one of pure happiness to be in her soul and to be in her body, but also to be an advocate for women to express and to feel their uniqueness.”
Neel was in her 80s when she painted Sprinkle — one of her last subjects. It’s an example of people never being too old to grow, Al emphasizes. “I think that Alice kept growing with her subjects.”
“Jackie Curtis as a Boy, No. 2, 1972” by Alice Neel. Credit: © The Estate of Alice Neel, courtesy of The Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner.
For this exhibition, why did Al specifically want to focus on the queer community and their supporters? He says it was a significant chapter of her work that hadn’t gotten much attention or been “properly excavated.”
“And I thought it was time. We're living in a multi-cultural, multi-diverse, multi-sexual, multi-gendered world. And … we're catching up with her poetic acceptance of other people. And by poetic, I mean her lyricism and her understanding of the beauty and difference.”
“Richard Gibbs, 1968” by Alice Neel. Credit: © The Estate of Alice Neel, courtesy of The Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner.
Why did Neel not get much attention when she was alive?
“I think it has a lot to do with fashion. … I think that by not foregoing what she knew to be true about herself, which is that she liked looking at people and rendering people, she was considered kind of old-fashioned,” Al explains. “And I think that Alice, by staying the course, shows us the ways in which art fashions that come and go are really art fashions that come and go. The thing that is important is to stay true to your own vision. And that's another thing that I really want folks to feel, and particularly young people who are painting artists, I want them to feel this magnetic pull to her work as an example of staying your own course, not replicating other things, not following the herd.”
“Kris Kirsten, 1971” by Alice Neel. Credit: © The Estate of Alice Neel, courtesy of The Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner.
“Allen Ginsberg, 1966” by Alice Neel. Credit: © The Estate of Alice Neel, courtesy of The Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner.