Alice Neel: Painted Truths 8 July - Whitechapel Gallery
Alice Neel: Painted Truths 8 July - Whitechapel Gallery Alice Neel: Painted Truths 8 July - Whitechapel Gallery
Psychological PortraitsFrom the late 1950s until her death, Neel’s portraitsdisplay a more fluid approach which becomes manifestespecially in her vivid sense of colour and animatedbrushwork. Rather than capture a single moment intime, these later portraits represent an accumulationof perceptions gathered over many sittings. Neel sawherself as akin to a therapist, revealing her sitters’psyche through their physical relationship to otherfigures, or by homing in on their idiosyncrasies. Butaccording to some sitters they manifest a projectionof Neel’s own anxieties.This approach to portraiture is diametrically opposedto that of Andy Warhol whom Neel painted in 1970.Warhol often worked from photographs, made portraitsof people he’d never met and was interested primarily ina person’s constructed, public persona. Neel’s portrait,as tender as it is exposing, therefore offers a fascinatingcounterpoise to the celebrity cult around the famouslyelusive Warhol.Alongside her portraits of art world personalities, Neelpainted equally probing portraits of neighbours andacquaintances, hard working, ordinary Americans, amongthem Dewald Strauss, the Fuller Brush Man, 1965. AfterKristallnacht, which marked the open persecution ofJews in Nazi Germany, Strauss had been interned in theconcentration camp of Dachau. He escaped to the USwhere he served in the army during World War II and wasawarded a Purple Heart for bravery. As a door-to-doorsalesman of brushes, Strauss had to make twenty fivesales a day so not to lose his job. However, according toNeel: ‘…he was so happy to be in America.’
Cityscapes and Portraitsfrom MemoryNeel’s cityscapes span the years she spent in GreenwichVillage, 1932-38, Spanish Harlem, 1938-62, and finally,the Upper West Side, 1962-84. Many of the GreenwichVillage works were painted for the Public Works of ArtProject, which formed part of President Roosevelt’s NewDeal economic programme. During her years in SpanishHarlem, Neel was a single mother raising two boys.Her cityscapes from this time convey a sense of isolationand imprisonment, as well as giving an impression oftenement living. In 1959, after her sons left home and herrelationship with Sam Brody, Hartley’s father, came to anend, Neel painted Night, a work that displays heradmiration for painter Clyfford Still. With her arrival onthe Upper West Side, Neel’s palette lightened, as a resultof which her paintings seem less claustrophobic andfilled with sunlight.Throughout her career Neel painted portraits frommemory. Robert Henri, a former teacher of Neel’s atPhiladelphia School of Design for Women and theleading theorist of the early 20th-century realistAshcan School, regarded memory as an essential toolfor artists. Henri believed that memory captured aperson’s essence and Neel recommended his bookThe Art Spirit to fellow artists. Neel’s portraits frommemory frequently dispense with detailed description,using caricature to invoke biting satire. But she alsomade paintings such as Dead Father, 1946, whichmemorialise poignant personal moments. Neel neverpainted her father in life. Here he is shown as sheremembered him in his funeral casket and in a mannerthat echoes the influence of Latin American art.
- Page 1 and 2: Alice Neel: Painted Truths8 July -
- Page 3 and 4: Alice Neel: Painted Truths8th July-
- Page 5: Allegory & Essential PortraitNeel
- Page 9 and 10: Old AgeNeel started to paint older
- Page 11 and 12: 81.3 x 55.9 cmCollection of Lillian
- Page 13 and 14: Ellie Poindexter1962Oil on canvas76
- Page 15 and 16: Collection of Monika and Jonathan B
- Page 17 and 18: Martin Kippenberger to the wall-mou
- Page 19 and 20: Keeping It Real: An Exhibition in F
- Page 21: Children’s Art Commission: Jake a
Psychological PortraitsFrom the late 1950s until her death, <strong>Neel</strong>’s portraitsdisplay a more fluid approach which becomes manifestespecially in her vivid sense of colour and animatedbrushwork. Rather than capture a single moment intime, these later portraits represent an accumulationof perceptions gathered over many sittings. <strong>Neel</strong> sawherself as akin to a therapist, revealing her sitters’psyche through their physical relationship to otherfigures, or by homing in on their idiosyncrasies. Butaccording to some sitters they manifest a projectionof <strong>Neel</strong>’s own anxieties.This approach to portraiture is diametrically opposedto that of Andy Warhol whom <strong>Neel</strong> painted in 1970.Warhol often worked from photographs, made portraitsof people he’d never met and was interested primarily ina person’s constructed, public persona. <strong>Neel</strong>’s portrait,as tender as it is exposing, therefore offers a fascinatingcounterpoise to the celebrity cult around the famouslyelusive Warhol.Alongside her portraits of art world personalities, <strong>Neel</strong>painted equally probing portraits of neighbours andacquaintances, hard working, ordinary Americans, amongthem Dewald Strauss, the Fuller Brush Man, 1965. AfterKristallnacht, which marked the open persecution ofJews in Nazi Germany, Strauss had been interned in theconcentration camp of Dachau. He escaped to the USwhere he served in the army during World War II and wasawarded a Purple Heart for bravery. As a door-to-doorsalesman of brushes, Strauss had to make twenty fivesales a day so not to lose his job. However, according to<strong>Neel</strong>: ‘…he was so happy to be in America.’
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