i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

6El Barrio:Portrait of Spanish HarlemI love you Harlem your life your pregnant women, your relief lines outsidethe bank, full of women who no dress in Saks 5th ave would ƒt, teeth missing,weary, out of shape, little black arms around their necks clinging to theirskirts all the wear and worry of struggle on their faces. what a treasure ofgoodness and life shambles thru the streets, abandoned, despised, chargedthe most, given the worst / I love you for electing Marcantonio, and him forbeing what he is And for the rich deep vein of human feeling buried underyour ƒre engines your poverty and your lovesAlice Neel, unpublished notes, Neel Arts, New York CityIn 1938, pregnant with a son by her lover José Santiago, Neel moved fromGreenwich Village to Spanish Harlem to be close to José’s relatives. She markedthe move with a small painting that caricatures the two of them walking uptownthrough Central Park, her belly echoing the shape of his guitar. She titledthe painting The Flight Into Egypt, and in contrast with the vital artistic andintellectual milieu she had enjoyed for the previous six years in GreenwichVillage, she must have felt as if she were entering exile in the desert. Yet Neelchose to make this important time of transition, in her life and in the historyof left-wing art generally, into an opportunity to initiate a new social realist90