i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository
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i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

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El Barrio / 99one might draw, following Burt, from their features. In playing with ratherthan into racial stereotypes, Neel disrupts ideas of biological inheritance basedon spurious concepts of racial purity. Is this matriarchal family of indeterminaterace—(“Most people in the world are in-betweens,” wrote Benedict andWeltƒsh)—in fact a more accurate representation of the norm, the vital center,in a heterogeneous nation?Neel’s repeated pairing of children in her Spanish Harlem portraits ledNeel not only to question dominant conceptions of class and race but to examinethe nature of childhood friendship in terms of the subtle power relationshipsbased on age, size, and personality type. In Richard and Hartley (1950,ƒg. 82), Hartley’s hand, placed protectively on his brother’s shoulder, suggestsaffection and concern; dependence on his elder brother is indicated by Hartley’splacement slightly behind Richard. Similarly, in Two Puerto Rican Boys(1956, ƒg. 83), the dominant-dependent relationship is explicitly cast in malefemaleterms: the doe-eyed boy sits deferentially behind his assertive, cowlickedfriend. And ƒnally, the more complex relations of teenagers who formincongruous and ultimately incompatible cliques is presented in the widelyvarying physiognomies of Three Puerto Rican Girls (1955, ƒg. 84), three youngwomen from the same roots who will branch off in different directions. Childrenbond by sex, girls with girls, boys with boys, and race is not a factor in determiningeither familial relations or friendships, at least as far as we can understandfrom these portraits. Her portrait of James Farmer’s Children (Tamiand Abbey Farmer, 1965, ƒg. 85) makes a more explicit political point: integrationis accomplished through intermarriage as well as through Farmer’s activism,and the result is neither the freakishness nor the homogenization fearedin turns at the time: each retains his or her unique “color” and personality.Neither innocent nor cute, Neel’s children are individuals as various as theshades of skin she records with such virtuosity, as polyglot as the community ofwhich they are a part. But Neel’s message is not the simplistic one of assimilationand inclusiveness—“The Family of Man” notion of the 1950s. If thewhite’s concept of selfhood is constructed in opposition to others who are different,then the grounds of identity are undercut when the other is “in-between”rather than within racial boundaries. Hence their power to disturb. Whiteviewers cannot look at the children and maintain the myth of racial purity.The minority response to the willed social myopia of whites, the “irreponsibility”claimed by Ellison, is found in Neel’s extended portrait of GeorgieArce, whom she painted between 1950 and 1959 as frequently as she paintedher own children. Arce thus becomes the paradigm of a Spanish Harlem childhood.Different characteristics dominate in each image, but Arce’s expression,with its combination of innocence and duplicity, remains constant despite thechanges in his appearance. In an early drawing from 1952 (ƒg. 86), Arce is

100 / Neel’s Social Realist Arttense and guarded, while in others he appears playful and relaxed. In a paintingdone at the same time, Arce smiles, but all playfulness is gone (ƒg. 87). Setagainst a pink ground, Arce’s skin takes on a sickly yellow pallor, and his knittedbrow and sad eyes reduce the smile to the ingratiating gesture of someonetrying to please. In a second painting from 1955 (ƒg. 88), the penknife withwhich he had cut a piece of wood or fruit in the early drawing has grown into acarving knife, and although it is only rubber, he is no longer playing but adoptingthe model of the gang member. However one may interpret his expressionsthroughout this series, in the context of Neel’s portraits of children, Arce literallystands apart, for he is always alone. His consistent isolation deƒnes himjust as the other children’s friendships deƒne them: he is antisocial. Arce’s threatmay be no more than a charade, but the white viewer is likely to read it as real.As Ruth Frankenberg has noted, this perceived threat inverts the institutionalizedrelations of racism, wherein minorites “actually have more to fear fromwhite people than vice versa.” 23 Neel’s painting makes us aware that this fear issocially constructed, as are the studied postures of aggressive self-conƒdenceArce adopts as a pitiful defense against institutionalized white power. 24Even if we do not know Georgie’s life story, we can with some conƒdencelocate its literary counterpart in Piri Thomas’s autobiography of growing up inSpanish Harlem, Down These Mean Streets (1967), which he wrote with theencouragement of the documentary ƒlmmaker Richard Leacock and thepainter Elaine de Kooning. Thomas’s vivid portrayal of a horriƒc childhood ofgang ƒghts, drugs, and thievery, leading inexorably to jail, is only hinted at inNeel’s portraits of Arce by the inclusion of the knives, but both boys are characterizedby anger and pain, disguised by bravado, which is their reponse to theirslum environment. Thomas’s use of vernacular speech captures in its rhythmand intonation the struggles with identity faced by the black Puerto Ricanwhose mother is white and whose siblings are light-skinned. At his brotherJosé’s insistence that “We’re Puerto Ricans, an’ we’re white,” Piri replies: “Say,José, didn’t you know the Negro made the scene in Puerto Rico way back? Andwhen the Spanish spics ran outta Indian coolies, they brought them big blacksfrom you know where. Poppa’s got moyeto blood . . . It’s a played-out lie aboutme—us—being white.” 25The Spanish Harlem portraits provide a picture of a vulnerable minoritypopulace of women and children. However, during the late 1950s, when Neelwas painting the decline of the Party through its aging leaders, she also paralleledher Spanish Harlem series with the emerging new radicals, the leaders ofblack culture. Whereas her earlier portrait of Alice Childress had exempliƒedthe alliance between communism and Negro civil rights, these later portraitsincluded authors who had defected from communism in order to assert an independentblack voice. The historian Mark Naison has argued that during and

El Barrio / 99one might draw, following Burt, from their features. In playing with ratherthan into racial stereotypes, Neel disrupts ideas of biological inheritance basedon spurious concepts of racial purity. Is this matriarchal family of indeterminaterace—(“Most people in the world are in-betweens,” wrote Benedict andWeltƒsh)—in fact a more accurate representation of the norm, the vital center,in a heterogeneous nation?Neel’s repeated pairing of children in her Spanish Harlem portraits ledNeel not only to question dominant conceptions of class and race but to examinethe nature of childhood friendship in terms of the subtle power relationshipsbased on age, size, and personality type. In Richard and Hartley (1950,ƒg. 82), Hartley’s hand, placed protectively on his brother’s shoulder, suggestsaffection and concern; dependence on his elder brother is indicated by Hartley’splacement slightly behind Richard. Similarly, in Two Puerto Rican Boys(1956, ƒg. 83), the dominant-dependent relationship is explicitly cast in malefemaleterms: the doe-eyed boy sits deferentially behind his assertive, cowlickedfriend. And ƒnally, the more complex relations of teenagers who formincongruous and ultimately incompatible cliques is presented in the widelyvarying physiognomies of Three Puerto Rican Girls (1955, ƒg. 84), three youngwomen from the same roots who will branch off in different directions. Childrenbond by sex, girls with girls, boys with boys, and race is not a factor in determiningeither familial relations or friendships, at least as far as we can understandfrom these portraits. Her portrait of James Farmer’s Children (Tamiand Abbey Farmer, 1965, ƒg. 85) makes a more explicit political point: integrationis accomplished through intermarriage as well as through Farmer’s activism,and the result is neither the freakishness nor the homogenization fearedin turns at the time: each retains his or her unique “color” and personality.Neither innocent nor cute, Neel’s children are individuals as various as theshades of skin she records with such virtuosity, as polyglot as the community ofwhich they are a part. But Neel’s message is not the simplistic one of assimilationand inclusiveness—“The Family of Man” notion of the 1950s. If thewhite’s concept of selfhood is constructed in opposition to others who are different,then the grounds of identity are undercut when the other is “in-between”rather than within racial boundaries. Hence their power to disturb. Whiteviewers cannot look at the children and maintain the myth of racial purity.The minority response to the willed social myopia of whites, the “irreponsibility”claimed by Ellison, is found in Neel’s extended portrait of GeorgieArce, whom she painted between 1950 and 1959 as frequently as she paintedher own children. Arce thus becomes the paradigm of a Spanish Harlem childhood.Different characteristics dominate in each image, but Arce’s expression,with its combination of innocence and duplicity, remains constant despite thechanges in his appearance. In an early drawing from 1952 (ƒg. 86), Arce is

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