i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

112 / The New York Art Networkthe New York avant-garde during the early 1950s. At that time, the Club’s membersincluded Alfred Leslie, Larry Rivers, Grace Hartigan, and Joan Mitchell. 1By 1954, when Neel was attending, many of these second-generation artistshad turned to the ƒgure while painting in a gestural manner. Neel’s style wasdirectly affected by the Club’s artists. By 1958, her loose, open facture and painterlysurfaces re„ect her renewed interest in European expressionists like Kokoschkaunder the in„uence of the second-generation abstract expressionists.In 1962, the year Neel ƒrst gained recognition, and Pop Art emerged on thescene, the artworld began its period of rapid expansion. Just as in the 1950s and1960s she had adopted an abstract expressionist facture, so in the 1970s, herpainting became larger and brighter under the in„uence of pop art and thenew realism. In turn, our culture’s image of the artist shifted from that of therebel and loner to the artist as a personality or celebrity. Neel charted thischange in her portraits of Frank O’Hara (1960) and Andy Warhol (1970), twoimportant paintings from her artworld gallery. This new “wing” includes aswell the new generation of femininist artists and critics, who will be discussedin a separate section because of their importance to Neel’s career. In her portrayalsof both male and female artworld ƒgures Neel addresses entrenchednegative stereotypes about artists’ sexuality. After 1969, what had been an acknowledgedbut unmentioned fact became an important topic in contemporaryart and criticism, and Neel, whose sympathies for gay men had been partof her sympathies for oppressed persons in general, explored the changingconƒgurations of professional and sexual identity in her sitters.The transition from the “Proletarian Portrait Gallery” to the “New York ArtNetwork” is exempliƒed by Neel’s participation in the underground ƒlm PullMy Daisy (1959–1960). Although Neel was not part of the ofƒcial membership,the Club provided the connection with the artists involved in the ƒlm.Produced and directed by the photographer Robert Frank and the painter AlfredLeslie and narrated by Jack Kerouac, the short ƒlm’s raw, improvised formis modeled on beat poetry and abstract expressionist painting. Neel was recruitedto play the mother of the priest whom the poets and artists—GregoryCorso, Allen Ginsberg, and Larry Rivers—make the focus of extended mockery.A portly ƒfty-nine, she was perfect for the role, and undoubtedly she enjoyedworking with the members of the new bohemia that had transformedAmerican art of the 1950s (ƒg. 101). Frank and Leslie also asked her to submita statement to their “beat” review, “The Hasty Papers.” In it, Neel made explicitthe connection in her own mind between the old and the new generation,and also ƒrst characterized her project as Balzacian: “I decided to paint ahuman comedy—such as Balzac had done in literature. In the 30’s I paintedthe beat of those days—Joe Gould, Sam Putnam, Ken Fearing, etc.” 2Pull My Daisy has a sort of innocence and spontaneity about it that would