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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The Women’s Wing / 133lenced the discussion by shouting, “The reason women don’t succeed is theydon’t have balls.” Neel’s now-famous retort, “Women have balls. They’re justhigher up,” 26 had the ego-reinforcing effect of Billy Jean King’s aces againstBobby Riggs.One reason that she was able to follow a schedule of approximately two appearancesper month—either a lecture, a panel discussion, or a talk at an exhibitionopening—and continue to paint, is that many of the administrative detailsof her burgeoning career were handled by her daughter-in-law Nancy.Nancy also posed frequently for Neel as a member of the family, but in Nancyand the Rubber Plant (1975, ƒg. 126), one of Neel’s most monumental portraitsfrom the 1970s, she posed as the professional she was. Seated in front ofthe towering house plant, Nancy’s torso is like a lean trunk from which springsa syncopated canopy of dancing green leaves, a visualization of that vital, organicnetwork to which Neel was connected through Nancy’s tireless assistance.Peering through the leaves is Neel’s 1940 portrait of WPA ofƒcial AudreyMcMahon, whose glowering stare contrasts Neel’s past artworld rejectionswith the open, intelligent acceptance found in Nancy’s face. At 80 inchesone of Neel’s tallest paintings, it is a literal measure of the importance of thenew generation of feminists, as exempliƒed by Nancy, to her artistic career. 27In contrast, feminist artists portrayed the network through group portraits,for instance, Sylvia Sleigh’s diptych Soho Twenty Gallery (1974) or May Stevens’sMysteries and Politics (1978). According to May Stevens, Neel was uninterestedin ideas of collaboratively produced art or in art about group cooperation.And although she willingly participated in conferences, panels, andartist residencies, she remained a loner, with few close women friends. 28 At thememorial service for Neel at the Whitney Museum on February 7, 1985, PatHills publicly acknowledged the struggles she had had with Neel in writingthe ƒrst monograph devoted to her work in 1983. “Along the way Alice and Ifought, and, for several months, we didn’t speak.” In her fair-minded analysisof the cause of the difƒculties, Hills summarized Neel’s attitude toward the“network”:Many people regard her as difƒcult, stubborn, egocentric, and opinionated. Butwhat they forget is the context—the milieu in which she worked . . . namely, the artworld centered in New York City. (“The rat race,” Alice used to call it.) In thisworld, she was determined ƒrst to gain a foothold, then to achieve the recognitionher talent deserved, and to do it on her own terms . . . She became singlemindedand unsentimental about her goals. She began to join artists’ groups, started callingcritics, and established a relationship with the Graham gallery . . . In this hectic “ratrace” Neel found herself in, a favorite motto became “I’d rather be shot as a wolfthan a lamb.” 29

134 / The New York Art NetworkThis lone wolf attitude, a single-minded determination to write herself intohistory, explains why Neel was an inspiration but never a true mentor to theyounger generation of women artists.Nevertheless, to all appearances Neel was an integral part of the women’smovement, for she was ubiquitous. Neel’s participation at one of the earliestand more important of women’s conferences in these years, “The Conferenceof Women in the Visual Arts” at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington,D.C., April 20–22, 1972, merits further discussion. Almost all feminist eventswere held in the egalitarian panel format, and Neel was one member of apanel with M. C. Richards (potter), Lila Katzen (sculptor), Agnes Denes(painter), Elaine de Kooning (painter, critic), and June Wayne (printmaker,critic). Little interested in the democratic format or the topic of discussion,Neel wrested control of the platform to show slides of her work. Although itwas the most memorable of the conference’s disruptions, it was not atypical. Atthe panel “Critical Judgments,” with Lisa Bear, Lucy Lippard, Marcia Tucker,Linda Nochlin, Josephine Withers, and Cindy Nemser, June Wayne “jumpedup and demanded a place on the platform, insisting that ‘only artists shouldjudge artists.’” In reviewing the conference, a bewildered Cindy Nemser commented:“It seemed to me that the basic antagonism, the love-hate relationshipbetween artist, critic and curator, was undermining our common ground aswomen that had brought us to the conference.” 30 Skeptical about the possibilityof disinterested action in the commercialized New York artworld, Neelwould have found such comments naive. 31In addition to Ann Sutherland Harris, who had co-founded the Women’sCaucus for Art at the CAA in Los Angeles in 1972, Cindy Nemser, who hadco-founded the Feminist Art Journal that same year, was Neel’s earliest andstrongest supporter. In 1973, Nemser wrote an article for Ms. magazine, “AliceNeel: Portraits of Four Decades,” and the following spring and summer publisheda two-part interview in Feminist Art Journal that formed the basis of herinvaluable interview with Neel in Art Talk: Conversations with Twelve WomenArtists in 1975. In the same year she wrote a catalog essay for Neel’s retrospectiveat the Georgia Museum of Art (September 10–October 19), the full retrospective(83 paintings) that the Whitney failed to do. Nemser’s essay includeda description of the portrait Neel had painted the previous June, Cindy Nemserand Chuck (ƒg. 127). The only one of Neel’s portraits of feminist art critics inwhich the subjects are naked, the two are the Adam and Eve of feminism. Thetitle, Cindy Nemser and Chuck, rather than Cindy and Chuck Nemser or Mr.and Mrs. Chuck Nemser, emphasizes what the composition makes evident:Chuck, although an editor of the Feminist Art Journal, is in the background,supporting Cindy and pushing her forward, while she, as the powerhouse,emerges phallically from his torso.Nemser read the portrait in terms of her marriage: “We sat close together,

134 / The New York Art NetworkThis lone wolf attitude, a single-minded determination to write herself intohistory, explains why Neel was an inspiration but never a true mentor to theyounger generation of women artists.Nevertheless, to all appearances Neel was an integral part of the women’smovement, for she was ubiquitous. Neel’s participation at one of the earliestand more important of women’s conferences in these years, “The Conferenceof Women in the Visual Arts” at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington,D.C., April 20–22, 1972, merits further discussion. Almost all feminist eventswere held in the egalitarian panel format, and Neel was one member of apanel with M. C. Richards (potter), Lila Katzen (sculptor), Agnes Denes(painter), Elaine de Kooning (painter, critic), and June Wayne (printmaker,critic). Little interested in the democratic format or the topic of discussion,Neel wrested control of the platform to show slides of her work. Although itwas the most memorable of the conference’s disruptions, it was not atypical. Atthe panel “Critical Judgments,” with Lisa Bear, Lucy Lippard, Marcia Tucker,Linda Nochlin, Josephine Withers, and Cindy Nemser, June Wayne “jumpedup and demanded a place on the platform, insisting that ‘only artists shouldjudge artists.’” In reviewing the conference, a bewildered Cindy Nemser commented:“It seemed to me that the basic antagonism, the love-hate relationshipbetween artist, critic and curator, was undermining our common ground aswomen that had brought us to the conference.” 30 Skeptical about the possibilityof disinterested action in the commercialized New York artworld, Neelwould have found such comments naive. 31In addition to Ann Sutherland Harris, who had co-founded the Women’sCaucus for Art at the CAA in Los Angeles in 1972, Cindy Nemser, who hadco-founded the Feminist Art Journal that same year, was Neel’s earliest andstrongest supporter. In 1973, Nemser wrote an article for Ms. magazine, “AliceNeel: Portraits of Four Decades,” and the following spring and summer publisheda two-part interview in Feminist Art Journal that formed the basis of herinvaluable interview with Neel in Art Talk: Conversations with Twelve WomenArtists in 1975. In the same year she wrote a catalog essay for Neel’s retrospectiveat the Georgia Museum of Art (September 10–October 19), the full retrospective(83 paintings) that the Whitney failed to do. Nemser’s essay includeda description of the portrait Neel had painted the previous June, Cindy Nemserand Chuck (ƒg. 127). The only one of Neel’s portraits of feminist art critics inwhich the subjects are naked, the two are the Adam and Eve of feminism. Thetitle, Cindy Nemser and Chuck, rather than Cindy and Chuck Nemser or Mr.and Mrs. Chuck Nemser, emphasizes what the composition makes evident:Chuck, although an editor of the Feminist Art Journal, is in the background,supporting Cindy and pushing her forward, while she, as the powerhouse,emerges phallically from his torso.Nemser read the portrait in terms of her marriage: “We sat close together,

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