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182 / Notes10. Neel was commissioned by their mutual friend Katherine Cole to paint Lynd’s portraitin 1969. Then on the faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, Lynd was to Neel a“lion,” and the artist gave her face the appearance of intelligence and strength sheneeded to rise, as a woman, to the top of her academic ƒeld.11. Perhaps for similar reasons, the regionalist painter Grant Wood would borrow thestiff poses and architectural conventions of Currier and Ives prints for some of hispaintings such as Dinner for Threshers (1933), a quite conscious parody of our culture’soversimpliƒed, idealized vision of farm life.12. Isabetta was born on November 24, 1928, at the Fifth Avenue Hospital where theWell-Baby Clinic was located.13. Susan Noyes Platt, Modernism in the 1920s: Interpretations of Modern Art in NewYork from Expressionism to Constructivism (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985),67.14. Rom Landau, “Modern Movements in German Art,” The Arts 14/1 (July 1928), 28.15. Neel must have learned about Munch’s work in the same way she absorbed thein„uence of German expressionism; through periodicals. Although Munch wasshown in the 1913 Armory Show, his paintings were not exhibited in this countryagain until 1950. However, publications available in English, from Julius Meier-Graefe’s 1907 Modern Art on, cited Munch as a precursor of expressionism, so nodoubt Neel was familiar with the artist. Although Gustav Schie„er’s two-volumecatalogue raisonné of Munch’s graphic work was published in Berlin in 1927, thereis no evidence that Neel had access to a copy.16. Hills, Alice Neel, 22.17. Michel Foucault, “The Birth of the Asylum,” from Madness and Civilization,(trans. Richard Howard [New York: Random House, 1965]), quoted in Paul Rabinow,ed., Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 159–60.18. Hills, Alice Neel, p. 37.19. The French surrealists are the obvious example here.20. Hills, Alice Neel, 32.21. From 1928 to 1930, Carlos, a Cuban aristocrat, tried to keep the family a„oat bytaking commercial art jobs. His parents also sent money, and promised to sendAlice and Carlos to Paris. On May 1, Carlos took Isabetta to Cuba for a visit so thatthey would be free to go to Paris. When, with the onset of the Depression, Carlos’sparents had to withdraw their offer, Carlos went on to Paris on his own. Accordingto Isabetta’s friend, Maria Diaz, Carlos felt that his actions were necessitated bywhat he felt was neglect of his child. During the winter of 1929 to 1930, Carloscame home to ƒnd Isabetta in her bassinet on the ƒre escape, slowly being coveredby the falling snow while Neel painted. For Alice, the loss of both her husband andher child was devastating. On August 15, having lost over twenty-ƒve pounds sinceCarlos left, she collapsed and was hospitalized.22. See, for example, Dick Polsky, interview with Alice Neel, tape no. 2, April 29, 1981,Oral History Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University. The quote is fromCindy Nemser, Art Talk (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), 125.23. Poems such as Alice Walker’s “Now That the Book is Finished” (c. 1975) situatethe con„ict in the body, as did Alice Neel’s painting forty-eight years earlier: “Now