i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

Notes / 183that the book is ƒnished / Now that I know my characters / will live / I can love mychild again / She need sit no longer / in the back of my heart / the lonely sucking ofher thumb / a giant stopper in my throat.”24. Lawrence Alloway, “Patricia Hills, Alice Neel” (review), Art Journal 44/2 (Summer1984), 191.25. Robert Storr, “Alice Neel at Robert Miller, Art in America 70/9 (October 1982),130.26. Lucy R. Lippard, “Introduction,” From the Center: feminist essays on women’s art(New York: Dutton, 1976), 6.Chapter 4. Art on the Left in the 1930s (pp. 45–66)1. The couple had met in 1924 at the Pennsylvania Academy’s summer school programin Chester Springs; they were married in the spring of 1925, but Neel refusedto accompany Carlos to Cuba until the following winter (see Gerald Belcher andMargaret Belcher, Collecting Souls, Gathering Dust: The Struggles of Two AmericanArtists, Alice Neel and Rhoda Medary [New York: Paragon House, 1989], 71–75).After overcoming her indecision, she found her stay in Cuba a seminal one. As sheconfessed to Hills: “My life in Cuba . . . conditioned me a lot.” Patricia Hills, AliceNeel (New York: Abrams, 1983, 1995), 21.2. Hills, Alice Neel, 33.3. Juan A. Martinez, Cuban Art and National Identity: The Vanguardia Painters,1920s–1940s (Ph.D. Diss., Florida State University, 1992), ch. 1.4. Ibid., 90.5. Ibid., 97.6. Marcelo Pogolotti, Del Barro Y Las Voces (Havana: Editorial Letras Bubas, 1982),n.p. My thanks to Prof. Lynette Bosch for translating the quoted passage.7. Letter from Neel to Robert Stewart at the National Portrait Gallery, summer 1969.8. These artists are discussed by Juan A. Martinez in “Cuban Vanguardia Painting inthe 1930s,” Latin American Art 5/2 (fall 1993), 36–38.9. John Dos Passos, “Margo Dowling,” The Big Money (New York: Harcourt, Brace,1933), 253.10. Two pieces of anecdotal evidence suggest that Neel never abandoned her “Cuban”identity. In 1983, she told Johnny Carson (and the television audience) that shehad moved to Spanish Harlem with José Santiago in 1939 in order “to correct themistakes I made with the ƒrst Latin.” During the 1960s or 1970s, after Carlos’sdeath and Isabetta’s emigration to Miami, Neel drafted a letter to Fidel Castro (c/othe Center for Cuban Studies in New York) praising his regime and requesting permissionto paint his portrait, explaining: “I have wanted for years to do a portrait ofyou for your government to give to the people of Cuba. My experience, my politicalallegiances as well as my work as a painter have been in„uenced by the same forcesas those which brought about the Cuban revolution . . .” [Draft of a letter at NeelArts, New York, New York.] Although the letter is undated, it may well be from thetime of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The June 1962 issue of Mainstream fea-