i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

6 / The Subjects of the Artistclass at the invitation of another friend, the socially concerned painter RudolfBaranik. Beyond their ready wit and broad range of knowledge, Neel’s lecturesconsistently beguiled their audience with the contrast between her grandmotherlyappearance and her provocative language. With the arrival of theWomen’s Movement in the late 1960s, Neel was constantly in demand.Driven by the desire to bring her art to the public, Neel appeared at almostevery one of the openings of her solo exhibitions, no matter how remote theirlocation, and invariably her lecture would be part of the opening night festivities.Her artistic reputation thus became inextricably bound up with her talks,and unfortunately the journalistic press, sensing the broad popular appeal ofa juicy life story, enthusiastically bought into it, adding their own decorative„ourishes.The format of the newspaper and magazine articles on Neel forms an unvaryinglitany into which passing reference to her work is made to ƒt. The ƒrstfew paragraphs invariably contain a sexist description of Neel’s grandmotherlyappearance and its con„ict with her “unladylike” personality:Alice Neel is like an old pagan priestess somehow overlooked in the triumph of anew religion. Indeed, with her shrewdly cherubic face, her witty and wizard eyes,she has the mischievous look of a maternal witch whose only harm lies in her compulsionto tell the truth. (Jack Kroll, Newsweek, 1966)Seated in front of a [canvas] in her blue smock, her bright little green eyes squintingand blinking behind her glasses, her plump legs spread forcefully apart and herspace-shoed feet planted solidly on the „oor, she picked up her brush gingerly andwailed, “I’m just scared to death . . .” While she formed our torsos . . . she chatteredon incessantly . . . but when she came to our faces, she became transformed; herface became ecstatic, her mouth hung open, her eyes were glazed and she neveruttered a word. (Cindy Nemser, catalog essay, Georgia Museum of Art, 1975)Such patronizing descriptions are the content of a newspaper’s “Living”pages, to which the reviews of Neel’s work were frequently relegated. Althoughsuch extended attention to physical appearance is unlikely to be found in thecritical discussion of art by men, the cliché of the creative artist who is seizedwith “ecstasy” while painting is as old as art history itself. Its relentless repetitionin the literature on Neel revives that stereotype for the purpose of establishinga myth of origins for the women’s movement. Such a myth, of course,requires a narrative of triumph against all odds. The highlights of Neel’s genuinelydifƒcult life story inevitably followed the journalist’s establishment ofthe persona: The hypersensitive child in a parochial Philadelphia suburb;marriage to an “exotic” Cuban artist, Carlos Enríquez de Gomez (1925); the