i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

74 / Neel’s Social Realist ArtPerhaps predictably, Neel’s two ƒnest story illustrations were rejected, 34 andwent unpublished until an anthology of Bonosky’s writings, A Bird in Her Hair,and Other Stories, was produced by International Publishers in 1987. Onestory, “A Quiet Summer’s Day” (1948, ƒg. 49), recounts a child’s death bydrowning in the polluted waters near a factory, a victim theme repeated in proletarianliterature from the time of Gold’s description of his sister Esther beingrun over by an Adams Express Truck in his 1927 “Poverty is a Trap.” 35 Thetheme was equally common in the visual arts.In the drawing for the anthology’s title story, “A Bird in Her Hair” (ƒg. 50),Neel uses the same stage set, the generic factory town, but brings to it all of thestrengths of her portrait skills. The protagonist, Ellie, is a poor young womanwhose tangled bush of hair was the subject of repeated taunts by the townspeople.As visualized by Neel, the barefoot woman’s stance and facial expressionembody the anger and deƒance of the poor outcast who has responded to interclasscruelty with an act of eccentric creativity—permitting a bird to nest inher hair. Ellie is less the proletarian heroine than a woman who reacts to oppressionwith an individual act at once so outrageous and so creative that itforces respect and silences her critics. Like Louise Patterson, Ellie is Alice.Because they are portraits, Neel’s Masses & Mainstream drawings of thetrials of Communist Party activists are equally strong. Along with the artistCharles Keller, Neel was assigned to cover the notorious “Trial of the Twelve,”actually eleven members of the National Board of the Communist Party, whoin July of 1948 had been accused under the Smith Act of belonging to a groupof persons who “teach and advocate” the overthrow of the U.S. Governmentby force. 36 Keller’s two trial drawings illustrated Joseph North’s report, “Justice,Inc.,” in the April 1949 edition of Masses & Mainstream, whereas Neel’sdrawing of Judge Harold R. Medina was relegated to Charles Humboldt’s reviewof George Marion’s book on the subject, Trial by Stoolpigeon, in the Decemberissue. Humboldt’s review credited Marion with exposing “the natureof this system and how it makes a mockery of justice.” 37 In contrast to Keller’sbland sketches, Neel unleashes the full force of her caricature skills to build onNorth’s vivid characterization of the urbane judge:The judge’s face is a mask. Behind it operates the complex psyche of a bourgeois intellectual. . . His mop of hair is iron gray and his mustache droops; His eyebrowsarch frequently . . . He strives for a homey, yet classic, colloquialism, assaying therole of a gentle Francis of Assisi, endlessly patient, low-toned, an understandinguncle. 38Neel’s ink drawing of Judge Medina (ƒg. 51) uses his arched brows to suggesthis superciliousness and the hypocrisy of his self-assumed role of “The