Met Retrospective Finds the Extraordinary in ‘People’ -Alice Neel
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Article: By Kristian Jaime | TheArtistsChateau.com
NEW YORK — Leave it to an artist to find the extraordinary in the common, and leave it to painter Alice Neel to make it the cornerstone of her work during her extensive career.
“Alice Neel: People Come First” illustrates just that in the first retrospective of her portraits in 20 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show runs from March 22 to Aug. 1 and includes a variety of paintings, drawings and watercolor from 1930 to 1950 and beyond.
Spanish Harlem by Alice Neel at the Met Museum
“One of the reasons I painted was to catch life as it goes by,” said Neel in a 1978 interview with the museum. “Besides painting specific people and all the happenings, I tried to capture the zeitgeist because I represent the twentieth century. It’s taken out of life itself and put into the work.”
Passing away at 84 years old in 1984, Neel spent much of her life as an activist and opted to make subjects of fellow community leaders and the impoverished. Depictions of demonstrations against fascism and racism found their way into her work as well as figures of those who also spent a lifetime living in Neel’s Spanish Harlem neighborhood.
She even produced a series of nudes in the wide range of media that would come to define her eclectic work. The lifelong New Yorker relished living in a city with no shortage of inspiration.
Painting of Kenneth Fearing by Alice Neel
Through her art, she was able to tell the story of a place bubbling over with diversity and passion, but still rife with social injustice and the need to fight it. She would champion what she would call “the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.”
“The vitality (of the work) is taken out of real living and put into the creative project,” said Neel. “The first time I sat in front of a canvas, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. In life itself, I never knew what I wanted to do because, in a way, it was all wrong for me.”
Throughout her life, she credited art with being her driving force noting that if she did not paint “all the time, she probably wouldn’t live.”
The numerous pieces she completed throughout her tenure bordered on a frenetic pace with batches of paintings being completed in a relatively short period of time. That would be followed by weeks of not finding her way to a sketch book or paint brush at all.
Neel became a role model to other female artists as her career progressed. For her contribution to art, she received the International Women’s Year Award, the National Women’s Caucus for Art Award, and was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
As one of the first non-virtual exhibitions at the museum since the pandemic, “Alice Neel: People Come First” represents a return for many to one of the nation’s seminal locations for the visual arts. Precautions still include the use of masks while on the premises and virtual tours are also available with an appointment.
The exhibition is made possible by the Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore Foundation with major support provided by the Adrienne Arsht Fund for Resilience through Art. Additional funding is provided by Angela A. Chao and Jim Breyer, Agnes Gund, and the Jane and Robert Carroll Fund.
{See, Watch, Experience Multimedia dialogue at the link below}
https://www.metmuseum.org/primer/alice-neel#intro-three-chapters
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