Alice Neel

Last weeks netflix was a documentary about one of my favorite American artists. Alice Neel is known as one of the great portrait painters of the 20th century and her life was just as interesting as her work. I first learned about Alice Neel when I was in art school and the thing that stuck with me the most about her work is that people always said that she didn't just paint what her subjects looked like, she painted their insides too. She managed to capture the essence of who people were and paint it in two dimensions on a canvas. It's interesting to love an artists work so much that you wish you were the subject.

The film, aptly titled Alice Neel, weaves many images of her work, various interviews with her over the years and also interviews with her friends, colleagues, family and children. And because the film was directed by her grandson I think it has a level of depth that can only come from one family member delving into their family's history. But not just of it's history, of it's matriarch. So it becomes a fascinating look not only into Neels work, but her and her families view on her life as well.

The film covers her life, her work, her struggles as a single mother, her battle with depression and her nervous breakdown, her struggles as a female artist and as a woman who constantly defied convention. As the website says Neel,

"Reinvented portraiture by expressing the inner landscape of her sitters, among them Andy Warhol, Annie Sprinkle, Bella Abzung and Allen Ginsberg. Painting a diverse cross section of humanity from communist party leaders to art world personalities, to her neighbors in Spanish Harlem, Neel created a body of work that serves as a social document of New York and America in the 20th century."

It's a fascinating film. Some of my favorite quotes from it are below.



"A lot of people want distinction without risk. They want to be known for themselves without knowing themselves. They want to stand out in crowds, but not far enough to actually be isolated. She was the kind of person who I think must have been isolated from very early on in her experience of life and got used to it and learned how to stylize it and learned how to play it and learned how to use it as a medium. Distinction was a medium for her as much as a thing to achieve."

-Robert Storr
Dean, Yale University School of Art



"I like it first to be art, so actually dividing up the canvas is one of the most exciting things for me. And then I like it not only to look like the person, but to have their inner character as well. And then I like it to express the zeitgeist, you see I don't like something in the 60's to look like something in the 70's and they don't, it's amazing."

-Alice Neel



"In the fifties all the men took their wives out to the suburbs and the women conformed more. There's a tendency in the human race to make people alike and the whole thing is to homogenize the world. I saw the world as difficult, I saw the pressures as terrific because you know the pressure to be normal, besides everything else that you have to do, they invented these frightful shirts that have to be laundered and buttoned and you're even supposed to put on a tie. But all those things were very difficult for me, you know, to keep up with your clothing, to keep up with all the things that regular life make you observe."

-Alice Neel



"When I sit in front of a canvas I don't think about all the notice that I've gotten, I don't think that they think I'm great, I don't think anything of that. All I think of is 'will I be able to do this' and that's a very good attitude to have for painting. It's not good for the rat race, but it's good for painting, and I would rather paint than anything."

-Alice Neel



"I think some people may be embarrassed to look at pictures like that, but the fact is that she was not embarrassed to look or paint in that manner, so the space between her understanding and the viewers understanding is the space that the painting essentially invites the viewer to cross."

-Robert Storr

"Starring at an individual that is looking at them fully frontal, eyes wide open, engaging them visually is very intimate and very demanding. We do no ordinarily engage at length individuals face to face who look at us as we look at them. We tend to look away."

-Richard Brialliant