Customer Reviews

Alice Neel: Painted Truths (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)

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The visibility of figurative painter Alice Neel has increased lately, with a record price paid at auction last year by the Cleveland Museum of Art for one of her paintings and with this retrospective, currently held at the Houston Museum of Art, which will then travel to England and Sweden and which is accompanied by this catalogue.

The book is a high-quality publication, with many very good reproductions of the 68 paintings in the show (from the 1920s to the 1980s), that traces the artist's career chronologically and studies such themes as the psychological portrait, the portrait from memory,the nude, the cityscapes, the relationship between parents and children, the old age, in short presents her work as a sort of chronicle of her time. It also dwells on her stylistic qualities, especially on her mastery of line and color, through numerous portraits of friends and celebrities (Andy Warhol...) and also some interesting landscapes in the tradition of Edward Hopper. The artist, herself influenced by various masters (Beckmann for example,) has in turn influenced many of today's figurative painters (Elizabeth Peyton comes to mind) and this is well shown here, even though one may question her real place among America's greatest artists of the XXth century...

Alice Neel, for many art lovers, is an artist primarily known for her rise to importance with the Feminist movement. Prior to that she had been admired for her courage to paint in the genre of portraiture usually carefully guarded by male artists. This book goes a long way in dismissing the myth that Alice Neel was just an interesting outsider and instead places her where she belongs - in the mainstream of American art. Born in 1900 and died in 1984 her paintings have ranged from observations of nature and cityscapes and landscapes, but her primary importance is centered in her vivid portraits of well known people as well as artist models her 'collection of souls'.

Some Neel's most famous paintings are her depictions of nudes one would never expect to be attractive enough to paint, children, strange appearing people with considerable personality in their body stance and facial expression, as well as her portraits of pubic figures, such as Frank O'Hara, Meyer Shapiro, Annie Sprinkle, Andy Warhol (both Andy with Friends and the very famous 'Andy Warhol, 1970' that shows the surgical wounds from his near fatal gunshots from the 1968 attempted assassination by Valerie Solanas) and the controversial painting of Joe Gould (more a study in male genitalia than a portrait of Gould).

Om addition to a fine sampling of Neel's paintings this book contains excellent essays by Barry Walker, curator of modern and contemporary art and prints and drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Jeremy Lewison who is a curator and advisor to the Estate of Alice Neel, Robert Storr, the dean of the Yale School of Art, and Tamar Garb, Professor in the History of Art at University College London. It is a scholarly study and at the moment the definitive work on this amazing artist. Grady Harp, December 10

As always, Alice Neel's figurative portraits reveal the inner soul of her models as well as herself. Sometimes awkwardly painted but always truthful, Alice Neel gets to the angst of her sitters. The essays in the book are very interesting and I wish that I could see the exhibit.

The book arrived in record time, in perfect condition and beautifully packaged. A perfec, five star purchase! Thank you!