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Perhaps for that reason her backgrounds are rendered schematically
and accouterments kept to a minimum. Her figure(s) dominate the picture surface
cramped and twisted in a shallow space and create patterns of angles with
the two-dimensional edges of the surface. Primarily a draftsman, her delineation
of the sitters' features began by means of contour lines. The deployment of
faces, hands and fingers - like the particular placement of a vase of flowers
- convey the artist's idea about the sitter or subject.
Unlike her more famous contemporaries, Neel affirms the individualism
of the sitter. She emphasizes the person as a particular person - not as a
contemporary icon (Warhol),
not as a source of formal invention (Pearlstein),
not as a signifier of social milieu (Katz),
and not as a display of depersonalized technique (Close).
During the last period of her life, Neel's depiction of her
children and grandchildren, neighbors and friends are especially plentiful.
The children are lopsided, rumpled, ungainly, insecure, defiant. Neel never
used photographs. She relied on observation and memory. Exaggeration of certain
facial features, especially the eyes (Picasso, Beckmann, Munch) are historically
important device in transmitting psychological information. Neel exploits
them both but always there is a point of view, an insight that is her own.
It is unfortunate she didn't create more prints, but clearly
she wasn't thinking about exploiting a commercial market nor had she a desire
to explore the medium of printmaking (Katz,
Serra, Bosman). Her prints largely reprise
her paintings. Nonetheless, they teach us all we can learn from Alice Neel
about traditional portraiture in America just as her emergence from obscurity
exemplifies the changes women have wrought in gender equality in American
society at the end of the 20th century.
- Michael Berger, January 2001 Alice
Neel Artwork Exhibition
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