Alice Neel at the Barbican
A critical review of Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle, shown at the Barbican Gallery ( Thu 16 Feb - Sun 21 May 2023). First submitted as part of unit 3 coursework for BA (Hons) Fine Art: Painting in May 2023.
This critical essay examines the purpose and effect of the retrospective exhibition, with Alice Neel’s being the primary example of how galleries and estates shape the understanding of Artists and their lives. I will be providing an in-depth look at an immersive experience that takes advantage of selective viewership and how it adheres to contemporary social censorship, and how that changes concerning the retrospective.
First, I'll discuss the exhibition's formal components, primarily how the arrangement addresses the effect on the observer.
I will be both looking through the rooms both chronologically and thematically to explore both the curator’s viewpoint and Neel’s experience. The gallery space opens up on the lower mezzanine. Then the viewer is guided upstairs to the left set of rooms and encouraged to follow a clockwise rotation until you return to the stairs and go downstairs and follow a subsequent anticlockwise direction. The mezzanine floors within the 3rd-floor gallery are filled with sectioned-off rooms that are intimately furnished and seek conversation. The top floor consists of eight rooms titled under seven sections:
Telling It As It Is
Havana
Greenwich Village
The Great Depression
In The Street
Spanish Harlem
Anarchic Humanism (x2)
And the bottom floor consists of five rooms spanning four sections:
Human Creatures (x2)
Lifelong Commitment
Alice on Alice
Living Room
Upon entering the first room titled “Telling It As It Is”, you are guided to a big block of text highlighted in a dimly lit section 1 where, after reading the small biography, your eyes are led to the also top lighted final portrait of Neel (her first nude as it was were when she finally decided to portray her self naked at the mature old age of 80). Thus, the exhibition begins with the Artist’s final form and aims to present her in an as current /modern version as possible. This format is repeated throughout all the rooms - with limited writing encouraging the viewer to interact with the given zine that goes in-depth into the purpose of the selected works and how they are contextualised in the theme of the room and Neel’s life.
The rooms “Havana” to “Spanish Harlem” provide a chronological visual memoir of Neel’s works from her childhood, subsequent psychological art therapy, marriage and then to her eventual future home. They all follow a pattern of slightly dim rooms that encourage the viewer to get as up close as possible (without tripping the alarms of some which had better lighting, thankfully) to view the personal mark-making that Neel specialised in, which you could tell was due to her familiarity with her subjects. The simple, concise titles portray a private agreement between Neel and her subjects to protect her neighbourhood grounds, especially since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies against mixed and coloured neighbourhoods (Redlining) [1] made it difficult for her compatriots to have access to essential city services and how she was portraying adversity in America for her work with the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The simple titles also can serve as a familiarity tactic to encourage the majority white upper-class viewers of the results of the Public Art Project. “It was always about power for the American painter. Who had it? Who deserved it? Who was fighting for it?” [2]
The lower gallery, unlike the upper floor, seeks to present a path of Neel’s ideological development with how she fought against the expressionist/abstractive cultural shift in art, sticking to her figurative opinion that the “Human Creatures” are the utmost important subject in art. Eleanor Nairne illuminates the versatility of Neel’s skill by having a range of subjects of different numbers, ages, races, and cloth. It demonstrates her ability to read the eyes of her sitters as they all seem to have that particularly Neel-ish warmth of life - looking straight at you with their numerous eyes sparked with bygone conversations. Nairne uses quotes throughout, like “I am a collector of souls… I paint my time using the people as evidence” and “I always felt much more truthful and courageous on canvas”, [3] which solidifies the idea of her art as an extension of her being. The ideological layout of the lower gallery consists of typical curation, where the setup follows a non-chronological, visual pattern and seeks to define Neel’s life into an inorganic classic literature-type structure with ambition (to paint and study specifically people), struggle (push back from an anti-communist, racist government) and reconciliation (satisfaction with creation and self [her final portrait - nude] and support from politicians for her occupation [WPA etc. ]).
This gives the lower floor a bit of an unsatisfactory end to the wonderfully curated comprehensive exhibition and showcases the difficulty of curating a physical biography after an Artist’s death, limiting the accurate representation of their work in their words.
Now comes the second portion of this essay, in which I will be referring to specific works and their impact on the exhibition as a whole, as well as providing context.
It is imperative to start at the beginning to understand the end. I am particularly looking at “French Girl” (1920s, estate of Alice Neel) and “Mother and Child, Havana” (1926, estate of Alice Neel), which are a stark contrast to her later “Abdul Rahman” (1964, Lonti Elbers, New York) and “Mother and Child” (1962, Private Collection). The signature eyes developing are a whole world away from her contemporary, Picasso’s, cubist faces with geometric lids and pupils. The initial portraits are posed, limited in structure, and the loose marks seem irregular and jaunty. The dissimilitude from the later family and singular portraits is defined by the direct eye contact and dynamism of movement that can only be captured by a participatory sitter.
This is seen by many a reviewer no matter the topic of exhibition or work:
“A tender portrait of a skinny Andy Warhol in 1970, two years after he was shot by Valerie Solanas, has his mangled and saggy chest barely held together by stitches. His eyes are closed in contemplation like a martyred saint.” [4]
Her ability to reveal the uncanny about her sitter later in life is cemented in her final portrait. Every lump, sag, age spot is carefully painted, as if examined under a microscope to reveal every hue shift and blood vessel pattern. Her not sparing herself from this interrogation was no doubt a skill developed from spite and confidence in her self worth. Her adamance that she was not a realist is both true and contradictory considering how she leaves a striking impression of her sitter as if they’re now forever sealed in her works.
Citations:
[1] Fowler, R. (2023) The Ugly History of Redlining: A Federal Policy ‘Full of Evil’, The Ugly History of Redlining: A Federal Policy ‘Full of Evil’ - Articles. Available at: https://www.tba.org/?pg=Articles&blAction=showEntry&blogEntry=85873.
[2] Spence, R. (no date) ‘Alice Neel, Barbican review — sharp portraits get under the skin’, Financial Times. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/521c9b48-a95e-48ee-8360-16e353d4e533.
[3] Neel , A. (2023) Alice Neel: Hot off the griddle, Barbican. Edited by E. Nairne. Available at: https://www.barbican.org.uk/exhibition-guides/alice-neel-hot-off-the-griddle (Accessed: 11 April 2023).
[4] Holman, M. (no date) ‘The Big Review: Alice Neel at the Centre Pompidou ★★★★★’, The Art Newspaper. Available at: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/10/28/the-big-review-alice-neel-at-the-centre-pompidou-.
Further Reading:
Baum, K. and Griffey, R. (2021) Alice Neel: People come first. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Gold, M. (1954) The Mike Gold Reader: From the writings of Michael Gold. New York: International Pubs.
Hall, G. (1979) Labor up-front in the people’s fight against the crisis: Report to the 22nd convention of the Communist Party, USA, Detroit, Mich., August 23, 1979. New York: International Publishers.
Henri, R. and Ryerson, M. (1990) The art spirit . New York, NY (24 W 57th St, New York 10019) : The Galleries.
Kerouac, J. (1989) Scattered poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
Lampe, A. and Neel, A. (2020) Alice Neel: Un regard Engagé. Paris: Centre Pompidou.
Nemser, C. (1975) Art talk: Conversations with 12 women artists. New York: Scribner.
Olyanova, N. (1979) Handwriting tells. No. Hollywood, CA: Wilshire Book Co.
Scheibler, A. and Blum, R. (2007) Alice Neel: Pictures of people. Berlin: Aurel Scheibler.
Shields, A. (1983) My shaping-up years: The ar early life of Labor’s great reporter. New York: Internat. Publ.
Baker, E. C. and Hess, T. B. (1978) Art and sexual politics why have there been no great women artists? New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.
Bloor, E. R. and Flynn, E. G. (1941) We are many. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Bonosky, P. (1967) Beyond the borders of myth, from vilnius to Hanoi. New York: Praxis Press.
Hackett, P. and Warhol, A. (1989) The andy warhol diaries. London: Simon and Schuster.
Martínez, J. A. (1994) Cuban art and national identity: The Vanguardia Painters, 1927-1950. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Morgan, R. (1970) Sisterhood is powerful: An anthology of writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement. New York: Vintage Books.
Neel, A. and Lewison, J. (2009) Alice Neel: Painted truths. Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts.
O’Hara, F. (2014) Lunch poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books (The Pocket Poets Series ).
Perreault, J. (1989) Hotel death: And other tales. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press.
Warhol, A. and Bourdon, D. (1989) Warhol. New York: H. N. Abrams.
Als, H. (2017) Alice Neel - Uptown. New York, NY: David Zwirner Books.
Frei, G., Gisbourne, M. and Neel, A. (2015) Alice Neel: ... occasion of the exhibition Alice Neel June 1 - September 25, 2015. Zürich: Thomas Ammann Fine Art.
Gruen, J. (1999) John Jonas Gruen: Facing the artist. Munich: Prestel.
Hills, P. (1983) Alice Neel. New York: H.N. Abrams.
Mitchell, J. (1996) Joe Gould’s secret. New York: Modern Library.
Neel, A. and Hills, P. (1983) Alice Neel. New York: Abrams.
O’Connor, F. V. (ed.) (1975) Art for the Millions; essays from the 1930s by artists and administrators of the WPA Federal Art Project. Boston: New York Graphic Society.
Temkin, A., Neel, A., Rosenburg, S. and Flood, R. (2000) Alice Neel. New York: H.N. Abrams.
