INTRODUCTION

Alice Neel (1900-1984) worked as a figurative painter during the decades of WPA realism, postwar abstract expressionism, 1960s Pop and 1970s minimalism. She persevered in her work in spite of a turbulent personal life, and a lack of attention to her work that continued until the 1960s. She survived through her great courage and her commitments. She lived an urban life devoted to leftist politics, the art world, her family, and her passion for painting. Although Neel occasionally painted rural and urban landscapes, people were her primary subjects. She disliked the term "portrait" (to her it implied hack work), but she did not depict anonymous models. Her figures were always specific. In a life struck by loss, Neel grounded herself in the physical presence of others.

The need to center herself by exploring the identity of others underlies both Neel's investigative eye and her acceptance of--even her relish for--eccentricity. Always feeling an outsider herself, she identified with the harsh realities of others' lives in her paintings as well as in her politics. In a 1980 review, Patricia Bailey wrote of Neel, "Her work has been a way of diminishing her personal sense of separation from life." Neel added, "That's right. It is my way of overcoming the alienation. It's my ticket to reality."

Neel called herself a "collector of souls." She believed that each person has an identity, an essential core of personality, and it was this that she sought to reveal in her paintings. Similarly, she believed that each era has essential elements that are expressed in individuals. She looked for the spirit of the times--using the German term Zeitgeist when she spoke of it. Neel began with the person, and found a way to situate that person in his or her times. As she said, "I have always considered the human being the first premise--I feel his condition is a barometer of the era." She painted her subjects as distinct individuals, in the poses that were natural to them, that "involve . . . all their character and social standing--what the world has done to them, and their retaliation."

I don't know if the truth that I have told will benefit the world in any way. I managed to do it at great cost to myself and perhaps to others. It is hard to go against the tide of one's time, milieu, and position. But at least I tried to reflect innocently the twentieth century and my feelings and perceptions as a girl and a woman. Not that I felt that they were all that different from men's. I did this at the expense of untold humiliations, but at least after my fashion I told the truth as I perceived it, and considering the way one is bombarded by reality, did the best and most honest art of which I was capable.

The artist, 1980