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what was alice neel known for

by Sofia Zulauf PhD Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago
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Neel grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania and spent a formative year in Cuba before moving to NYC in 1927. She worked there for 60 years, raised a family, and is now known for her groundbreaking portraits and commitment to social justice.

Full Answer

Why is Alice Neel famous?

Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was an American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers. Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity.

Was Alice Neel a feminist?

Neel's subject matter—a steady stream of pregnant women, African American intellectuals, women and children, and nude couples—signaled for many her radical embrace of feminism. This was solidified when she painted the famous feminist Kate Millet for the cover of Time Magazine in 1970.

What is Alice Neel's style?

She worked in a mode known as social realism, confronting humanity forthright with no irony to spare the viewer. It's a style best glimpsed in a self-portrait made in 1980, four years before her death. Neel painted herself seated in an armchair and wearing only her glasses.

What influenced Alice Neel?

Amid the drama of her personal life, Neel continued to paint and exhibit her portraits. She found particular inspiration from her neighbors in Spanish Harlem, where she lived from 1938 to 1962.

Why Alice in Wonderland is feminist?

Alice defies her social role as a damsel in distress by challenging the feminist theory. In literature, a damsel in distress is a stereotype commonly used to narrate innocent and young women that are waiting to be saved. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice does not need a hero because she is the hero herself as portrayed.

Is Alice in Wonderland a feminist text?

For, although written by a man during the Victorian Era, the book's strong female heroine and her adventures are a veritable gold mine for feminist critics to study. In fact, Judith Little even wrote that the Alice books are “almost a comic compendium of feminist issues” (195).

Did Alice Neel ever see her daughter again?

She never tried to bring her daughter back to the US. Isabetta died of suicide in 1982 at age fifty-four; Neel hadn't seen her in over thirty years.

Who did Alice Neel paint?

American, 1900–1984 One of the great portraitists of the 20th century, Alice Neel painted stark, honest pictures of her relatives, lovers, friends, activists, and neighbors in New York City. A successor to the Expressionism of Chaïm Soutine, Edvard Munch, and Ernst …

Did Salvador Dali illustrated Alice in Wonderland?

In 1969, Salvador Dalí created illustrations for a limited edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The rare work was recently reissued and is now available to Dalí lovers everywhere.

Is Blue Period Based on a true story?

Based on real-life events during the now-famous artist's early days, the book explores the dramatic turns that led to Picasso's storied Blue Period, a brief, intense window in his long career when in the wake of tragedy he was able to bring to life some of the most tender, empathetic, and moving works of the era.

What made Alice Walker an activist?

In addition to her writing, Ms. Walker is a passionate activist and defender of human rights. After meeting Martin Luther King Jr. in the early 1960s, she was compelled to return to the south after college and join the struggle against segregation.

Where is the Alice Neel exhibit?

On view at the gallery's 537 West 20th Street location, the focused presentation centers around works from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and includes interiors, memory paintings, New York City streetscapes, and intimate portraits of family and others close to Neel.

Is Alice Walker a radical feminist?

Alice Walker as a radical feminist presented the issues related to Gender feminism through articulation of protagonists highlighting the racial and gender inequality.

What did Alice Walker do for feminism?

In her public and private life, she worked to challenge racism and systemic oppression. As part of her work on such issues, she coined the term 'Womanism' in 1983 which intended to unite women of colour and the feminist movement at the intersection of race, class, and gender oppression.

Is Alice Munro a feminist writer?

Therefore, from the aspects of analysis, it is sure that Alice Munro is a feminist writer. a feminist writer in a strict sense, but her stories presents many different and typical female figures with plentiful self-awareness.

What is the definition of feminism by Emma Watson?

During her UN Speech, Watson defined feminism point blank: "For the record, feminism by definition is: 'The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.

When did Neel have her first solo exhibition?

Neel had her first solo exhibition in New York City in 1938. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now. Neel’s raw, intimate paintings reflected conditions of poverty and disease with unparalleled honesty.

Who did Linda Nochlin paint?

In the 1960s she began to paint portraits of fellow artists, art critics, and collectors; she later extended her work to include noteworthy individuals such as Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling (1969), composer Virgil Thomson (1971), artists Andy Warhol (1970), Marisol (1981), Duane Hanson (1972), and Faith Ringgold (1976), art historian Linda Nochlin with her daughter (1973), and art historian Meyer Schapiro (1983).

What did Neel paint?

When other artists were working with abstraction, Neel was painting regular people—pregnant nudes, social outsiders, and family members. She often depicted people she encountered on the street and once even convinced a door-to-door salesman to pose for a portrait.

What museum did Alice Neel work in?

National Museum of American Art ( CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996) Alice Neel’s artwork was largely overlooked for the first forty years of her career.

What is linked open data?

Born in Merion Square, Pennsylvania, Alice Neel graduated from the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art) in 1925. She was a portrait painter whose work cut across the social classes. She once described herself as a ​ “ collector of souls,” and lived much ...

What is Alice Neel's style?

Alice Neel, an unshakable original, witnessed a parade of avant-garde movements from Abstract Expressionism to Conceptual Art, and refused to follow any of them. Instead, she developed a unique, expressive style of portrait painting that captured the psychology of individuals living in New York, from friends and neighbors in Spanish Harlem ...

Where did Neel move to?

Neel moved from Greenwich Village to Spanish Harlem in 1938. The Village, she felt, was too full of pretentious bohemians. She moved in with the Puerto Rican musician Jose Santiago and began to paint many portraits of friends and neighbors.

Was Neel a figure painter?

At a time when it was deeply unfashionable, Neel persisted in being a figure painter and a portraitist. While fully engrossed in the New York art scene and connected with its major innovators, she remained steadfast in her choice of style and subject matter, unswayed by an art world that favored abstraction.

Was Neel an artist?

It is clear, however, that Neel was still evolving as an artist. The face, with its distracted features, looks past the edge of the frame, as if focused on a faraway thought. The background here is much darker and the features more idealized than in Neel's later portraits (although, after all, this was her lover).

Where is the National Gallery of Art?

Oil on Canvas - National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.)

Who was Neel's husband?

This early work depicts Neel's husband, the painter Carlos Enríquez, a year after they were married. The portrait displays many of the stylistic and compositional features evident in her mature work. It is clear, however, that Neel was still evolving as an artist.

Who was Pat Whalen?

Pat Whalen (1935) Neel's passionate interest in left-wing politics is evident in her portrayal of Communist activist and union organizer Pat Whalen, whom she painted when she was involved with the WPA, part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Here, Whalen is portrayed as the archetypal blue-collar worker.

What was Alice Neel's success?

Success. For much of her career, Alice Neel ran contrary to the dominant mode of painting at the time. The 1940s and 1950s saw an intense shift in interest towards monumental abstract works by Abstract Expressionists like Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell. For this reason, Neel’s success came late in her career.

Where was Alice Neel born?

Early Life. Alice Neel was born in 1900 in Pennsylvania and grew up feeling stifled by its traditional puritan culture. After she enrolled in the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now the Moore College of Art and Design) in Philadelphia in 1921, she would never look back.

Did Alice Neel have a daughter?

In 1926, they had a daughter. Living hand to mouth, Neel and her husband struggled to earn enough money for their new family. Tragically, their daughter died in 1927. Soon after, Neel’s husband left for Paris, promising to send for Alice when he had amassed enough money to pay for her passage. He never did.

Who is the artist who painted abstract art?

American painter Alice Neel is best known for her expressionist portraits. Though she painted figuratively throughout the rise of abstract art in the United States, her commitment to portraiture was eventually celebrated in the 1970s, as the art world returned to an interest in the representation of the human form.

Who is Alice Neel?

Painter Alice Neel in her NYC studio with an unidentified family member, surrounded by paintings, New York, NY, January 5, 1979. Hall W. Rockefeller is a writer and art historian, specializing in the work of woman artists from 1900 to the present. American painter Alice Neel is best known for her expressionist portraits.

Who did Neel paint?

This was the beginning, not the end, of Neel’s inclination towards painting the people around her, as she would go on to paint the icons of the 1960s and 70s, including Andy Warhol and critic Linda Nochlin . Neel's Andy Warhol, 1970.

What is Neel's style of art?

The artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimalism were interested in defamiliarizing the human form, reducing and reconstructing individuals to color and line. Neel, a painter apart from her time, was curious about people just as they were. She worked in a mode known as social realism, confronting humanity forthright with no irony to spare the viewer. It’s a style best glimpsed in a self-portrait made in 1980, four years before her death. Neel painted herself seated in an armchair and wearing only her glasses. One of her hands holds a paintbrush, and in the other, she clutches a rag. She peers out unassumingly at the viewer with a gaze that almost suggests a hint of judgement, as if she’s trying to say: “Yes, and ?”

What did Alice Neel do?

Radical Realist Alice Neel Helped Redefine Portraiture in Postwar New York. Alice Neel's "People Come First" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Anthony Behar/Sipa USA via AP Images) During the 1940s and ’50s, from her modest studio in New York, Alice Neel saw the heyday of Abstract Expressionism come and go.

What was Neel's main interest in the art world?

The artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimalism were interested in defamiliarizing the human form, reducing and reconstructing individuals to color and line.

Why did Neel work so hard?

“I realized that wasn’t what I was there for…. For three years I worked so hard because I had a conscience about going to art school .” She was disquieted by the “old grey-haired women” who scrubbed the academy’s floors while she studied Greek statues.

What is Neel's expression?

Neel is there, painted with an expression of exhaustion or ambivalence. A young girl, bald and clad in ghostly white, stares out at the viewer. Neel returned to themes of motherhood, loss, and female interiority again throughout her career.

What happened to Neel's painting Well Baby Clinic?

As Neel recalled it, “it was just the end of everything.”. She had a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide twice, once by eating glass, and entered a sanatorium. It was at that time that she painted Well Baby Clinic (1928–29), a ghoulish scene of a local maternity ward.

What is Andy Warhol's work stripped to the waist?

Andy Warhol appears in one famed Neel work stripped to the waist and showing off the scars Valerie Solanas’s assassination attempt left on his sunken chest. During her lifetime, New York Times critic John Russell wrote: ”To be painted by Miss Neel is not simply the equivalent of a body search. It is the equivalent of a body-and-soul search.”.

When did Neel paint Retrato?

April: Two paintings by Neel from 1926-27, Retrato (‘Portrait’) and Enríquez, are reproduced in Revista de Avance (April 15), a new publication for which Enríquez becomes a regular illustrator. In the April 30 issue these paintings as well as two of her untitled drawings are illustrated.

Where is Neel in Philadelphia?

Late Spring: Neel is transfer to the suicidal ward of Gladwyne Colony, a private sanatorium in Gladwyne, Philadelphia, directed by Dr. Seymour DeWitt Ludlum of the Neuropsychiatric Department at Philadelphia General Hospital. She is encouraged to continue drawing and painting, in contrast with current conventional treatment which stopped all professional life activities.

Where is Santillana buried?

December: Santillana dies of diphtheria and is buried on December 9 in the Neel family plot at Arlington cemetery in Pennsylvania.

Where is Neel returning to?

May: Neel returns to Colwyn, Pennsylvania, with Santillana.

Where is Alice Neel from?

January 28: Alice Hartley Neel is born in Merion Square, Pennsylvania, to Alice Concross Hartley, a descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington Neel, an accountant in the per diem department of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Her father’s family is variously described as owners of a steamship company and as a family of opera singers.

What is the trio on the lake trail?

The trio are clever craftsmen, transferring their thoughts to the sketch pad with fountain pens. Each stroke of the pen must be correct because there is no chance for erasures. Friday the trio was photographed for a motion picture news reel. Their presence on the Lake Trail drew much attention and a great deal of curiosity.

Who are the artists that sketched Palm Beach?

Helping to spread the fame of Palm Beach, a trio of artists, Miss Alice Neel of Philadelphia, Don Carlos Enríquez and Marcelo Pogoloti of Havana, Cuba, are daily sketching many of the show places of the famous winter resort.

What is the art of Neel?

Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity. Neel was called "one of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th century" by Barry Walker, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which organized a retrospective of her work in 2010.

What was the Cuban avant-garde?

In Havana, Neel was embraced by the burgeoning Cuban avant-garde, a set of young writers, artists and musicians. In this environment Neel developed the foundations of her lifelong political consciousness and commitment to equality.

Where was Alice Neel born?

Alice Neel was born on January 28, 1900, in Merion Square, Pennsylvania to George Washington Neel, an accountant for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Alice Concross Hartley Neel. In mid-1900, her family moved to the rural town of Colwyn, Pennsylvania. Young Alice was the fourth of five children, with three brothers and a sister.

Where did Neel and Carlos meet?

She met an upper-class Cuban painter in 1924, Carlos Enríquez, at the Chester Springs summer school run by PAFA. The couple married on June 1, 1925, in Colwyn, Pennsylvania. Neel soon moved to Havana to live with Enríquez's family.

Who was the most influential figure in the Ashcan School?

It is believed this influence came from one of the most prominent figures of the Ashcan School, Robert Henri, who also taught at Philadelphia School of Design for Women.

Who is Alice Neel?

Wikipedia article References. ... Wikipedia article. References. Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was an American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers. Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity.

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1.Alice Neel - Wikipedia

Url:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Neel

35 hours ago  · See all related content →. Alice Neel, in full Alice Hartley Neel, (b. January 28, 1900, Merion Square [now Gladwyne], Pennsylvania, U.S.—d. October 13, 1984, New York, New York), …

2.Alice Neel | American painter | Britannica

Url:https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Neel

32 hours ago Alice Neel was born in Merion Square, Pennsylvania, and studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art) from 1921 to 1925. After living briefly in Havana, …

3.Alice Neel | Smithsonian American Art Museum

Url:https://americanart.si.edu/artist/alice-neel-3504

30 hours ago  · Alice Neel was known for her boldly honest portraits, and she liked to depict people in all their intricacies, penetrating and revealing their fears and concerns, as well as how …

4.Videos of What Was Alice Neel Known For

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9 hours ago Alice Neel in her debut at Contemporary Arts tempers her firm constructions with a somewhat sardonic humor in which a couple of remarkable cats play a part. Her “Classic Fronts” (red brick …

5.Alice Neel Paintings, Bio, Ideas | TheArtStory

Url:https://www.theartstory.org/artist/neel-alice/

34 hours ago  · Neel has been noted as one of the first female artists to depict pregnant women naked, an inversion of many works by male artists which see women as sexual, not maternal.

6.Biography of Alice Neel, Painter of Expressionist Portraits …

Url:https://www.thoughtco.com/alice-neel-4686566

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7.Who Was Alice Neel, and Why Is She Important?

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8.Biography | Alice Neel

Url:https://www.aliceneel.com/biography/

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9.Alice Neel - 25 artworks - painting - WikiArt

Url:https://www.wikiart.org/en/alice-neel

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10.What Painter Alice Neel Saw in Jewish Faces

Url:https://www.jta.org/2021/04/14/ny/what-painter-alice-neel-saw-in-jewish-faces

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