Alice Neel

David Zwirner is pleased to present At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World, curated by Hilton Als. The exhibition continues the gallery’s history of presenting curated exhibitions that focus on different facets of Neel’s ever-relevant work, and follows Als’s critically acclaimed Alice Neel, Uptown, which was on view at David Zwirner New York in 2017.

Alice Neel (1900–1984) is one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century. She is known for her daringly honest and humanist approach to the figure that not only captures the truth of the individual, but also reflects the era in which she lived. At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World highlights the artist’s career-long commitment to depicting the human condition and her practice of painting people from many walks of life. This presentation focuses on her paintings of individuals from queer communities and those who were a part of their circle. The works on view include paintings of politicians, philanthropists, writers, performers, and artists, as well as friends and neighbors—together forming a collective portrait that both embodies and complicates an understanding of the queer world of Neel’s moment and the artist’s place within it. As Als notes, this exhibition “will include not just portraits of gay people but those of theorists, activists, politicians, and so on who would qualify as queer by virtue of their different take in their given field and thus the world. So doing, they reflect Alice’s own interest in and commitment to difference.”

Drawn from museum and private collections, and including rarely seen works from The Estate of Alice Neel, the paintings in Alice Neel: At Home in the Queer World feature figures both notable and unknown, from cultural and political personalities to intimate acquaintances and friends. Works on view include paintings of individuals such as congresswoman Bella Abzug (1976; Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, New Jersey); gregarious champion of contemporary art Henry Geldzahler (1967; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); and New York City Mayor Ed Koch, painted by Neel in 1981. Other subjects include Frank O’Hara (1960)—one of two paintings of the poet and curator completed by Neel in the same year—and an atmospherically embellished painting of the provocative Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (1966), which she painted from memory after seeing him at a performance. Also on view are works depicting individuals such as concert pianist Robert Avedis Hagopian (1971; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco); performance artist and sexual icon Annie Sprinkle (1982); and Andy Warhol (c. 1970), in a drawing inscribed to performers Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd—further reflecting Neel’s interest in various creative and avant-garde communities. Also exhibited are related archival material and films that illuminate the lives and accomplishments of the individuals depicted by Neel and their surrounding historical and cultural contexts. These subjects, united here through a connecting thread of difference, demonstrate the breadth of Neel’s work and the unfettered scope of her humanist vision.

As Als writes in his catalogue essay:

"When she died in 1984, Neel had a great number of masterpieces to her credit, a galaxy of masterpieces, I would say, that bear witness to the terror we usually turn away from, having no language for it, namely alienation, disconnect, love. [...]

As an artist, Neel gave so many people their name—the right to their name. So doing, she told us that no person is fixed; we have as many names as the lies we tell, the truths we live. In my dreams of a glittering gay world, as exemplified by Geldzahler, Warhol, and the like, it never occurred to me that that universe wasn’t about inclusion; my imagination already included me. But Neel’s paintings offered something definitive and real, something larger than “identity.” She seemed to be saying in canvas after canvas that there was no word or image that could equal those fleeting moments of joy—of connectedness—that bound her not only to her subjects, but to painting itself, that solitary act that she performed in front of other people."

Alice Neel was born in 1900 in Merion Square, Pennsylvania, and died in 1984 in New York. Although she exhibited sporadically early in her career, her work has been shown widely from the 1960s onwards. In 1971, a comprehensive solo exhibition of Neel's paintings was held at her alma mater Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, and in 1974, she had her first retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. It was followed by a large-scale presentation of eighty-three paintings in 1975 at the Georgia Museum of Art, The University of Georgia, Athens. In 1978, the Graham Gallery, New York, organized the first retrospective dedicated to the artist's works on paper, and in 1979, a survey of her paintings was co-hosted by the University of Bridgeport and The Silvermine Guild of Artists in Connecticut.