Alice Neel liked to say that she was the century and in many ways she was. She was born into a proper Victorian family, and came of age during suffrage. The quintessential Bohemian, she spent more than half a century, from her early days as a WPA artist living in the heart of the Village, through her Whitney retrospective in 1974, until her death ten years later, painting, often in near-obscurity, an extraordinarily diverse population—from young black sisters in Harlem to the elderly Jewish twin artists, Raphael and Moses Soyer, to Meyer Schapiro and Linus Pauling, to the American Communist Party chairman Gus Hall—creating an indelible portrait of 20th century America.
Neel’s hundreds of portraits portray a universe of powerful personalities and document an age. Neel painted through the Depression, McCarthyism, the Civil Rights Movement, the sexual revolution of the 60’s, feminism, and the feverish eighties. Fiercely democratic in her subjects, she portrayed her lovers, her children, her neighbors in Spanish Harlem, pregnant nudes, crazy people, and famous figures in the art world, all in a searing, psychological style uniquely her own. From Village legend Joe Gould with multiple penises to Frank O’Hara as a lyrical young poet, from porn star Annie Sprinkle gussied up in leather, to her own anxious, nude pregnant daughter-in-law, Neel’s portraits are as arrestingly executed as they are relentlessly honest.
In this first full-length biography of Neel, best-selling author Phoebe Hoban recounts the remarkable story of Neel’s life and career, as full of Sturm and Drang as the century she powerfully captured in paint. Neel managed to transcend her often tragic circumstances, surviving the death from diphtheria of her infant daughter Santillana, her first child by the renowned Cuban painter Carlos Enriquez, with whom she lived in Havana for a year before returning to America; the break-up of her marriage; a nervous breakdown at thirty resulting in several suicide attempts for which she was institutionalized; and the terrible separation from her second child, Isabetta, whom Carlos took back to Havana.
In every aspect of her life, Neel dictated her own terms—from defiantly painting figurative pieces at the height of Abstract Expressionism, convincing her subjects to disrobe (which many of them did, including, surprisingly, Andy Warhol) to becoming a single mother to the two sons she bore to dramatically different partners. No wonder she became the de facto artist of the Feminist movement. (When Time magazine put Kate Millet on its cover in 1970, she was asked to paint the portrait.) Very much in touch with her time, Neel was also always ahead of it. Although she herself would probably have rejected such label, she was America’s first feminist, multicultural artist, a populist painter for the ages.
Phoebe Hoban’s Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty tells the unforgettable story of a woman who forged a permanent place in the pantheon by courageously flaunting convention, both in her life and her work.
Publishers Weekly
Hoban's (Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art) latest biography is a sweeping portrait of a colorful subject, the painter Alice Neel. It is also an effective cultural history of the artistic and political scene in 20th-century New York. This well-documented work brings to life a "collector of souls" whose passion for painting the human figure at a time when abstraction was the rage resulted in years of financial hardship and obscurity. Neel emerges as a resolute survivor who lived by her convictions, both aesthetically and politically. A single mother committed to a bohemian lifestyle, Neel was also a supporter of political movements that ranged from Communism to feminism. While this biography suffers at times from overly detailed accounts of the supporting players in Neel's life and from the author's occasional repetition, it is immensely absorbing, and soars at the end as Neel, in the later decades of her life, finally receives "the recognition she so long deserved." Photos.
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From the Publisher
"Phoebe Hoban's biography of Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty is terrific. It is not only an engrossing narrative, it's Hoban's singular achievement that she gives both an appreciation of Neel's provocative art and a deep compassion for Neel the woman, too."—Patricia Bosworth author of DIANE ARBUS, a biography
“Phoebe Hoban’s biography of the iconoclast Alice Neel, rich in details and highly readable, should do much to establish Neel for a new generation as a powerful figurative painter and counter-figure to the male-dominated world of the Abstract Expressionists. What emerges here is the compelling tale of a proto-feminist, pre-hippie hippie and uncompromising artist who only towards the end of her career received widespread recognition, most notably from her portrait of Kate Millet on the cover of Time, which became the face of women’s liberation.”—Annalyn Swan, co-author of de Kooning: An American Master
Library Journal
The remarkable, expressionistic portraits of Alice Neel are unique in postwar American art. Her subjects are decidedly unpretty, gritty, and often devastatingly depressing and revelatory. Neel's tumultuous life—Philadelphia born, bohemian, avowed communist, and unofficial portraitist to Beats, pop artists, and critics—spanned much of the 20th century (1900–84). Unconventional and self-directed, Neel transcended her arts academy training, depressions, and middle-class roots to become the woman she wanted to be—a full-time, serious painter. Her portraits bridged the gap between the prewar figuration of social realists and the postwar abstract expressionists. Hoban, author of the impressive Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, reveals the life of a sometimes opportunistic and unlikable (an indifferent parent, Neel had a penchant for the "wrong" sort of men) yet ultimately admirable, astonishing protofeminist painter. VERDICT This is a terrific read, well researched, incident rich, and amazingly comprehensive. For readers who enjoy fine arts and feminist biographies with a frisson of social history.—Barbara A. Genco, Library Journal
Kirkus Reviews
Culture and arts writer Hoban (Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, 1998) presents an accessible biography of painter Alice Neel (1900–1984).
Like many creative geniuses, Neel's story as an artist began with a rebellious childhood. From an early age, she turned to art as an outlet to cope with her rejection of turn-of-the-century societal sensibilities. Even at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, Neel felt like an outsider, despite the fact that she was repeatedly recognized for her talent. Later on, her aversion to conformity persisted in her choice of mediums. During the height of abstract expressionism, she forged ahead as a realist painter, producing dark and psychologically revealing portraits of a diverse group of people. She found subjects all around her, from the masses on the New York streets to her well-known artist friends (Andy Warhol, Joe Gould) to her own children, and Neel captured a stark, disarming beauty in all of them. Because her work was often brutally personal—for example, the paintings she producedafter the death of her first child—Neel's oeuvre is alsoextraordinarily reflective of herlife and alludes to such issues as her struggle with feminine roles, including motherhood, and her involvement withMarxismand the Communist Party. Amid the personal issues that dogged her—mostly trouble with men and money—Neel remained prolific, slowly gaining professional recognition. In 1970, she was commissionedto paint Kate Millett for the coverof Time, and in1974,her work appeared as a retrospective at the Whitney. Throughout this movingbiography, Hoban allows Neel's triumphs and struggles to inform her experience, and the result is an honest narrative of an artist who always strived to document the truth, however difficult. "No matter what happens to you," she once said, "you still keep on painting."
An intimate look at one of American art history's unsung heroes.
