It should be noted that this artist was not always favored by the critics and that the trend to bring feminist icons back to light has accelerated her emergence from obscurity, but I will tell you more about that later.

She, who did not appreciate labels, would surely not necessarily like to be classified, as shown by the tags on the Beaubourg website in "feminism" or "LGBTQIA +" boxes that they would consider reductive.

For Alice Neel has fought for all the disadvantaged:

"In politics, as in life, I have always loved the losers, the underdogs, this smell of success, I do not like it" she says.

A Communist during the Maccarthy era, she has represented the bohemian, the rich and the underprivileged, the transvestites and the pregnant women.

What makes Alice Neel a special artist?

Before answering this question, let's go back to Alice Neel: who is she and what is her background?

Alice Neel was born in 1900 in Pennsylvania.

She had a difficult childhood and art seemed to her to be the only way out:

In 1921, she enrolled at the Philadelphia School of Design where she studied the work of the American modernist Robert Henri, whose Ashcan School of art-making maintains that painting should be "as real as the mud, the clods of dirt and snow that freeze on Broadway in winter".

This cannot leave her indifferent:

Her paintings and drawings became a way to negotiate life, even if life resisted her ambitions.

Alice Neel sketched the human being in the depths of New York, depicting the misery of underprivileged women but not only.

Through her sensitive portraits of working-class women, Neel became a cult figure in the New Left feminist movement, of which the Village was the focal point in New York.

Feminist activists and critics championed her work, leading to a resurgence of interest in Neel.

It seems only fitting, then, that left-wing feminists helped rescue her from obscurity.

Out of this fervor for her came her first retrospective, at the Whitney Museum in 1974.

It included 58 paintings, dating from the years 1933 to 1973. The exhibition lasted only 38 days and was not unanimously approved.

Critics seemed offended, even disgusted, by the way they viewed her models. Their bodies were often sagging and wrinkled, and their faces were marked by surprise, contentment or despair. Women, in particular, were represented as sexual but not sexualized, sensitive but not fragile.

But Neel, although a feminist, and a communist arrested during the McCarthy purge, was above all interested in the human, and that is what will interest us today.

Let's go back to our exhibition at Beaubourg.

I asked the question: what makes Alicia Neel a special artist?

While the exhibition proposes a thematic reading divided into two distinct parts: the class struggle on the one hand and the gender struggle on the other, I propose a transversal reading of Alicia Neel's work through the theme of the portrait:

"Alice Neel or the capture of the soul", which makes her an artist apart, not only a witness of her time but who knew how to leave a mark of each soul she met.

Neel distanced herself from 20th century American movements such as Abstract Expressionism or Minimalism and this proved to be a strength.

She has characterized her vision as "anarchistic humanism". It is a tactile and ever-contemporary work, a tireless documentary of resilience and improvisation.

To set the context of the times in the 1940s and 1950s, Alice Neel, from her modest New York studio, saw the heyday of Abstract Expressionism marked by Pollock and Rothko.

Then, in the 1960s, Pop Art came along, and soon Minimalism too.

During this time, Alice Neel continued to work, producing figurative paintings that were resolutely out of step with what was popular in the art world at the time.

Why?

Because Alice Neel is fundamentally interested in capturing the soul of the human being on her canvas.

While artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Minimalism were interested in defamiliarizing the human form, reducing and reconstructing individuals to color and line, Alice Neel wanted to capture the human being for what he or she is.

While Andy Warhol embellished his subjects, Alice Neel paints a scathing portrait of the pop artist.

Alice Neel captures here the fragility of the pop artist in a new posture, he who controlled so much his image.

Andy Warhol appears in one of Neel's famous works, stripped to the waist and showing the scars left by the attempted assassination of Valerie Solanas. 
He took off his shirt. He is wearing this corset because the doctors had to cut the muscles in his stomach to remove the bullets from his assassination attempt.
Andy Warhol gives himself up entirely to Alice Neel, his eyes closed in near-recognition, a halo around him gives off a serenity that contrasts with the representation of this exposed pulpit; his hands are barely drawn, he is seated on furniture that is barely sketched out: the character is put forward for what he is, in all his fragility.

While the art world hung out in the East Village, Neel worked in relative obscurity, creating unadorned portraits of her Spanish Harlem neighbors.

She lived in a tough working-class environment, and her paintings are a testament to that.
She worked in a mode known as social realism, confronting humanity without detour, without irony to spare the viewer.

An early feminist and staunch communist, her social realism was intended to communicate socio-economic inequality through striking portraits: 

Art Shields is a portrait dated 1951: a proportion that highlights the subject's face to the features of a face that shows a man who has lived, eyes in reflection, hand hardened: a sense of great self-confidence against a yellow background that inspires the struggle of a man fighting for justice and good. 
Art Shield was indeed a member of the Communist Party and journalist for the Daily Worker who notably defended in the 1920s Italian anarchists sentenced to death for a death they did not commit.

This portrait of Mike Gold, communist activist and journalist for the Daily Worker is the leader of proletarian literature in the United States.
One cannot remain indifferent to this portrait: the character's hardened air, an intelligent and determined look: a position at his desk with his fist folded, symbol of his militancy.

I stayed a long time in front of this portrait: 
Harold Cruse is represented with a doubtful face, the hand on his face calls for questioning. 
Indeed, Harold Cruse is an American social critic known for his collection of essays The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, which explored all the issues of social justice and its equity.

During their painting sessions, Neel talked and talked, bringing out the life stories of his subjects. Because of this, she was able to capture the soul of her subject.
Despite this, one of her most famous remarks denigrated conversation: "Art is not as stupid as human conversation".

The works in this exhibition reflect the fact that Neel was a visual archivist of New York City, particularly Spanish Harlem, where she lived for some twenty years. 

Her black and Latino models were captured with a grace and depth of interiority that was rarely afforded them at the time.
Georgie Arce is a young Puerto Rican from Spanish Harlem with whom Alice Neel became friends.
Observe the proportion of the head put forward by a sharp look that seems to struggle against life, a hard face. Figured dagger in hand, symbol of his defense against a difficult existence.  Georgie was convicted of murder in 1874.


Strangers and lovers were portrayed with the same care as the luminaries of the New York creative landscape of the post-war and 1970s. 

Let's explore this portrait of Gerard Malanga: a relaxed, confident, supple air, a piercing gaze with parted lips ready to deliver something in a white and black halo.
Gerard Malanga was an emblematic figure of Andy Warhol's Factory and is a poet, dancer, director and photographer.

Ron Kajiwara is depicted with a wait-and-see face, a long coat, a hand on his hip as a sign of confidence and a hand pointing at the viewer waiting for a discussion.
Son of Japanese immigrants, he was marked as a child by the internment of his family during the Second World War in a camp in California. A homosexual figure in the art world, he worked as a graphic designer for Vogue

During his lifetime, New York Times critic John Russell wrote: "Being painted by Miss Neel is not merely the equivalent of a body search. It is the equivalent of a search of the body and soul.

In a raw and authentic style, she also has nudes with unattractive bodies, paintings of pregnant women or victims of domestic violence. A way of putting back into play the strings of the female representation

She was onto something vital, and was ready to wait for the world.
"You know what it takes to be an artist?" Neel asked Hoban. "A hypersensitivity and the devil's will. Never give up."

First of all Alicia Neel never sold much work during her life as an artist, but it wasn't  the important thing.

"I had a very hard life, and I paid the price, but I did what I wanted to do." 

Ignored during her lifetime, this painter is praised today for the great acuity with which she portrayed the different strata of American society. 

Today she is an icon of feminism and a model of commitment, inspiring more than ever generations of women painters such as New Yorker Aliza Nisenbaum who asserts "It is precisely today that we can learn from her humanism and emotional honesty.

Mexican-born painter Aliza Nisenbaum is best known for her luminous, large-scale portraits of people and community groups. The transmission is made. 

I highly recommend this exhibition and since art is everywhere, you'll even have the chance to see through a glass window the street art that surrounds the Beaubourg museum.

Elodie Couturier, expertisez.com
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