Art review: Alice Neel at L.A. Louver

When Alice Neel was under FBI investigation in the 1950s, her file described her as a “romantic Bohemian type Communist.” Far more revealing than the Red Scare classification was Neel’s purported interest in having the agents who interviewed her sit for a portrait. Needless to say, her request was denied. It would have been fascinating to see how she dealt with the faces of bureaucratic antagonism.

Over six decades, Neel (1900-1984) painted her lovers, children and grandchildren, friends, fellow artists and activists, and strangers who intrigued her. Born near Philadelphia, she settled in New York, and was poor and under-recognized for most of her career. Her life was richly textured (she appeared, for instance, in the Robert Frank film, “Pull My Daisy,” with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac) but also stained with grief: the death of her first child; estrangement from her second; suicide attempts and a nervous breakdown; a lover who destroyed much of her early work.

You can see in her portraits some of Schiele’s tense angularity, Munch’s brutal honesty, Cassatt’s fascination with the maternal, as well as a hint of Goya’s attraction to the shadowy and grotesque. You can always recognize Neel’s hand, her energy, her nerve. She talked continuously and uninhibitedly through portrait sittings. The power of her work often lies in its paradoxical compression of raw immediacy and sustained encounter.

L.A. Louver’s show of 16 Neel portraits, dating from 1940 to 1978, is a prized opportunity. The last time so many of the artist’s works were on view together in L.A. was over 20 years ago.

Jeremy Lewison, an advisor to the Alice Neel estate, helped orchestrate this show, and co-curated the thematic survey of Neel’s work now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In the catalog to the museum exhibition, Lewison aptly describes the portraits as “not so much a record of intimacy as a call to intimacy.” They are invitations to the domains of both sitter and artist, to their psychic and physical shared space.

In nearly every canvas of Neel’s, that space feels alive, dynamic, charged with emotional depth and formal energy. A 1965 seated portrait of her friend Frank Gentile is a stellar example. Neel peppers the image with destabilizing asymmetries as she anchors it with rhyming lines, curves and colors. Gentile’s eyebrows rise; his eyelids droop. One downward hand notches the chair’s arm and the other is raised as if for conversational emphasis. The path from one to the other traces a sideways S across the canvas, intersected by a vertical version running from torso through crossed legs. A dark gray patch in the amorphous background subtly frames Gentile’s head and echoes the streak of his black-socked shin. His emerald jacket meets the gold chair with the saturated luminosity of stained glass.

In this, as in many of Neel’s most striking works, she toggles between sketchy outline and more detailed finish. She leaves patches of canvas bare next to areas more fully rendered. As an analog to identity’s lack of fixity, its perpetual fluidity, this pictorial strategy could not be more potent. It’s also a compelling reminder that every realist painter is also practicing a fundamentally abstract art, organizing shapes and lines, solids and voids, hues and tones across a flat surface. Composition reinforces content and vice versa.

Consider the stunning “Peggy” (c.1949), in which the sitter’s unnaturally lanky arms stretch out and double back, so that her hands (one open, one curled closed) come to rest on either side of her face like fragile but insistent arrows pointing to the cut above one eye, the bruises next to the other.
 
Neel considered herself a “collector of souls.” In this fine assembly, it is clear how well she honored those she gathered, in all their restlessness, vulnerability and imperfection.

– Leah Ollman

L.A. Louver, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through June 26. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.lalouver.com

Images: "Frank Gentile" (top) and "Peggy." Photo credit: Copyright the Estate of Alice Neel, Courtesy L.A. Louver.

Comments

[william wray]

For most of my conscious art life I found Neal's work to be to structurally unsound to be worthy of deeper examination. However, despite the poor proportion drawing issues that art critics may admire in her work for it’s uncontaminated crudeness, her humble struggle and this example of her art intrigues me. I don’t know if I’m getting smarter about art or just getting beaten down, but I’m going to check out the show.

[Donald Frazell]

Write a review WW. I have never found her work expressive in line, nor color, not that many Americans understand such a musical, poetic and spiritual fundamental of art outside of a very few mostly Bay Area types, and long ago. Still basically self indulgent and referential, the artist isnt important, the work is as a triggering mechanism of mind, body, soul, intertwined as one.

Maybe better in person, i hope so. I just spent half an hour before the cezanne portrait at the getty, now thats the painters painter. This stuff has the feeling of being a wannabe Schiele, but emotionless, all about her small group, where is humanity? The line simply lacks energy or passion.

Tragedy is a part of everyones life, some more than others, but how does this relate to the commonality of all?

[Charles J]

Ok, ok, so her works don't match up to Cezanne, Schiele, Vermeer, etc., etc. Yet I find something extremely engaging about her style, her ability to capture personalities with a combination of approaches ranging from carefully-wrought to near cartoonish. A quick first impression may lead to thoughts of 'slaphappy', but it doesn't take long to perceive the depth in what she has done.
Hmm...perhaps a bit of Mies here, 'less is more'...?

[Georganne Deen]

I thought the feminists would show up and take these blogs apart but I guess not. First of all, comparing one artist to another is useless and presumes that we are all using the same rules to judge the merit of art, that we all have the same taste and are looking for a similar experience. I personally can’t stand country western music but at least I have the sense not to go blogging on a review of someone by saying she’s not important and not as good as this dude who lived a hundred years ago & whose work is Nothing Like Hers! What??
Those of us who like her work experience a life full of humor, pathos, desire, ennui, all the things that make us human, and we experience it through the expression of her often dull line, application of paint and subjects. No one’s saying she’s a genius but one doesn’t have to be considered a genius to be loved. She’s a great character who left a generous testimony of her turbulent life for us to observe and who deserves the respect she’s given.

[Donald Frazell]

Fine, but the lowering of creative standards, as with Cezannes talk about Impressionisms low vaulted ceinling, is what has led to the desolation of soul in contemporary art. All human activities are compared to thopse of the past. science, politics, sports, literature, why not visual art? Why is it left off the hook, and allowed to wallow in mediocrity? because it has become business first, second, and third, where is arts Purpose in all this?

No, we must be held up to the highest standards. That includes all artists work, and each one on its own merits, and fulfillment of purpose. She has low vaulted standardds, so be it. But they have become the standards of the day. Passion, skill, intelligence have been replaced by witty, smart, and clever. And self exhibitionism and psychology, the worshipping of the individual over humanity, nature and god. And so, bad art rules the day.

She is a niche painter, for a protected and small crowd that has far too much influence in what is supposed to be about all. She went through no more than many, hell, I have been through worse. Got wounds on my back healing and half a finger at the moment, so what? Stuff happens, but it will NEVER enter my work or its focus. Though my typing is worse than ever right now, sorry.

Art collegia delenda est
Save the Watts towers, tear down the rotten ivories.

[marcarch]

met Alice Neel in late 70's in Balto. she was very sweet. don't think she cared too much if you didn't like her paintings. enjoyed it when you did. (btw: she told me that) would not have made any difference as to how or what she painted. she chose to paint that way. does not mean she could only paint that way. she made a lot of paintings. that's hard to do. especially if poor, when paying the rent, etc. is a problem. she had an interesting life too. she's dead now, not much she can do about your opinion now is there?

[Donald Frazell]

Another master at stating the obvious, must have a MFA, Deep too.
ACDE