Alice Neel: Self-Portrait, 1980

This being the 40th anniversary of the “Summer of Love”, and of the concert known as Woodstock, The Great Nude felt the need to highlight the nudes of Alice Neel, one of the most independent figurative artists of the twentieth century, and an artist who’s work at this time (1960’s) reflected some of the social changes rippling through our culture.

By the end of the 1960’s Neel’s work as an artist was well known and her acceptance by the critics assured. Her career was reaching it’s crescendo, with museums and galleries lining up to exhibit her paintings. But it’s important to consider that Alice Neel started out as a woman in a man’s world under emotionally difficult if not tragic circumstances. And being a female artist who felt compelled to explore the boundaries of gender and politics, she shocked many of her peers and broke taboos with her direct and honest depictions of the nude. Her early life (and her career as an artist) was filled with many obstacles and difficulties.

We saw some of her work here in New York this summer in an exhibit at the Zwirner & Wirth Gallery. The paintings Neel produced around the 1930’s were dark and moody, a reflection of her experiences. Neel’s work at this time clashed against the social mores of this period, even by New York standards. Her paintings were often drawn from her personal experiences, where Neel’s nervous breakdown, suicidal tendencies, and subsequent internment in a mental asylum were the context from which her work as an artist began.

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Well Baby Clinic. 1928

Ethel Ashton. 1930

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