Alice Neel: Un regard engagé

Also see People Come First

Centre Pompidou –

5 October, 2022 – 16 January, 2023

Barbican Centre, London

February 16, 2023 to May 21, 2023

Image: Alice Neel, Marxist Girl (Irene Peslikis), 1972

Oil on canvas

151.8 x 106.7 cm
59 3/4 x 42 in

© The Estate of Alice Neel

Courtesy The Estate of Alice Neel and Victoria Miro

Left: Alice Neel, Ellie Poindexter, 1961. Oil on canvas, 99.7 x 66.5 cm. 39 1/4 x 26 1/4 in © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy the Estate of Alice Neel and Victoria Miro. Right: Alice Neel, Ellie Poindexter, 1962. Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 61 cm. 30 x 24 1/8 in © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy the Estate of Alice Neel and Victoria Miro.

This autumn, the Centre Pompidou is dedicating a major exhibition to Alice Neel (1900-1984), an important North American artist. Born with the century, this remarkable painter was largely overlooked during her own lifetime, but is now celebrated for how acutely she portrayed the different levels of American society. Her vast oeuvre has even been compared to Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy). 

Six years after the retrospective held at the Van Gogh Foundation in Arles, the exhibition, “Alice Neel – An Engaged Eye” presents the artist in a specific light, emphasising her political and social activism, in connection to her membership in the Communist party and involvement in the women’s rights movement. The exhibition reflects Centre Pompidou’s commitment to furthering the study and understanding of the work of female artists, and to featuring a greater proportion of their works in the collection. 

Throughout her life, Alice Neel painted marginalized individuals, those who were relegated to the fringes of American society, because of their origin, skin colour, eccentricity, sexual orientation or their radical political activism. As she became better known in the 1960s, Alice Neel widened the spectrum of her models to include those from more privileged backgrounds, but she always remained true to her convictions. A few weeks before her death, the painter stated, “In politics and in life I always liked the losers, the underdogs. There was a smell of success that I don’t like.” 

Alice Neel painted a lot of women, particularly female nudes – far removed from traditional depictions of women as objects of the male gaze – and unsentimental portrayals of pregnant female nudes. She even went so far as to portray a victim of domestic violence. For this she became an icon of militant feminism. Foreshadowing contemporary discussions, in 1971 she explained, “I have always believed that women should resent and refuse to accept all the gratuitous insults that men impose upon them.” 

Although she lived and worked through the heydays of triumphant abstraction, pop art, minimalism and conceptualism, Alice Neel, a free-spirited, independent woman, pursued her figurative painting, going against the tide of the prevalent avant-garde art scene of New York, a city she had called home since the early 1930s. As a resident of working-class multi-ethnic neighbourhoods – first Greenwich Village and later Spanish Harlem – Alice Neel, a single mother who lived on welfare, felt close to her sitters with whom she sought to identify. Her engagement was never abstract – it was shaped by real experiences. She had no interest in painting a story without the filter of close intimacy. Like the lens of a camera, Alice Neel brought those who had long remained in the shadows and been ignored by society into our field of vision. This was her first political act. The second was her choice of framing which reveals a striking frontality. The artist places us directly in front of her sitters. With great visual power, Alice Neel imposes them on us: look at them ! 

The exhibition is being shown exclusively in Paris and is divided into two parts loosely conceived, around the notions of the class struggle and the struggle for gender equality. Each section is presented as a thematic retrospective, starting with her earliest works in the late 1920s, which were painted in Cuba, and finishing with the final paintings made shortly before her death in 1984. In all, some 75 paintings and drawings are on view, along with two extracts from a film about the artist made by French artist Michel Auder - in the late 1970’s as well as other film productions.

 A selection of unpublished documents is also included in the show. 

The exhibition opens with works by two other artists : a portrait of the painter by Robert Mapplethorpe and a work by Jenny Holzer drawn from Alice Neel’s FBI record. In October 1955, FBI agents visited Neel to question her as she had been under investigation since 1951 for her ties to the Communist party. 

The exhibition will be presented at the Barbican Centre in London from February 16, 2023 to May 21, 2023. This exhibition was originally scheduled from June 10 to August 20, 2020. 

Alice Neel, Andy Warhol, 1970 Oil and acrylic on canvas 152.4 × 101.6 cm Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Gift of Timothy Collins 80.52 The Estate of Alice Neel Photo © 2019. Digital image Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala Centre Pompidou 

 Three questions for Angela Lampe, the exhibition curator, curator of modern collections at the Musée national d’art moderne, 

Who is Alice Neel, the artist? “I am the century” Alice Neel used to say. She was born on 28 January 1900 and died in 1984. Long ignored during her lifetime, Neel currently figures among the most striking painters of 20th century American art. Living in New York, she made innumerable portraits of all social classes, her family – friends, lovers, neighbours, artists, poets, art critics – but also of those whom society ignored and neglected – Latin-American and Puerto Rican immigrants, Blacks, young delinquents whose kingdom was the street, and mothers struggling to raise their children. As a Communist sympathiser, Neel took a lifelong interest in injustice and inequality, lampooning racial segregation and discrimination against women and homosexuals. Her uncompromising female nudes made her an icon of feminism. Driven by an empathetic vision, the great intensity of her portraits is striking. With Neel, the act of painting became a quest for truth, thus a political act. 

How does the Centre Pompidou project enable us to understand her work? 

The project entitled “Alice Neel. Un regard engagé” (Alice Neel. A Committed Vision) presents the artist from a particular point of view, with a strong and radical perspective: it highlights her political and social commitment, as evidenced by her membership of the Communist Party and her advocacy of women’s rights. “In politics and in life, I have always liked losers, outsiders. I didn’t like the smell of success.” the artist declared. The project is divided into two parts, freely organised around two themes that resonate with today’s world: the class struggle and gender equality. Each section can be seen as a thematic retrospective, beginning with early works from the late 1920s and extending to the latest paintings made shortly before she died in 1984. 

Catalogue

What is the main theme of the exhibition catalogue? Like the exhibition, which was initially scheduled for June 2020 and postponed until the autumn of 2022 because of the health crisis, the catalogue is organised into two parts, revolving on the one hand around political questions and, on the other, around the image of women’s and men’s bodies. As well as containing four new essays and a rich iconography, the publication is a mouthpiece for the artist herself. Many works are accompanied by Alice Neel’s comments, collected from various sources and translated into French. An anthology of her texts and original interviews along with an illustrated chronology complete this portrait of a committed artist. Some comments by Jenny Holzer, author of a work on the FBI file on Alice Neel during the period of McCarthyism, emphasise her timeliness for younger artists.

Picasso Cut Paper

 Hammer Museum 

October 1 – December 31, 2022 

The Hammer Museum at UCLA presents Picasso Cut Papers, an exhibition about an important yet little-known aspect of the practice of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). This exhibition features some of Pablo Picasso’s most whimsical and intriguing works made on paper and in paper, alongside a select group of sculptures in sheet metal. Cut papers were created as independent works of art, as exploratory pieces in relation to works in other mediums, as models for Picasso’s fabricators, and as gifts or games for family and friends.

Pablo Picasso, Female nude, Barcelona or Paris, 1902–03. Pen and sepia ink on paper pasted onto electric-blue glazed paper. 7 5/8 × 13 5/16 in. (19.3 × 33.8 cm). Museu Picasso, Barcelona. Gift of Pablo Picasso, 1970 © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 

 Although the artist rarely sold or exhibited them during his lifetime, he signed, dated, and archived them just as he did his works in other mediums. Many examples have been stored flat or disassembled in portfolios until now and will regain their original three-dimensional forms when presented in the exhibition. This survey spans Picasso’s entire career, from his first cut papers, made in 1890, at nine years of age, through the 1960s, with works he made while in his eighties. Picasso Cut Papers will be on view from October 1 to December 31, 2022. 

There are approximately 100 works in the exhibition, many of which have never before been displayed in public, with loans coming principally from the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, the Picasso estate, and the Musée national Picasso in Paris. Major loans have also been granted by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the collection of Gail and Tony Ganz. 

“Given our major collection of works on paper from the Renaissance to the present, the Hammer has a long-standing commitment to presenting both historical and contemporary exhibitions of works on paper. We are thrilled to be organizing the first exhibition devoted solely to Pablo Picasso’s inventive cut papers, many of which have never been exhibited. Picasso Cut Papers will also be the first international loan exhibition to occupy our new Works on Paper Gallery.” said Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin. 

Picasso played with the versatility of paper and its ability to be folded and molded, attempting to create volume where it is not otherwise perceived. The cut papers embody the artist’s ongoing experiments in breaking down the traditional barriers between drawing, painting, and sculpture, extending into the fields of photography, moving images, and live performance. Picasso Cut Papers is organized loosely chronologically, according to the following sectios:

• Silhouettes • Contours • Cut, Pinned, and Pasted Papers • Torn and Perforated Papers • Shadow Papers • Sculpted Papers • Divertissements • Masks • Diurnes 

 CREDITS 

Picasso Cut Papers is organized by Cynthia Burlingham, deputy director, curatorial affairs, and Allegra Pesenti, independent curator, former associate director and senior curator, Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. The exhibition is organized with the exceptional support of the Musée national Picasso–Paris.

CATALOGUE 

The first publication to focus solely on Picasso’s cut papers, this book features many works reproduced for the first time with newly commissioned photography, alongside new scholarship on a little-known aspect of one of the 20th century’s most pivotal practices. It contributes to the ongoing discourse surrounding innovation and abstraction at the roots of modern art. Also featured is a photo section that surveys Picasso’s engagement with cut paper and sculpture over the decades and documents his practice of cutting paper, both in and out of the studio, with family, friends, and collaborators. 

The book features a text by Allegra Pesenti and is edited by Cynthia Burlingham and Pesenti. It is published by DelMonico Books • D.A.P and designed by Miko McGinty and Rita Jules. 

Book: Neighborhood provides new understanding of 17th-century Dutch art

The importance of knowing what’s going on in your neighborhood and knowing what’s going on in your neighborhood and upholding its honor is at least as old as comparable societal expectations in 17th-century Netherlands, according to a new book by a University of Kansas art historian. Numerous Dutch paintings of an array of subjects — scenes of streets, domesticity, professions, and festivity -- conveyed and reinforced those values to contemporary viewers.

That is Linda Stone-Ferrier’s conclusion after analyzing a range of 17th-century Dutch paintings in a new context: that of the neighborhood. Her book, “The Little Street: The Neighborhood in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Culture,” is just out from Yale University Press after a 14-year process of research, writing and editing.

A professor of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art in KU’s Kress Foundation Department of Art History, Stone-Ferrier realized she would begin research for a book like “The Little Street” when, by chance, she read an article about 17th-century Netherlandish neighborhoods by the sociologist Herman Roodenburg.

“I knew no art historian had ever talked about the neighborhood, which Roodenburg made very clear was a significant organizing unit for social control and social exchange,” Stone-Ferrier said. “No art historians of Dutch art had ever addressed the neighborhood as an interpretive context for the study of Dutch paintings.”

In the book’s introduction, she writes that studies by art historians tend to silo works by subject matter, like landscapes or scenes of daily life, “presum(ing) that each category raises interpre­tive issues distinct from the others. In a revision of that par­adigm, I argue that certain seemingly diverse subjects share the neighborhood as a meaningful context for analysis.”

In addition, Stone-Ferrier writes, her book challenges scholars’ assumptions that categorize “imagery in paintings within a binary construct of ‘private,’ understood as the female domestic sphere, versus ‘public,’ synonymous with the male domain of the city ...”

The neighborhood was a “liminal space” between home and city that encompassed people of every gender, religion, social class, nationality and political persuasion, she writes. In fact, Dutch citizens of the 1600s were required to officially belong to and participate in their neighborhood organizations – much like today’s homes associations – which collected membership dues, enforced neighborhood rules, and hosted mandatory meetings and annual group meals. Thanks to some exquisite recordkeeping from centuries ago and today’s digital resources, Stone-Ferrier was able to research, among other things, relevant subjects of paintings and the identity and professions of Dutch citizenry who owned them that informed her research. Art collecting was important, Stone-Ferrier said, to a broad and deep urban middle class whose wealth was generated by such trading enterprises as the Dutch East and West India companies.

And it's clear, from an analysis of that art and an array of documents, that what was going on down the street and around the corner was important to Dutch people of that time – just as it is to people in neighborhoods around the world today.

“Honor is the word the Dutch used in in their neighborhood regulations and in other contexts, too,” Stone-Ferrier said. “Honor had to do with how one behaved. To act honorably in all endeavors -- personally, at home, in your business -- was valued highly. An individual's honor or dishonor reflected on that of the whole neighborhood. That was an integral tie. That's why there was gossip and documented witness statements regarding the behavior of one’s neighbors.”

One chapter is subtitled “Glimpses, Glances, and Gossip” because — like today -- not only are people curious about what the neighbor across the street is doing in his driveway, or what is going on with those Rottweilers around the corner, but they want to make sure people are not misbehaving or breaking communal rules.

Paintings showing scenes of people upholding neighborhood virtues both reflected and reinforced those values, Stone-Ferrier writes.

Van Gogh in America

 On the centenary of its status as the first public museum in the United States to purchase a painting by Vincent van Gogh, the Detroit Institute of Arts  (DIA) presents a landmark exhibition that tells the story of the artist’s rise to prominence among American audiences. Van Gogh in America features paintings, drawings, and prints by the Dutch Post-Impressionist artist.

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The exhibition will run from October 2, 2022 to January 22, 2023, featuring 74 original Van Gogh works. Visitors can experience the defining moments, people, and circumstances that catapulted Van Gogh’s work to widespread acclaim in the United States.

The exhibition’s presence in Detroit – and more generally, in the Midwest – holds special significance. The DIA’s 1922 purchase of Self-Portrait (1887) was the first by a public museum in the United States. Notably, the next four Van Gogh paintings purchased by American museums were all in the Midwest, where audiences were galvanized by Van Gogh’s rugged aesthetic, featuring subjects from modern, everyday life; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Saint Louis Art Museum; and Toledo Museum of Art. These important purchases – Olive Trees (1889; Kansas City); 

Stairway at Auvers (1890; Saint Louis); Houses at Auvers (1890; Toledo); and Wheat Fields with Reaper, Auvers (1890, Toledo) – are all featured in the exhibition.

“One hundred years after the DIA made the bold decision to purchase a Van Gogh painting, we are honored to present Van Gogh in America,” said DIA Director Salvador Salort-Pons. “This unique exhibition includes numerous works that are rarely on public view in the United States, and tells the story – for the first time – of how Van Gogh took shape in the hearts and minds of Americans during the last century.”

One of the most influential artists in the Western canon, Van Gogh amassed a large body of work: more than 850 paintings and almost 1,300 works on paper. He began painting at the age of 27, and was prolific for the next 10 years until his death in 1890.

Works by Van Gogh appeared in more than 50 group shows before he finally received a solo exhibition in an American museum in 1935 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Reflecting and fanning the excitement among American audiences for Van Gogh was Irving Stone’s novel Lust for Life (1934), and Vincente Minnelli’s film adaptation starring Kirk Douglas (1956), which helped shape Americans’ popular understanding of the artist.

“How Van Gogh became a household name in the United States is a fascinating, largely untold story,” said Jill Shaw, Head of the James Pearson Duffy Department of Modern and Contemporary Art and Rebecca A. Boylan and Thomas W. Sidlik Curator of European Art, 1850 –1970, at the DIA. “Van Gogh in America examines the landmark moments and trajectory of the artist becoming fully integrated within the American collective imagination, even though he never set foot in the United States."

The Exhibition

Van Gogh in America is arranged in a narrative fashion spanning 9 galleries, starting with Van Gogh’s Chair (opens in a new tab)(1888; The National Gallery, London):

• In the first gallery, the exhibition is introduced and illustrations of early black and white U.S. newspaper clippings pertaining to Van Gogh are presented.
• Following is a selection of works by Van Gogh that were included in the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show).
• Next, works from the first U.S. retrospective of Van Gogh's work in a commercial gallery context in 1920 are displayed, documenting the role of Van Gogh’s family in fostering the artist’s reputation in the United States.
• To follow is a presentation of the DIA’s Self-Portrait purchased in 1922. Works by other artists from the DIA’s permanent collection, as well as some lent by other American museums, are included in this gallery to reveal how the DIA displayed Self-Portrait soon after its acquisition.
• In the following room, the Midwest museums that followed the DIA in accessioning Van Gogh works of their own are highlighted.
• Next, galleries are dedicated to the marquee traveling exhibition organized by MoMA in 1935.
• In the final room, Hollywood’s representation of Van Gogh and the making of his art is brought to life, as well as a discussion of the legacy and enduring appeal of Vincent van Gogh.

Starry Night (1888) – on loan from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris – is the newest addition to its Van Gogh in America exhibition, which will run from October 2, 2022 to January 22, 2023 only at the DIA. Featuring more than 70 works by the famed artist, the groundbreaking exhibition is the first ever devoted to Van Gogh’s introduction and early reception in America. Tickets will go on sale this summer.

Starry Night – also known as Starry Night Over the Rhône – is one of two iconic paintings including the nighttime sky that Van Gogh created while living in the French city of Arles from 1888 to 1889. The beloved work captures a clear, star-filled night sky and the reflections of gas lighting over an illuminated Rhône(opens in a new tab) River in Arles with a couple strolling along its banks in the foreground. Starry Night is important to the introduction of Van Gogh’s work to the United States for its pivotal role in the iconic film Lust for Life (1956; directed by Vincente Minnelli). The masterpiece will be on view in the U.S. for the first time since 2011, and is one of three Van Gogh works on loan from the Musée d'Orsay for the DIA exhibition.

Van Gogh in America will be the largest-scale Van Gogh exhibition in America in a generation, featuring paintings, drawings, and prints by Van Gogh from museums and private collections worldwide. Visitors will also “journey” through the defining moments, people, and experiences that catapulted Van Gogh’s work to widespread acclaim in the U.S.

Van Gogh in America reveals the story of how America’s view of Van Gogh’s work evolved during the first half of the 20th century and his rise to cultural prominence in the United States. Despite his work appearing in over 50 group shows during the two decades following his American debut in the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art (commonly known as the Armory Show), it was not until 1935 that Van Gogh was the subject of a solo museum exhibition in the United States. Around the same time, Irving Stone’s novel Lust for Life was published, and its adaptation into film in 1956 shaped and began to solidify America’s popular understanding of Van Gogh.

Major highlights include:

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  Self-Portrait(opens in a new tab) (1887), Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts

• Van Gogh’s Chair(opens in a new tab) (1888), Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, The National Gallery, London

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• Starry Night (Starry Night over the Rhône) (1888), Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

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• L'Arlésienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux (Marie Julien, 1848–1911)(opens in a new tab) (1888–89), Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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• The Bedroom (1889), Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, The Art Institute of Chicago
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• The Olive Trees (1889), Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

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"Two Peasants Digging," 1889, Vincent van Gogh, Dutch; oil on canvas. Stedelijk Musuem, Amsterdam, A411.

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890). Lullaby:Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse), 1889. Oil on canvas; 36 1/2 x 28 5/8 in. (92.7 x 72.7 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, bequest of John T. Spaulding, 48.548.

• Portrait of Postman Roulin (1888), Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts
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• Poppy Field (1890), Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, Kunstmuseum Den HaagThe exhibition includes select works by Van Gogh’s contemporaries Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, in addition to 20th century European and American artists Raoul Dufy, Henri Matisse, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, and Joseph Stella.

Vincent van Gogh
Zundert 1853 – 1890 Auvers-sur-Oise

WALLRAF-RICHARTZ-MUSEUM & FONDATION CORBOUD

The Drawbridge
1888, Oil on canvas, 49.5 x 64.5 cm
Acquired in 1911
Inv. no. WRM 1197
Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, b.1853, d.1890); Undergrowth with Two Figures; 1890; oil on canvas; Bequest of Mary E. Johnston; 1967.1430.

Vincent van Gough (Dutch, 1853-1890) Wheat Fields with Reaper, Auvers. Oil on canvas, 1890. Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1935.4. Gallery 35

Musée d’Orsay.Vincent van Gogh, The dance hall in Arles, 1888

Catalogue

A full-length, illustrated catalogue with essays by Rachel Esner, Joost van der Hoeven, Julia Krikke, Jill Shaw, Susan Alyson Stein, Chris Stolwijk, and Roelie Zwikker, and a chronology by Dorota Chudzicka will accompany the exhibition.

A fascinating exploration of the introduction of Vincent van Gogh’s work to the United States one hundred years later

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is one of the most iconic artists in the world, and how he became a household name in the United States is a fascinating, largely untold story. Van Gogh in America details the early reception of the artist’s work by American private collectors, civic institutions, and the general public from the time his work was first exhibited in the United States at the 1913 Armory Show up to his first retrospective in an American museum at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1935, and beyond. The driving force behind this project, the Detroit Institute of Arts, was the very first American public museum to purchase a Van Gogh painting, his Self-Portrait, in 1922, and this publication marks the centenary of that event. 
 
Leading Van Gogh scholars chronicle the considerable efforts made by early promoters of modernism in the United States and Europe, including the Van Gogh family, Helene Kröller-Müller, numerous dealers, collectors, curators, and artists, private and public institutions, and even Hollywood, to frame the artist’s biography and introduce his art to America.