The great Alice Neel: 'I wanted to paint as a woman, but not as the oppressive, power-mad world thought a woman should paint'
Retrieved on:
Thursday, April 20, 2023
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In London, a portrait of Nochlin and her daughter Daisy hangs in the Barbican Art Gallery exhibition Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle.
Key Points:
- In London, a portrait of Nochlin and her daughter Daisy hangs in the Barbican Art Gallery exhibition Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle.
- The common theme of celebrations of Neel’s greatness is her empathetic but unyielding scrutiny of family, friends and neighbours within a radically diverse community.
A male art world
- Neel herself asserted:
I have always wanted to paint as a woman, but not as the oppressive and power-mad world thought a woman should paint. - I have always wanted to paint as a woman, but not as the oppressive and power-mad world thought a woman should paint.
- Neel’s gender was crucial for her painting and politics, but she resented the cliches about female artists that dominated art criticism.
- The same applies to Black artists, and doubly so with Black female artists, far removed from the predominating narrative of white male artists.
Art without men
- This not only foregrounds the forgotten women of abstract art but also extends beyond the US and Europe.
- If the most famous painters on display are Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler, these two women have long endured playing second fiddle to the men of abstract expressionism.
- For Katy Hessel, telling The Story of Art Without Men is the only sure way of shifting the terms of greatness, as inscribed in Ernst Gombrich’s gender-blind The Story of Art.
- This training was liberating in enabling women’s creative work, but modern art criticism often presented the applied arts – crafts and commercial art – as secondary.