Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle review – a ‘momentous’ exhibition at the Barbican
This show is a testament to the painter known for ‘her unflinching yet compassionate gaze’
The painter Alice Neel was neglected in her lifetime, but is today “celebrated for her unflinching yet compassionate gaze”, said Chloë Ashby in The Times. Born into a conservative family in Pennsylvania, Neel (1900-1984) rejected her roots, married a Cuban émigré and became a committed communist, living a bohemian existence in New York’s Spanish Harlem.
She specialised in “candid and unconventional” portraits of “lovers and neighbours, heavily pregnant women, queer couples, artists and writers, black intellectuals” – looking beyond the conventions of portraiture to focus on figures marginalised on account of their sexuality, race or class. “Life itself, unvarnished and fresh – hot off the griddle, she called it.” Neel was painting while abstraction was in its heyday, and she was ignored for much of her career.
In recent decades, however, her eccentric figurative work has won her cult status – and as this thrilling survey at the Barbican demonstrates, the attention is well-deserved. Bringing together 70 paintings from every stage of Neel’s long career, the show is a testament to her genius for capturing not just “outward appearances but inner lives”. It is a “momentous” exhibition.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Neel was not out to flatter, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. The first thing we see is a striking self-portrait she painted at the age of 80, in which she “presents herself as a grandmotherly, bespectacled lady with white hair, sitting naked, while holding a brush”. She captures her “drooping breasts and wobbly tummy”, her hand “seemingly gangrenous”.
It’s a work typical of her matter-of-fact approach. Yet while there is much that is admirable about Neel’s work, it’s hard to get past its fundamental “weaknesses”. She was “terrible” at painting hands, and had an annoying tendency to make her subjects’ heads “disproportionately large”.
Some of these portraits are plain bad: she really “drops the ball” in a “marionette-like” portrait of Andy Warhol’s assistant Gerard Malanga, while a “horrid” likeness of the poet Frank O’Hara is “an abortive piece of painting”.
Neel’s style is certainly “ungainly”, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Yet to criticise her work for lacking “correctness of proportion” or photorealistic accuracy is to miss the point. Her paintings are near to caricature, but much odder: they speak to the “weird” coexistence of our minds and our bodies.
A “notorious” 1933 painting of the “wildly eccentric writer” Joe Gould has him surrounded by “tiers of male genitals”; her lover John Rothschild is “seen peeing in the sink” as he examines a “wriggling critter” in the palm of his hand. Elsewhere, Warhol himself is memorably depicted half-naked shortly after a 1968 attempt on his life, in a surgical truss. Overall, this is a “terrific” show that captures Neel’s tremendous “force of personality”.
Barbican Art Gallery, London EC1 (020-7870 2500, barbican.org.uk). Until 21 May; barbican.org.uk
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
'New arrivals are more than paying for themselves'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
6 stylish homes in Portland, Oregon
Feature Featuring a wall of windows in Collins View and a historic ballroom in Portland Heights
By The Week US Published
-
What's next for US interest rates?
The Explainer Stubborn inflation forestalls anticipated rate cuts
By Becca Stanek, The Week US Published
-
6 stylish homes in Portland, Oregon
Feature Featuring a wall of windows in Collins View and a historic ballroom in Portland Heights
By The Week US Published
-
Tom Crewe's 6 favorite works that challenge societal norms
Feature The novelist recommends works by Margaret Oliphant, Patrick White, and more
By The Week US Published
-
On the trail of India’s wild lions at Sasan Gir National Park
The Week Recommends The sanctuary is a 'roaring' conservation success
By The Week UK Published
-
Recipe: almond marmalade cake
The Week Recommends This syrupy cake can be toasted for brunch
By The Week UK Published
-
Properties of the week: houses with enchanting gardens
The Week Recommends Featuring pretty homes in Hampshire, Devon and West Sussex
By The Week UK Published
-
Venice Biennale 2024: from the good to the bad to the downright 'bizarre'
The Week Recommends Central exhibition features the work of some 330 artists
By The Week UK Published
-
Sunset Song: gripping theatre that's 'close to magic'
The Week Recommends Morna Young's 'first-class adaptation' of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic novel
By The Week UK Published
-
Challengers: 'the most purely pleasurable film of the year so far'
The Week Recommends Zendaya plays a former tennis player turned coach in this 'almost ridiculously' sexy drama
By The Week UK Published