At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World Curated by Hilton Als at David Zwirner

Installation view, At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, September 7—November 2, 2024 Photo by Elon Schoenholz. Courtesy David Zwirner

By PIPER OLIVAS September 25, 2024

Alice Neel once famously declared herself a “collector of souls” as she navigated through the tribulations of her life, painting up until her death in 1984. After her passing, Neel left behind hundreds of stories in the form of figurative portraits, which hinge on a rare authenticity that personifies her emblematic energy. Neel, who was championed for decades as radically free-spirited, broke out into the Village scene in New York City in the 1930s. Her intimate and highly expressive paintings of the queer community are the subject of this expansive show, held at the newly opened David Zwirner in Los Angeles. The exhibition, curated by esteemed critic and curator Hilton Als, follows the 2017 exhibition Alice Neel, Uptown, which featured a separate set of critically acclaimed portraits done by Neel.

During her life (1900–1984) Neel traversed an unconventional path and, after a brief stint working in Havana after marrying Cuban aristocratic painter Carlos Enríquez, she got a taste for politics within the avant-garde art scene. It was there that she developed a dedication and interest in equality. From then on her taste for the socially unconventional grew, leading her to New York City in 1927. The works featured in this exhibition were made during the five decades she spent living in Upper Manhattan.

While in New York, Neel spent time with critics, fellow artists, members of the queer community, and activists going between her preferred neighborhoods of Spanish Harlem and Greenwich Village. Neel was heralded for carving space within the male-dominated art scene where nudes were, and still presently are, typically painted by male artists. During the 1930s she painted her earliest female nudes, continuing to engage with disarming the patriarchal gaze and rising into her own power. From then on her portrait style developed substantially over the next few decades as she created a seminal and radically earnest body of work which not only reflected her nature, but the identity of the cultural era during the culmination of her work. Hilton Als noted that this exhibition “will include not just portraits of gay people but those of theorists, activists, politicians, and so on who would qualify as queer by virtue of their different take in their given field and thus the world. So doing, they reflect Alice’s own interest in and commitment to difference.”

Als, who was a friend of Neels, likened her to a visionary who “saw the world before it saw itself.” The works Als selected are tender examples of the closeness she shared with her subjects, where she often painted lovers and dear friends – those, who she had deep emotional connections with or political affinity towards. This can be observed with the relaxed, sensual posing and casual expression often seen within her work. 

A portrait painted from memory of Allen Ginsberg (Neel watched Ginsberg perform with Dr. Timothy Leary in 1966), is moody and unmissable. Several monumental queer figures appear in the room such as a portrait of the iconic poet Frank O’Hara and the former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, who was notably responsible for introducing one of the first gay rights bills to Congress. You get the feeling, while looking at these portraits, that Neel truly understood her subjects, almost as if she was also a psychologist of sorts, spending time with their inner consciousness.

Annie Sprinkle, 1982. Oil on canvas, 60 7/8 x 44 1/8 inches. Private Collection

Paintings from these decades are colorful, loose, and gestural, highlighting subtleties in a disarming form of honesty. The portraits seem posed, but organically, and true to each individual's personality. Neel’s portrait of Bella Abzug, 1976, a distinguished congresswoman, who was also a social activist within the ecofeminism community, features prominently painted breasts, alluding to Abzug’s nurturing nature and generosity to their shared community. As Abzug described, being a feminist was “as natural as breathing, feeling, and thinking.”

It’s easy to get lost in Neel’s portraits; they carry characteristics that aren’t often seen in typical portrait paintings from this period of art and are slightly uncanny in characteristics. A provocative portrait of Annie Sprinkle, from 1982, an active feminist and sex worker, is stripped down, featuring a minimal background. Sprinkle poses unapologetically, exposing herself to Neel, proudly. Her expression, which appeared to be both demure and comical, is endearing. Sprinkle wears her leather as a second skin. It's a part of her very identity. Her outfit is an expression of her radicalness, a statement for body autonomy, and she is not ashamed. Neel’s lifelong commitment not only to painting but her devotion to these communities is what projected her into the limelight during the 1950s, where she remains honored and acknowledged to this day.

The show also features ink portraits of Adrienne Rich, Andy Warhol, and Mary Garrard and a vitrine filled with memorabilia, some touching, some heartbreaking – all relevant to Neel's iconic oevre. “For me, people come first,” Neel once stated “I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.”

At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World is on show at David Zwirner in Los Angeles until 2 November 2024. WM