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In this print, Margaret Evans, a close friend of Neel’s, sits on the floor with her twin children. Both infants are naked to the waist and wear red booties; the one on the left extends his left foot out, turns his back to the viewer, and reaches toward his mother, who appears to be affectionately touching his cheek. The other baby wears blue leggings; he faces forward with prominent facial features and an expression verging on horror. He seems about to cry. Margaret’s and her children’s bodies overlap, suggesting that children are an extension of their mother. [2] The figures are placed to the right side of the composition, leaving a large white openness to the left, which is relieved by the projecting feet of the baby on that side. The viewpoint is elevated, as if the artist were standing above her subjects when she rendered them.
Neel was left-handed, which may explain the placement of the figures to the right in this composition. Typically, she started her paintings with outlines in an ultramarine color, and then filled in the shapes with other colors, as she did here with black, blue, red, and flesh tones. This silkscreen print was based on an oil on canvas painting that Neel completed in 1979. The print was one of thirteen in a portfolio commemorating the conversion of the Second Avenue Courthouse into the new home for the Anthology Film Archives. Some of the other artists in the portfolio were Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, and James Rosenquist. Neel was one of two women to participate, and she may have done so because of her ties to documentary film. For eighteen years, she had an intermittent relationship with Sam Brody, a left-wing filmmaker and critic, and the father of her son, Hartley. The fact that Neel chose as her subject a scene of children—one apparently terrified—may be an indirect allusion to her own unsettled household where Brody was often abusive.
The representation of a woman with two children conjures Renaissance paintings of the Madonna with the Christ child and St. John the Baptist. More recently, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, exceptional women artists of the Impressionist era, depicted mothers and maids caring for small children. But Neel did not see herself in terms of her predecessors: “I tried to capture life as it went by—art records so much, the feeling, the beliefs, the changes. … I have painted life itself right off the vine—not a copy of an old master with new figures inserted—because now is now.” [3]
[1] Neel, quoted in Patricia Hills, Alice Neel (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981), 187.
[2] Denise Bauer, Alice Neel’s Feminist Portraits: Women Artists, Writers, Activists, and Intellectuals (New York: SUNY New Paltz Publications Department, 2003), 36.
[3] Neel, quoted in The Christian Science Monitor October 31, 1977, quoted in Phoebe Hogan, Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010), 375.
ProvenanceFrom 1984
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by the American Art Foundation through The Pace Gallery, New York on March 20, 1984. [1]
Notes:
[1] Letter, March 20, 1984, object file.
Exhibition History2010
Looking At/Looking In: Bodies and Faces in Contemporary Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (5/11/2010 - 8/8/2010)
2020
Private Life: Domestic and Interior Spaces in 20th Century Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (2/4/2020-9/27/2020)
2021
The Voyage of Life: Art, Allegory, and Community Response
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (7/16/2021 - 12/12/2021)
2023
Coexistence: Nature vs. Nurture
Reynolda House Museum of Amerian Art (4/7/2023 - 9/24/2023)
Published ReferencesReynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). 204, 205
DepartmentAmerican Art
Margaret and the Evans Twins
Artist
Alice Neel
(1900 - 1984)
Date1982
Mediumsilkscreen
DimensionsFrame: 36 3/4 x 47 in. (93.3 x 119.4 cm)
Paper: 31 3/4 x 42 in. (80.6 x 106.7 cm)
SignedNeel '82
Credit LineGift of the American Art Foundation
CopyrightCopyright David Zwirner Gallery
Object number1984.2.1.e
DescriptionBeginning in the early 1960s, Alice Neel became highly regarded for her masterful psychological portraits of art world celebrities. But throughout her career, she also painted her own children and grandchildren, as well as those of others. In a larger sense, she also dealt with some of the major issues that women face: poverty, pregnancy, motherhood, and death. She declared: “Art is a form of history … I want to paint the specific person, plus the Zeitgeist.” [1] In this print, Margaret Evans, a close friend of Neel’s, sits on the floor with her twin children. Both infants are naked to the waist and wear red booties; the one on the left extends his left foot out, turns his back to the viewer, and reaches toward his mother, who appears to be affectionately touching his cheek. The other baby wears blue leggings; he faces forward with prominent facial features and an expression verging on horror. He seems about to cry. Margaret’s and her children’s bodies overlap, suggesting that children are an extension of their mother. [2] The figures are placed to the right side of the composition, leaving a large white openness to the left, which is relieved by the projecting feet of the baby on that side. The viewpoint is elevated, as if the artist were standing above her subjects when she rendered them.
Neel was left-handed, which may explain the placement of the figures to the right in this composition. Typically, she started her paintings with outlines in an ultramarine color, and then filled in the shapes with other colors, as she did here with black, blue, red, and flesh tones. This silkscreen print was based on an oil on canvas painting that Neel completed in 1979. The print was one of thirteen in a portfolio commemorating the conversion of the Second Avenue Courthouse into the new home for the Anthology Film Archives. Some of the other artists in the portfolio were Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, and James Rosenquist. Neel was one of two women to participate, and she may have done so because of her ties to documentary film. For eighteen years, she had an intermittent relationship with Sam Brody, a left-wing filmmaker and critic, and the father of her son, Hartley. The fact that Neel chose as her subject a scene of children—one apparently terrified—may be an indirect allusion to her own unsettled household where Brody was often abusive.
The representation of a woman with two children conjures Renaissance paintings of the Madonna with the Christ child and St. John the Baptist. More recently, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, exceptional women artists of the Impressionist era, depicted mothers and maids caring for small children. But Neel did not see herself in terms of her predecessors: “I tried to capture life as it went by—art records so much, the feeling, the beliefs, the changes. … I have painted life itself right off the vine—not a copy of an old master with new figures inserted—because now is now.” [3]
[1] Neel, quoted in Patricia Hills, Alice Neel (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981), 187.
[2] Denise Bauer, Alice Neel’s Feminist Portraits: Women Artists, Writers, Activists, and Intellectuals (New York: SUNY New Paltz Publications Department, 2003), 36.
[3] Neel, quoted in The Christian Science Monitor October 31, 1977, quoted in Phoebe Hogan, Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010), 375.
ProvenanceFrom 1984
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by the American Art Foundation through The Pace Gallery, New York on March 20, 1984. [1]
Notes:
[1] Letter, March 20, 1984, object file.
Exhibition History2010
Looking At/Looking In: Bodies and Faces in Contemporary Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (5/11/2010 - 8/8/2010)
2020
Private Life: Domestic and Interior Spaces in 20th Century Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (2/4/2020-9/27/2020)
2021
The Voyage of Life: Art, Allegory, and Community Response
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (7/16/2021 - 12/12/2021)
2023
Coexistence: Nature vs. Nurture
Reynolda House Museum of Amerian Art (4/7/2023 - 9/24/2023)
Published ReferencesReynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). 204, 205
Status
Not on view