"Neel emerges as a resolute survivor who lived by her convictions,
both aesthetically and politically." --Publisher's Weekly
Phoebe Hoban's definitive biography of the renowned American painter
Alice Neel tells the unforgettable story of an artist whose life spanned
the twentieth century, from women's suffrage through the Depression,
McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and
second-wave feminism. Throughout her life and work, Neel constantly
challenged convention, ultimately gaining an enduring place in the
canon.
Alice Neel's stated goal was to "capture the zeitgeist." Born into a
proper Victorian family at the turn of the twentieth century, Neel
reached voting age during suffrage. A quintessential bohemian, she was
one of the first artists participating in the Easel Project of the Works
Progress Administration, documenting the challenges of life during the
Depression. An avowed humanist, Neel chose to paint the world around
her, sticking to figurative work even during the peak of abstract
expressionism. Neel never ceased pushing the envelope, creating a unique
chronicle of her time.
Neel was fiercely democratic in selecting her subjects, who represent an
extraordinarily diverse population--from such legendary figures as Joe
Gould to her Spanish Harlem neighbors in the 1940s, the art critic Meyer
Schapiro, Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, Andy Warhol, and major figures
of the labor, civil rights, and feminist movements--producing an
indelible portrait of twentieth-century America. By dictating her own
terms, Neel was able to transcend such personal tragedy as the death of
her infant daughter, Santillana, a nervous breakdown and suicide
attempts, and the separation from her second child, Isabetta. After
spending much of her career in relative obscurity, Neel finally received
a major museum retrospective in 1974, at the Whitney Museum of American
Art, in New York.
In this first paperback edition of the authoritative biography of Neel,
which serves also as a cultural history of twentieth-century New York,
Hoban documents the tumultuous life of the artist in vivid detail,
creating a portrait as incisive as Neel's relentlessly honest paintings.
With a new introduction by Hoban that explores Neel's enduring
relevance, this biography is essential to understanding and appreciating
the life and work of one of America's foremost artists.
