pdf 1 - Exhibitions International

Édité par Jeremy Lewison et
Susanna Pettersson
Alice Neel : peintre de la vie moderne
Dans ce catalogue éclairant, les fameux portraits, natures mortes et vues de villes d’Alice Neel font l’objet d’un
réexamen radical. Présentant quelque soixante-dix tableaux répartis sur l’ensemble de la carrière de l’artiste, ce beau
livre va de pair une rétrospective majeure de son œuvre. Il révèle aussi son intérêt pour l’histoire de la photographie, la
peinture allemande des années 1920, et des artistes comme Van Gogh et Cézanne, ce qui contribue à expliquer la
véracité et l’intensité émotionnelle brute de ses œuvres figuratives. Neel était renommée pour son acuité visuelle et sa
profondeur psychologique, et tant ses portraits que ses nus, qu’ils représentent des amis, des membres de sa famille,
des étrangers ou des personnalités culturelles, véhiculent, indépendamment de ses relations avec son sujet, une
intimité incroyablement prégnante.
Les essais d’accompagnement retracent l’itinéraire d’Alice Neel par rapport aux tendances contemporaines dans
l’univers artistique new-yorkais et étudient la manière dont son œuvre s’inscrit dans les contextes social et culturel de
son temps. L’œuvre de Neel, qui s’étend sur plus de soixante ans, constitue un document révélateur sur les milieux
fréquentés par l’artiste, tout en affichant son aptitude à transcender les marqueurs temporels.
• 29 x 25 cm
• 240 pages
• 130 illustrations en
couleurs
• Prix : 44,95€
• Relié sous jaquette
• ISBN FR : 9789462301375
• MEV 4 (22/06)
Ce catalogue détaillé réévalue l’œuvre d’Alice Neel, une des artistes figuratives américaines les plus renommées du
20e siècle.
Jeremy Lewison, ancien directeur de collections à la Tate, est conseiller auprès de l’Alice Neel Estate. Susanna
Pettersson est directrice de l’Ateneum Art Museum.
Avec la collaboration de Bice Curiger, Petra Gordüren, Jeremy Lewison, Laura Stamps et Annamari Vänskä
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki (juin 2016 – octobre 2016)
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Pays-Bas (novembre 2016 – février 2017)
Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles, France (mars 2017 – septembre 2017)
Deichtorhallen Hamburg (octobre 2017 – janvier 2018)
Fonds Mercator S.A.
Rue du Midi 2 - 1000 Bruxelles (Belgique)
Tél. +32 (0)2 5482535 / Fax +32 (0)2 5021618
[email protected]
“I hate the use
of the word portrait.”
by Bice Curiger
see the artist checking the framing by looking at
blue contours outline the woman’s body with
the picture through the rectangle formed by her
masterful cogency, like a tender arabesque of
thumbs and index fingers, a frequent gesture,
liberty. “There is new freedom for women to be
according to her sons.
themselves, to find out what they really are.”9
5
Neel’s sitters take a bold and innovative stance
It has become so commonplace that we
when modelling for her. Neel claimed that she
hardly notice anymore how fundamentally
Alice Neel knew that she could only say what
crutches and prostheses. “If there are very liber-
did not pose or arrange them, adding, in the same
cultural change over the past hundred years
she had to say through painting. The medium
ated people, I in turn feel very liberated and can
breath, that she observes how people sit down
has altered the way we look at and relate to our
was an existential necessity for her and it is
paint them in a more liberated way.”3
when she is talking to them. “They unconsciously
bodies. This brings us back to Neel’s technique
6
the unerring ability to hone in on essentials
assume their most characteristic pose, which
of including the frame in her compositions,
in her paintings of people that accounts for
Paolini reproduced in black-and-white, the
in a way involves all their character and social
by which she probably also meant the zeit-
the extraordinary quality of this oeuvre. The
Renaissance likeness of a young man painted
standing – what the world has done to them and
geist, “the feel of an era”, to which she so often
likenesses of her twentieth-century colleagues
in 1505 by Lorenzo Lotto. By calling it Giovane
their retaliation. And then I compose something
referred.
may seem too polished by comparison, bogged
che guarda Lorenzo Lotto (Young Man Looking
around that.”
down by convention or by an emphasis on form
at Lorenzo Lotto), Paolini highlighted the facts
so wrought that the immediacy of the human
that some five hundred years ago a young man
suggested that her models undress and pose
appeared on the cover of the then tone-setting
encounter is attenuated.
directed his gaze at the artist while the latter
in their underwear because their clothing – a
Village Voice. It must have struck like a bomb-
Alice Neel’s paintings show a great rightness
In 1967, at the height of conceptual art, Giulio
7
In the film, we also learn that she occasionally
In 1968, a year after she had painted naked,
pregnant Julie and her partner, the picture
painted him and that we as viewers of the image
three-piece suit, for example – did not match
shell, breaking taboos in more than one way. For
of means in rendering straightforward events
now take the place of the artist in the act of
her painting. In some cases they actually ended
one thing, the self-confident, perfectly natural
that oscillate between accident and destiny.
painting.
up naked on a bed or a couch. A case in point:
image, an extremely unusual motif in painting,
Cindy Nemser and Chuck (1975), who seem to
quite literally embodied the raging battle against
Palpable in these pictures is the contribution the
Foregrounding the gaze, drawing attention to
sitters make to the emergence of their likenesses
the meta-level of a likeness: Alice Neel is not a
express this very circumstance with every fibre
the Puritanism of bourgeois culture and society.
through the intensity of their presence, so much
conceptual artist but her paintings once again
of their being. Seeking protection, they have
For another, pregnancy was a taboo subject
so that Robert Storr was motivated to comment,
confirm the assertion that good art is conceptual
retired to a corner of the spacious couch, their
for feminists for fear that it could be enlisted
“You see time happen.”2
by definition. Her paintings reflect the art of the
serious but trusting gaze directed toward the
as an argument “to send women back to their
portrait in actu. Through her commitment to
painter.
suburban prisons”.10
It is astonishing and telling that, given her
un-conventional temperament, Alice Neel
figurative painting, she courageously defied the
Fortunately for posterity, some of Neel’s
Formally, Neel’s painting of John Perrault
chose to dedicate herself to portrait art, which
ideology that dominated the art scene in New
sitters were interviewed for the 2007 film, like
(1972),11 is the naked male counterpart to Julie.
was more or less written off in the 20th century
York as the uncontested centre of post-war
Julie from the painting Pregnant Julie and Algis
Stretched out, he lies there with legs bent, quiet
as one of the most conventional of genres! Her
abstraction – which meant even more deter-
(1967). Julie speaks of the incredibly powerful
and pensive, his genitalia unabashedly exposed.
declared antipathy to the word “portrait” must
mined and vigilant consideration of her contribu-
and electrifying energy of an intense nonverbal
also be assessed in this context, especially since
tion within the larger context.
dialogue; subjected to Alice’s laser gaze, she
intimacy of Neel’s paintings. “Psychological”
finds that she is staring at herself. 8
is a term repeatedly invoked by writers and
she painted people who ‘sat’ for her, as classical
art terminology has it.
What’s more, it is impossible to overlook the
patently attentive, alert presence and wordless
communication of Neel’s sitters. The people she
Almost in passing, Neel once remarked that
“My painting always includes the frame as part
Julie faces us, looking out at the world with
There is nothing laboured about the profound
critics but what does that actually mean? Her
of the composition,” as opposed to Soutine, who
confidence, her decisive attitude as a pregnant
work records a readiness to trust and confide.
“is just like Rembrandt, inside the frame.”
woman is tangible in the panorama format of that
It reveals an awareness of others that unfolds
painting that pictures her lying stretched out on
in thrilling repose, leading to an encounter of a
4
These statements draw attention to the
portrays are ‘centred’, both relaxed and mindful,
somewhat curious way in which her sitters often
the bed. Her partner, still fully clothed, seems
special order that takes time and allows for an
wearing no armour metaphorically speaking,
fill the space of her compositions. Neel estab-
to protect her although he is almost hiding
unusual communicative exchange.
although they do occasionally reveal the way in
lishes tension in the picture plane by wildly
behind her. The lively pattern of the red blanket
which they garner support from their protec-
cropping the figures and zooming in not only on
underneath captures some of the tension of
painted the same couple again a year later in
tive shells, i.e. their clothing but also gestural
the face but also the body. In her grandson’s, we
the moment, while Neel’s characteristically
1968, now with their baby; the lackadaisical
In The Family, (Algis, Julie and Bailey), Neel
1 Giulio Paolini, Giovane che guarda Lorenzo
Lotto, 1967.
2 Still from the film Alice Neel by Andrew Neel:
Alice building a “viewer” with her fingers.
3 Alice Neel, Cindy and Chuck Nemser, 1975
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“I hate the use of the word portrait.”
27
Catalogue
of Works
by Jeremy Lewison
Carlos Enriquez – 1926
Oil on canvas, 76.8 cm x 60.96 cm,
Estate of Alice Neel.
Born in 1900, the same year as Neel, Carlos
Enriquez, a Cuban, came to the USA in 1920 to
study at the Curtis Business School, Philadelphia.
After completing his course he enrolled at the
Pennsylvania Academy of Art where he met Neel.
They married in 1925 and moved to Cuba staying
with his parents. They returned to New York in 1927,
where Enriquez worked as an illustrator for a Cuban
magazine, revista de avance. Following the death
of their first child, Santillana, and the birth of their
second, Isabetta, Enriquez returned to Cuba in 1930,
taking Isabetta with him and abandoning Neel. As a
painter he adopted a surrealist outlook tempered
with a dreamy romanticism. He died in Havana in
1957.
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Havana, Cuba