Alice Neel’s art is at last getting the attention it deserves
Her subjects’ inner worlds interested her as much as their appearances did
When Alice Neel painted Andy Warhol in 1970, he chose to sit topless with his eyes clamped shut. Then 70 years old, Neel was good at talking people out of their clothes; she saw disrobing them as a battle of wills. Warhol loathed nudity and managed to keep his trousers on. But he could not hide the scars from an assassination attempt that were carved into his droopy torso, nor the surgical corset that held his severed abdominal muscles together. Neel painted the superstar of Pop Art as she thought he saw himself: broken and alone, but composed.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The naked truth”
From the December 17th 2022 edition
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