关于爱丽丝·尼尔（Alice Neel）的经常重复的故事之一是，她不喜欢“肖像”一词。
The American painter found the term elitist and instead referred to her works as “pictures of people,” a more democratic description that reflected the diverse racial, social and economic backgrounds of those she painted. As an overarching label for Neel’s body of work, the term is fitting; even in her cityscapes and still lifes, people are always Neel’s true subject.
“Alice Neel: People Come First,”从3月12日（星期六）开始在De Young博物馆观看，这是一个滴落人类的展览。这不仅是她的臣民的人性 - 包括邻居，艺术家，激进的激进主义者，母亲，孩子，朋友和陌生人 - 她以人文和亲密的方式描绘了他们的柔和表现主义，具有象征意义的风格。Neel主题的许多姿势和面孔都有脆弱性。参与作品，您几乎可以感觉到将他们的故事传授到Neel的目光中。
“She had this deeply empathetic and humanistic streak in her work,” says Lauren Palmor, the assistant curator of American Art at the de Young. “But also practically, she was a working mother. She couldn’t afford models, so she painted the world around her.”
Neel周围的人足以吸引她，她有能力捕捉一个人的本质。在基督般的姿势中很明显，这表明了肺结核患者在“ T.B.”中的痛苦。哈林”（Harlem），从1940年开始；母亲在1943年的“西班牙家庭”中的精疲力尽；或罗比·蒂罗森（Robbie Tillotson）冷静地坐着，双腿交叉，in a 1973 work.
Neel (1900-84) was born into a middle-class family in Merion Square, Pa., and studied art at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art & Design.) She traveled to Cuba in 1924 with her husband, painter Carlos Enríquez, and was initially exposed to the radical politics that would color her social circle and art for the rest of her life.
那十年后，这对夫妇搬到了纽约市。在那儿，女儿桑蒂拉纳（Santillana）去世后，距离她在1927年的第一个生日只有一个月的时间，尼尔（Neel）的作品承担了焦虑和害怕失落的方面。在她最终的作品绘画不受孕产的图片绘画中尤其如此。（Neel再有三个孩子：女儿Isabetta与Enriquez；儿子Richard Santiago，音乐家JoséSantiagoNegron和Hartley Neel，其父亲是摄影师和电影评论家Sam Brody，后来她都画了她。）
在大萧条期间，尼尔（Neel）将目光转向了格林威治村（Greenwich Village）的社区，后来又将西班牙哈林（Spanish Harlem）转向了，其中包括诗人肯尼斯（Kenneth Fearing）等工作的穷人，像诗人肯尼斯（Kenneth Fearing）的艺术家，以及像母亲布洛尔（Bloor）和帕特·沃伦（Pat Whalen）这样的社会活动家。她的抗议场面，例如1936年从1936年开始的“纳粹谋杀犹太人”和1950年的“ Save Willie McGee”展示了Neel世界的充满活力的行动。
During the 1930s, she also began painting female nudes. but like her works showing motherhood, they were without the typical idealization. Following World War II, Neel would broaden her practice to painting uncompromising pregnant nudes. Among her later works is a 1980 nude self-portrait at age 80.
The exhibition, which originated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, begins by looking at Neel’s earliest work from the 1920s and ’30s and placing her directly in the context of her time and place with examples of her New York cityscapes.
在她的抗议图像和作品中，例如《鱼市场》（1947年）和“中央公园”（1959年），人类开始从城市中出来。最终，您会发现自己面对她的臣民的人类存在，就像1967年的“黑人男孩”一样，他们的眼睛向上注视。策展人亨利·格尔德扎勒（Henry Geldzahler）在1967年的一件作品中用手握在椅子的后面时，看上去很不适。同年她同样吹牛的“马克思主义女孩”的决心，但在椅子的手臂上挑衅地挥舞着一条腿。
剧作家和安迪·沃霍尔（Andy Warhol）超级巨星杰基·柯蒂斯（Jackie Curtis）的两种观点 - 1970年起的“杰基·柯蒂斯（Jackie Curtis）和里塔·雷塔（Ritta Red）”，展示了柯蒂斯（Curtis）在拖拉中，从1972年开始在“小时候的杰基·柯蒂斯（Jackie Curtis）”中，也表明了与新浪潮的局外人创意潮的联系生活。其他部分提供了Neel的母亲，怀孕和儿童作品的收藏，以及男性和女性裸体的探索。
In addition to the feeling of connection to her subjects, what “People Come First” most expertly shows is how far ahead she was of contemporary discussions about who should be represented in portraiture should represent. When seen en masse, her works reflect the urban racial and cultural melange she lived amid in a way that feels very relevant in 2022.
During Neel’s lifetime, much of the art world veered toward abstraction as the modus for change. There is something quietly radical about Neel’s figurative works of people that dare to present the human condition in all its complicated intimacy.
“爱丽丝·尼尔（Alice Neel）：人们首先来”在巨大的人道主义危机时期开放Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine。如我们所见statistics of casualties and crowd shots of panic and mass exodus from cities, it can be difficult to contextualize the human cost. It’s never a bad time to have an Alice Neel retrospective, but the past two years have made it feel especially urgent to revisit work that focuses on the value of individual lives.
“Alice Neel: People Come First”:绘画。上午9:30-5：15下午星期二至周日。3月12日，星期六，至7月10日。$ 15- $ 30。Young Museum，S.F。Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive 50415-750-3600。deyoung.famsf.org
Editor’s note: The original version of this story has been updated to reflect that Alice Neel met her husband Carlos Enríquez prior to her trip to Cuba in 1924; Neel’s son Hartley Neel was fathered by photographer and film critic Sam Brody; and during the 1930s, Neel lived in Greenwich Village prior to moving to Spanish Harlem.